Ruminations, Haunts, and Errors

Time to clear out some links I thought might be worthy of commentary…

• Blue Ball Machine Stupid and pointless, but oddly mesmerizing. Just like much of the world wide web.
• Tinfoil hats attract mind-control signals, boffins learn Uh…the title is quite enough.
• Screwcap Savvy. On one level I’m perfectly aware that good screwcaps are no longer an indicator of cheap wine, but I do remember being momentarily suprised during our Sydney vacation when waiters in a couple of restaurants opened our bottles with a twist of the wrist rather than a corkscrew. However, the reason I posted this link was that it’s the first time I’ve seen wine and light sabers discussed in the same story.
• History’s Worst Software Bugs; Some Technologies Will Annoy. Evidence against the movement towards all-wired, all-in-one, always-connected technology. As if incessant cellphones and inexplicable ‘check engine’ lihts weren’t enough of a reminder.
• Gravity-Powered Asteroid Tractor Proposed to Thwart Impact. The realities of astronautical physics and technology aren’t nearly as slick as the movies, but it’s still impressive that we’ve got a plausible method for redirecting an asteroid. Too bad that promising glitz and glam, rather than the slower plod of reality, is the better way to get decent science funding.
• NASA Axes Space Station Research. Yep, to be effective ISS needs to be safe. (And, well, completing the damn thing wouldn’t hurt either.) Yet it seemed obvious to me back in the late ’80s that, despite the promises, ISS would be so expensive to build and maintain that it wouldn’t be cost-effective as a platform for cutting-edge science and technology. And now here we are.
• Repairing Journalism. Sydney H. Schanberg suggests that journalists should consider promises of anonymity null and void upon discovery that the source was disingenous. Good idea. We need to go further into a wider examination–for journalism, law, and politics–regarding the proper conditions for putting names and statements out of public view.
• Pump Some Seriousness Into Energy Policy Wow, I never thought I’d read such a staunch conservative advocating higher taxes on anything, let alone the gasoline. His arguments for ANWR drilling don’t persuade me, but some of the others aren’t half bad.

• I started playing with Flock last night. Still needs a little work, but the potential is there for this to become a great tool. I’m especially looking forwad to the ability to consolidate tags across multiple tools. I believe that the critical mass is now present in tools like blogs, Flickr, del.icio.us, Google, and widespread broadband so that a tool like Flock can now get closer to the ‘network is the computer’ ideal Sun and others have been promising for a generation now. That it’s not coming from one of the Big Guys shouldn’t be a surprise.
• Fans polled support umpires, dislike DH rule
  Good to know I’m not in the minority. Quoth Frank Thomas on the DH:
  

  It’s extended many careers. I think it should be universal; it would mean more jobs in baseball. Who wants to see pitchers hit? Nobody.

  Actually, I do like to see pitchers hit. A number are decent, plenty lay down good bunts, and watching an inept pitcher flail badly at curveball or a big guy (say, Carlos Zambrano) lumber around second for a freak triple is quite entertaining. However, while Thomas’s concern for job security is understandable, it should be considered irrelevant here. The decision to enact or drop a playing rule should be judged only by its effect on the balance of gameplay; how shifts in that balance affect the interest of fans is the only business effect really worth considering.
• What do current controversies like the validity of Intelligent Design, political intransigence and incompetence, the effects of global warming, and others have in common? I think an important thread is the desire by very many people to believe that the world functions accoring to a set of simple, easily knowable rules, and furthermore their insistence not only that those rules are already known but also that there must be something amiss with observations of the world that would seem to conflict with those rules. These types of people often have trouble with the proper interpretation of observations and tend to ignore the limitations or quirks of the mind; what’s worse, even people who do (or should) have the training to know better are susceptible to falling into such modes of thought when it suits them. Myself, I like the philosophy of the Bad Astronomer–”I like reality the way it is, and I aims to keep it that way”–but if others prefer a different mode of thought that is of course their prerogative. However, their views present a serious problem when used to select public officials and set public policy; if nothing else, we all end up wasting time in pointless debates over topics that should be considered settled.
• Mapping Where You Think You Live
  Ah, the power of the internet being harness for good: elucidating where the true boundaries lie between civic and sports loyalties, and all to be nicely mapped. Isn’t this info in some marketroid database at a big consumer-products corporation somewhere? Well, at least soon we’ll also be able to easily locate which locale officials deserve our scorn, and then marshal forces for the upcoming pop vs. soda war that we all know is inevitable.
• Oink Oink; For a Senate Foe of Pork Barrel Spending, Two Bridges Too Far
  The growth in pork spending over the last decade is truly astounding, especially since it coincides with Republican control of the House–and accelerated after they got the White House. They used to deride the the Democrats as the ‘tax-and-spend’ party, but that ethos is at least more honest in my view than the GOP’s ‘borrow-and-spend’ methods. I suppose the latter better corresponds to most Americans’ fiscal habits, though.
• Cheap Gas Is a Bad Habit; Sierra Club Gets Behind the Wheel
  Hybrid vehicles are still luxury items, purchases that have more feel-good effects than actual significant environmental impact, but it certainly seems that the technology is rapidly improving in terms of both efficiency and price. Perhaps these continuing improvments, combined with the lessons of Katrina and Rita, the rising demand of the Chinese economy, and the security quagmires caused by our Middle-East entanglements will finally give the proper impetus to move on from the petroleum enconomy that has dominated for the last century or so.
• Using Our Leverage: The Troops
  A little reverse psychology to nudge the Iraqis? Actually, we should make this a more general policy in the places around the world–and there are many–where locals simultaneously desire and detest American help. During our inteventions in the Balkans during the 1990s I always thought that the better approach in such situations–where various groups have been warring on and off for centuries over perceived slights, religous differences, and other such pettiness–would simply be to stay out and to use our resources to prevent spillover into neighboring regions that prefer to remain uninvolved. That’s somewhat callous given that many true innocents can be caught in the crossfire, but no amount of military power, American or otherwise, can fix broken societies. We can only offer to help if they sincerely want to change, otherwise we should simply strive to ensure an imploding society doesn’t take its neighbors down with it.
• Kathleen Sulivan, Dick Thornburgh, Ron Klain, Glenn Harlan Reynolds, and Jean Edward Smith published twenty-five questions for Supreme Court nominees in the New York Times. Many of the specifics will soon be dated (if they aren’t already), but I think these cover a number of important topics that Americans should continually ask themselves–and their public officials–regarding the responsibilities and powers of the judiciary in our government and society. John Tierney also posed some more flippant ones that are amusing but also oddly point to good techniques for any sort of important interview.

• New Planets - Why did the announcements take so long?
  Since science is done by people, it’s difficult to elimnate tendencies of some to favor sensationalism and prestige over more sober search for knowledge. Such tensions have probably been around for millenia, but there does seem to have been a disturbing acceleration in recent decades.
  Tags:astronomysciencesociety
• Titan moon occupies ’sweet spot’
  Interesting example of a generalization of the Anthropic Principle. Of course such striking balances simply must indicate ‘design’ for those who simply refuse to believe that anything can result from chance or coincidence.
• Pounding Pavement Generates Electricity When Wearing Novel Backpack
  Very promising. How can you not like the idea that an extra snack can eliminate the need for some batteries?! I couldn’t help but think of a couple of my grade- and high-school teachers who wished they could harness the collective jaw power of gum-chewing students.
• Plan by 13 Nations Urges Open Technology Standards
  Great idea, but will probabaly never happen because the major corporations will have difficulty seeing that abandoning data-format lock-in (and the profits thereof) can lead to a proliferation of new, better-working products.
  Tags:internationalopensourcetechnology
• PCWorld.com - 20 Things They Don’t Want You to Know
  Conspiracy! Well, maybe not so evil, just an example of how marketroids know that most people don’t have the expertise to really know what’s going on with their electronic equipment.
  Tags:technologytips
• ICAO - Phonetic alphabet
  Came in handy to specify airline reservation locator codes over the phone.
  Tags:communicationinternationalstandard

• The Uses of ‘Activism’ ;   Teaching of Creationism Is Endorsed in New Survey
  A subtlety in the definition of democracy that is often overlooked is that majoritarianism is not required. Indeed, it should be imperative of any government to have mechanisms that can ignore or overrule the prevailing ‘will of the people’ when required, lest minorities or posterity be oppressed by political whims that arise from citizenry who may not be fully informed or enlightened enough to appreciate the full impact of their sentiments. When various options (or candidates, or whatever) are all essentially equivalent, then majority-rule is an appropriate way to make a decision. However, when proper analysis of facts and logic can show one to be superior, whether or not a majority of the populace actually like that result shouldn’t be a major factor; conversely, majority support for something provably fallacious shouldn’t matter, especially when few in that majority really have the knowledge and training to assess the concepts properly.
• Most scientific papers are probably wrong
  I think an important difference between those with proper training in science and other forms of reasoning is that they won’t find this conclusion surprising–or, importantly, bothersome.
• PowerPoint: Killer App?
  Of course the problem isn’t with PowerPoint per se, or even that it makes taking a set of too-sparse notes and expand them to a thirty-page deck complete with flashy graphics that obscures the fluffiness of the content ridiculously easy. No, the issue it’s used in situations where neither the presenter has the chops to make the content compelling nor the audience has the analytical skills to notice the weak argumentation. Ever notice that the horror stories come out of places like corporate boardrooms, the Pentagon, and high-level NASA managerial meetings rather than, say, university colloquia?
• The Public Domain: Here Today, Gone Tomorrow
  While I respect Lessig’s opinions, this one seems a bit Cassandra-like. I’m sure there will come a point when the threat to the existence of a public domain will be obvious and critical enough for its protection to be in the interest of forces powerful enough to fight back vigorously. Still, it does make one think how the very existence of a distinction between copyrighted and public works is merely a legal construct and not one to be taken for granted.

• Irreplaceable Exuberance;   Inequality and Risk
  Leans towards supply-side economics, but presented from more of a human-nature point of view so I can sorta buy it. Certainly, innovation and progress require motivated people, and often that motivation is for profit. However, accepting that socioeconomic disparity is unavoidable doesn’t mean we can’t try to temper it; I’ll believe that heavy-handed government policy that tries to force redistribution is probably counterproductive in the long term, but we can certainly provide social pressures on those at the top of the scale to voluntarily decide when they have ‘enough’ and eagerly distribute their surplus to help out others.
• Calif. Senate Passes Gay Marriage Bill

  A higher power created the institution of marriage.

  –Sen. Dennis Hollingsworth (R-San Diego)
  Um, then it really doesn’t matter what the legislature says, so why bother to rail and vote against the measure? Oh, that’s right, because Mr. Hollingsworth is wrong: marriage is in fact a construct of society and its laws, established and regulated by the statutes and constitutions of the several states.
• Blair calls for better parenting
  Good sentiment, but I’m fairly certain that giving the state broad powers to intervene isn’t really going to be a major improvement. On the other hand, perhaps there should be a bit more scrutiny…I mean, why is it that one needs a license to cut and color hair but anyone can become a parent with no training whatsoever?
• Day-After Pill Exposes FDA Rift
  The polticians-vs.-science angle here is obvious, but what struck me more in reading about this was the continued crusade against contraception, in particlar by those who continue to claim that access to it will encourage sexual activity. First off, it’s an untterly unproven assertion. Second, given the well-known inability of most teenagers to fully comprehend the consequences of their actions (beyond ‘getting caught’), it seems laughable that fear of pregnancy is the major factor that is stopping millions of horny American teenagers from getting it on. Finally, despite the claims of any particular religion, cultural rules and taboos about sexual activity are really just a form of ‘behavioral contreception’, and hence the most important concern should be to prevent pregancies among those who are incapable (or unwilling) to handle them properly.
• The Road to Hell Is Clogged With Righteous Hybrids
  Had the Honda Civic hybrids not been a couple months away from production when I bought my car, I would have given it serious consideration. However, it’s become clear over the past couple of years that the technology is still several years (decades?) away from really being cost effective for all but a very small group of drivers in certain types of areas; it’s more of a feel-good purchase than anything else. Still, it’s good to see they are at least becoming mainstream, as that’s the first step towards ensuring future, better technologies will be adopted when their available. Until then, Tierney’s idea to base tolls and other sorts of road charges based on vehicle weight seems a great idea–although obvious in hindsight, the greater amount of road space required by SUVs on expressways never occurred to me.

• Women’s Rights. Gay Rights. Healthcare. Anti-Torture. Pick One.
  A good if longish rant on how the idealistic approach to politics favored by single-issue groups (and Third Parties, in my view) is fine for generating discussion but a terribly impractical method for making that final decision in the ballot booth:
  

  That’s all this single-issue, not-single-issue argument is about. That choice, right there, and how to make it. It’s not about “disrespecting” people, or “abandoning” people, or “not understanding the severity” of the issue. It’s about the fundamental problem with representative democracy: if you’re not your own representative, you’re by definition going to have to figure out who should be. And it’s a brutally imperfect process.

• The prize for the worlds most redundant book title
  Scary that there’s enough demand for the book for a major house to publish it.
• Age-Old Cures, Like the Maggot, Get U.S. Hearing
  And why not? Much of medical and pharmeceutical research amounts to finding ways to concentrate or control naturally occurring compounds and processes to affect human physiology in beneficial ways. If the natural operation of some creatures can do exactly what we want in certain situations, why shouldn’t we use these ‘medical devices’? The eww factor should only apply when such critters show up in uncontrolled ways.
• Brain’s Own Pain Relievers At Work in Placebo Effect, Study Suggests
  Aha, it’s not just psychosomatic then. Methinks that a firmer understanding of the mechanisms by which this works could have great potential for medicine, especially for the treatment of pain.
• In Asia, the Eyes Have It
  Always interesting to read research that yet again confirms that people’s cultures and personalities have significant effects on how they observe the world. (It underscores how much training is required to even approach looking at anything ‘objectively’.) On the other hand…why does this continue to surprise people? Taoism and Buddhism (among others) have been pointing out this effect for millenia, and quantum theory has laid it out more ’scientifically’ for nearly a century.
• We’re No. 17! We’re No. 17!
  Um, okay, anyone who says that Chicago’s being midway down the liberal-conservative spectrum is ’surprising’ hasn’t really paid attention to this town’s politics over the last century or so. Democrats control the town because ward-machine politics gets things done, and the Dems got there first. The ‘liberal’ tendency towards lots of public services exists because providing those services helps bring in the votes. Chicago Democrats have never really staked out policy positions that strayed very far from moderate, especially in comparison with their party brethren on the coasts.
• Medics attack use of homeopathy

  It has been established beyond doubt and accepted by many researchers, that the placebo-controlled randomised controlled trial is not a fitting research tool with which to test homeopathy

  Wow…that’s pretty much an admission that homeopathy is doomed to fail any tests that follow our silly ‘conventional’ ideas of how logic, science, evidence, and data analysis. Well then, if a controlled and randomized study isn’t appropriate, what pray tell is an appropriate method?
• GnuCash - Open Source Accounting Software
  Astounding how many questions can be answered and annoyances allayed by actually bothering to read the documentation.
  Tags:Linuxfinancetechnology

• The Cubs slide began innocently enough with a Little-League type gaffe in Philadelphia last week, but as it has grown longer the losses have become more and more breathtaking in their ineptness. The last few games have held a morbid sort of entertainment value, for while sinking towards oblivion with a series of heartbreaking, close losses seems more valiant, a spectacular implosion has a certain kind of stupefying panache.
• Analyze This: Combining Data
  It seems to me that the ability to sift through unstructured data and drawn meaningful content from it–especially emergent properties rather than mere induction or deduction–is a key element of artificial intelligence, perhaps even more so than the venerable Turing Test. Somewhat ironic here that after decades of academic AI studies, an important step forward may have come out of the simple desire to cut costs.
• Silliness On Stem Cells

  Life, however, is lived on a slippery slope: Taxation could become confiscation; police could become gestapos. But the benefits from taxation and police make us willing to wager that our judgment can stop slides down dangerous slopes.

  And people sometimes thik that politics and law will lead to clarity and simplicity? Ha.
• Privilege at Stake With Nominees
  Executive privilege has its place, but it’s really unfortunate how its extent all depends upon the political climate rather than a more holistic debate on its merits and limits. Really, any public official should expect that any discussions and deliberations made about public issues–on taxpayers’ time and money–are to be public knowledge; anyone who can’t deal with that should go instead into private enterprises where disclosure can be as broad or narrow as employment contracts specify. Certainly there are a few situations–ongoing criminal investigations, specific information that could compromise public safety, etc.–where withholding information is in the public interest, but any such cases should be provable to an independent entity (judge, arbitration panel, whatever) and limited to the minimum time necessary; no one, not even the President, should be able to self-certify information as ‘privileged’ without the possiblity of independent review.
• Bible Course Becomes a Test for Public Schools in Texas
  Given its importance in European and American cultures, the Bible–and the ways in which it is interpreted and used–is most certainly a valid topic for study; in that light I would have no objections to elective courses in public schools. Yet the rumblings from otherwise supportive parents that the current implementations reflect a very particular sectarian bent indicate that, despite protestations of the course creators, the current efforts are less about education and more about proselytizing. Besides, if it’s really For the Children’s Education, given that the course covers material that the kids should already know pretty well, wouldn’t it make more sense to explore other religions–gee, I dunno, understanding the Koran springs to mind–either in comparision with the Bible or on their own merits? I’d love to see how the Bible-course advocacy groups would respond (squirm?) in the face of that idea.

• Astronomers Discover “10th Planet”
  Objects of significant size in the Kuiper Belt, and even the Saturn-to-Neptune region, have been found with increasing frequency recently, and now we’ve got one that appears to be bigger than Pluto. The distinction between major and minor planets will almost certainly need to be revisited, and I wouldn’t be surprised if Pluto loses its ‘major’ designation once the generation of astronomers who keep it there for sentimental (political?) reasons have been replaced.
  
• Over the Moon
  It behooves NASA to send the shuttle up a few more times to repair HST and maybe ferry a few more items to the space station, but after that I think it’s time to scale back our manned space program–including Moon and Mars missions–in favor of unmanned missions that provide vastly more science and engineering knowledge per dollar. Tierney puts it as succinctly as I’ve seen it:
  

  Sending astronauts on the shuttle isn’t worth the risk, and not simply because of its design flaws. For all its problems, the shuttles have safely returned from 98 percent of their missions, which may well be the highest success rate of any exploration program in history.The real problem with this exploration program is that it doesn’t explore anything. Three decades after going to the Moon, NASA is sending astronauts a few hundred miles above Earth to conduct high school science experiments. Can you name anything - besides repairing the Hubble Telescope - they’ve accomplished?

• Paper’s Natural Fingerprint Could Be Built-In Passport Protection
  Just think of all the efforts we spend on technology for encryption, ID protection, and the like…yet simple things from nature not only put our efforts to shame but do so in plain sight. Ain’t science grand?

• Look Who’s Talking
  Wired article describing how–and why–the Amish view, adopt, and reject technology. Enlightening. To me their views seem a bit extreme yet many of the underlying principles and goals seem quite valid.
  Tags:societytechnology
• Corporate Weasel Words
  Sad thing is that I’ve heard some of these with regularity. Worse is that I’ve actually used some too (but at least I felt dirty doing so).
  Tags:businessculturefunlinguisticssociety
• Un-Spin the Budget
  Oh, my…
  

  To understand where the budget deficit came from, you can’t do better than the Jan. 18, 2001, issue of the satirical newspaper The Onion, which predicted the future with eerie precision. “We must squander our nation’s hard-won budget surplus on tax breaks for the wealthiest 15 percent,” the magazine’s spoof had the president-elect declare. “And, on the foreign front, we must find an enemy and defeat it.”

  When an economist cites The Onion as an accurate predictor of presidential policy, is that one of the signs of the apocalypse? It’s still very, very sad and wrong.
• Dubya’s socioeconomic myopia regarding global warming
  What, me worry? Taking responsibility? Nah, not if it affects next quarter’s results.
  Tags:politicsscience
• Longhorn following Unix on security?
  About frickin’ time they learned the basic least-privilege security lessons that Unix learned a generation ago. The sad thing is that Windows user and file permissions have probably been granular enough–in some cases, even more so than Unix–to make most PCs vastly more secure than they are currently, but the allocation of those permissions has been so stupid–and vendors so reluctant to push changes lest they break logo compatibility–that securing a Windows box has been such a lingering issue. How many internet outages and lost dollars could have been prevented over the last 15 years had Microsoft had just a little more vision about publishing software that was properly designed rather than in accordance with marketing schedules?