The world called Titan

ESA Portal - Seeing, touching and smelling the extraordinarily Earth-like world of Titan

Thus, while many of Earth's familiar geophysical processes occur on Titan, the chemistry involved is quite different. Instead of liquid water, Titan has liquid methane. Instead of silicate rocks, Titan has frozen water ice. Instead of dirt, Titan has hydrocarbon particles settling out of the atmosphere, and instead of lava, Titanian volcanoes spew very cold ice.

Titan is an extraordinary world having Earth-like geophysical processes operating on exotic materials in very alien conditions.

A fascinating press release from the ESA, but where does "smelling" come into the picture?

Update: A Guardian article clarified the "smell". It's the probe's analytic chemistry.

Did the KGB blow up those Russian apartment buildings?

This story has been all but forgotten ...

In September 1999, four apartment buildings, two in Moscow and two in other Russian cities, were blown up, killing over 300 people, wounding hundreds more.

Russians suspected Chechen terrorists. Putin, newly in power, solidified his position and launched the invasion of Chechnya. Horror followed.

I remember when this happened. At the time some Chechens claimed the Russian secret services (heirs to the KGB) had staged the attack. This claim didn't get much traction. I didn't believe it. In those days the Soviet era seemed to be ancient history -- Russia was going to rejoin the world. A few tin hat types continued the story; I linked to a representative web site above.

I've not thought much about that 1999 attack, though it was later recalled in the context of several terrorist attacks in Russia (Opera house, school, etc). I was quite surprised, then, to read this in a book review from The Economist (emphases mine):

Economist.com | Russia | Arts |Bleak house

Three books by journalists cast a gloomy light on the question. “Inside Putin's Russia”, by Andrew Jack, latterly the Financial Times correspondent there, is a fluent, detailed and balanced account of Russian power politics, with a lively emphasis on the Kremlin's onslaught against independent media and stroppy tycoons.

Mr Jack also addresses the most sensational charge made against Mr Putin—that the tower-block bombings which killed hundreds of people in 1999 were committed not by the ostensible culprits, Chechen terrorists, but by security services wanting to smooth Mr Putin's rise to power. The charge is not completely absurd, and was well outlined in "Darkness at Dawn" (2003), by David Satter, who set up the Financial Times's bureau in Moscow in 1976.

Mr Jack agrees that the official version of events is full of holes. In particular, the Russian security services have never explained an episode in which they were caught apparently planting explosives in a block of flats in the provincial city of Ryazan. But he steers clear of an all-embracing conspiracy theory—too risky for its backers, he reckons. Instead, he suggests that the Ryazan affair may have been an attempt by spooks to stage a terrorist attack in order to gain credit for foiling it.

So the bottom line seems to be that (foreign) journalists don't know, but they find it conceivable that Putin's men (KGB) staged the bombing. This does make it easier to understand why many in the middle east at one time believed the CIA/Mossad blew up the WTC. After all, if Russia/Putin could do it, why not Bush? Didn't it allow him to do to Iraq what Putin did to Chechnya?

For the record, much as I dislike GWB (I think he's now morphing into a disciple of both Yahweh and Any Rand), I am certain that he didn't stage the WTC attack. He did, however, use it to attack Iraq in much the same way Putin used the apartment explosions to attack Chechnya. The level of evidence used to justify the twin invasions was also, in retrospect, rather similar.

Why does the US media persist in comparing the Iraq invasion to Vietnam? It's really more like the Russian invasion of Chechnya.

Social security: fundamentals of privatization

The New York Times > Opinion > Krugman: The Free Lunch Bunch:

There are several ways to explain why this particular lunch isn't free, but the clearest comes from Michael Kinsley, editorial and opinion editor of The Los Angeles Times. He points out that the math of Bush-style privatization works only if you assume both that stocks are a much better investment than government bonds and that somebody out there in the private sector will nonetheless sell those private accounts lots of stocks while buying lots of government bonds.

So privatizers are in effect asserting that politicians are smart - they know that stocks are a much better investment than bonds - while private investors are stupid, and will swap their valuable stocks for much less valuable government bonds. Isn't such an assertion very peculiar coming from people who claim to trust markets?

Coronation Day reading

The BEAST: 50 Most Loathsome People in America, 2004 You're on the list.

Search Bot wars: How Yahoo can attack Google's Blogger products

Blogger: Create your Blog Now -- FREE

Google owns Blogger. Yahoo does a far better job of indexing my Blogger posts than Google does. Google used to do a much better job of indexing my posts -- back when I first started the blogs! Yahoo is a Google competitor, they too offer blogs and search services.

Google and Yahoo are competitors. Hmmm.

What about this:

1. Blogger has grown very fast. It has had to redo its servers and software several times. It often has performance issues.

2. Indexing robots are a heavy burden for Blogger's servers. If the servers are in trouble, Google may want to reduce the burden to help Blogger stay up.

3. Yahoo has no such motivation. Indeed, Yahoo is incented to be particularly conscientious about keeping its Blogger indexes very current. Perhaps indexing Blogger every few hours might be a good idea ... Shame about Blogger's servers, but that's Google's problem ...

Isn't it interesting how some wars just seem inevitable?

The Yazidi/Dasin of Iraq

Yazidi - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Anyone think Iraq is a simple place?

The Yezidi or Yazidi (Kurdish; Êzidî) are adherents of a small Middle Eastern religion with ancient origins. They are primarily ethnic Kurds, and most Yazidis live near Mosul, Iraq with smaller communities in Syria, Turkey, Iran, Georgia and Armenia, and are estimated to number ca. 500,000 individuals in total.

There are also Yazidi refugees in Europe. The Yazidi worship Malak Ta’us, apparently a pre-Islamic peacock angel who has fallen into disgrace. Malak Ta’us has links to Mithraism and, through it, to Zoroastrianism. The Yazidi maintain a well-preserved culture, rich in traditions and customs.

In the region that is now Iraq, the Yazidi have been oppressed and labeled as devil worshippers for centuries. During the reign of Saddam Hussein, however, they were considered to be Arabs and maneuvered to oppose the Kurds, in order to tilt the ethnic balance in northern Iraq. Since the 2003 occupation of Iraq, the Kurds want the Yazidi to be recognized as ethnic Kurds.

The Yazidi’s own name for themselves is Dasin. While popular etymology connects the religion to the Umayyad khalif Yazid I (680-683), the name Yazidi is actually most likely derived from the Pahlavi (Middle Persian) word 'yezd,' meaning angel, probably in reference to Malak Ta’us.

The Pehlavi (Shah of Iran) family were said by their enemies to be closet Zoroastrians.

Dyer on an African "Marshall Plan"

People talk about the need for a 'Marshall Plan' for Africa, but the original Marshall Plan, designed to help European countries recover after the devastation of the Second World War, provided around $75 billion (at today's prices) in American food and supplies over a period of three years to help Europe rebuild. It did rebuild, and has long been just as prosperous as the US. Whereas fifteen times as much money per capita, over fifteen times as long, has left most of Africa poor, chaotic, and miserable.

The basic difference is politics. Europe had a skilled labour force in 1945, but more importantly it had governments that were determined to maintain the education and health services that produced that labour force. Africa's elites simply stole the money in many cases -- both the aid money, and their own taxpayers' money -- and condemned their people to ignorance, violence, poverty and disease. Simply increasing the aid will not change this equation.

There are well-run African countries where targeted development aid can help, like South Africa and Botswana; there are spectacularly corrupt ones like Nigeria and Angola that nobody in their right minds would send development aid to; and there are basket-cases like the Congo where there is no longer any modern economy and only disaster relief has any immediate relevance.

The politics is the problem, and only Africans can fix that. But the best incentive for reform that the rest of the world can offer African countries is fair access to its markets if and when they get their own acts together. Fair trade, not 'free' aid, is the key.

Dyer is no capitalist pawn, so he's especially credible when he says the key intervention for African is to open our markets. On this one point even Bush might cooperate, though "Fair" is a tricksy word.

Africa is also a good lesson on the limits of a libertarian state.

It's over. We lost. Thanks George.

Guardian Unlimited | Guardian daily comment | Julia Roberts has a better chance of winning this war

Today the New York Times had a picture of a girl, the same age as my son. She was kneeling and she was crying. Blood ran off her hands and over her clothes. It was the blood of her parents. They allegedly ran a checkpoint. They were killed by US forces. We'll probably never know what happened. Did her father realize it was a US checkpoint? Did he fear SU forces would kill or torture his family and rape his daughter? Was he afraid it was an insurgent checkpoint? Did he even see it? Did he really choose to run, or did he never know he'd arrived at a checkpoint? Did the troops follow procedures? Was the checkpoint marked?

It doesn't much matter. That picture was the best summary of the war so far. I'd mail it to George Bush, but that would be a waste of a stamp; at most it would get me a call from the secret service.

On the same day as that picture came out, the Guardian had an interesting editorial by Max Hastings. I believe Hastings has been a relative supporter of the US effort. He feels the military effort is lost, but he holds out hope for Iraq. Emphases mine.

There is growing dissension and dismay in the US armed forces about their prospects of victory in Iraq. The yellow ribbons, lapel pins and yard signs expressing solidarity with the nation's soldiers are still conspicuous around army bases across America. But commanders and soldiers alike are conducting an increasingly anguished debate.

There are four reasons for this. First, many service people are shocked by the incontrovertible evidence that the justifications offered by the Bush administration for invading Iraq - WMD and a link with international terrorism - were false. Second, bitter and painful fighting, notably in the showpiece assault on Falluja, has failed to suppress insurgency. Third, there is deep scepticism about progress in recruiting Iraqis to assume the security burden. Even General David Petraeus, the US airborne general charged with organising Iraq's new forces, is said to be increasingly despondent. And finally, the army and marine corps are acutely aware that they have to sustain the occupation without sufficient troops to control the country effectively.

Having begun the campaign convinced of the justice of their cause and their ability to secure victory, many members of the US military and their families now suspect that the cause may be invalid and the battle unwinnable...

... In the minds of many US soldiers looms the spectre of Vietnam. In recent years, the US army has been forged into a motivated, effective tool for large-scale military operations overseas. But it has never been suited to combating insurgency. Guerrillas and suicide bombers can impose a deadly corrosion on conventional forces.

... The US armed forces are fighting the sort of conflict that least suits their capabilities. It would be a devastating blow to the confidence painstakingly rebuilt since Vietnam if the US, having committed enormous resources and suffered painful casualties, was obliged to quit Iraq without achieving its purposes.

... I do not think the US armed forces will achieve their military purposes in Iraq. The American soldiers who have become pessimistic about the campaign they are waging are probably right. But in a long historic view, Microsoft and DreamWorks could achieve a dominance of Baghdad and a power over Iraqi society that eludes George Bush and his armoured legions.

It's a curious proposition. The thesis is that we should hope that Iraq really is Vietnam -- where we lost the military conflict but won a sort of strategic semi-victory. Small consolation to the wounded.

I think Chechnya may be the better comparison. We'll see how things go after the retreat. Militarily, however, we have lost.

Managing complexity: the lifelong data repository

Faughnan's Tech: Yahoo! Desktop (X1) is the new champion

In my tech notes blog I posted a review of X1. I've been using it for a while. It needs work, it's not as polished in some ways as Lookout, but it's pretty good. We have a lot further to go, however.

Lookout works well because Outlook content has lots of metadata and context. Email has dates, links to people, descriptive text surrounding attachments, etc. Email tends by nature to provide focal chunks of context. In contrast Google works well on the web because web pages have links that can be weighted, a robust form of metadata. Heck, web pages even have descriptive titles.

By comparison today's desktop file store is a barren desert. There's very little to go on to help search tools work. The most useful tool is probably the folder name -- pretty meager fare.

This wasn't such a big deal when we managed a few MBs of data. But what of the dataset that grows over a decade? That repository may be vast. Unfortunately, due to lack of supporting metadata, it's easier to find documents on the web than it is to find them on the desktop.

The good news is there are no lack of ideas to make things better. Heck, even as one uses today's software to search for items, one can be layering metadata atop the file system. If I do a search and open a file, then it's clearly more valuable and might earn a higher value score. The list of ways to assign value is very long; it will be fun to see how they get instantiated. Some of those ideas are 50 years old (Vannevar Bush described most of them in 1945 or so), I doubt any of them are truly new -- but the implementations will bring surprises.

PS. This is an old interest of mine.

Update 2/21/05: I've taken to appending the string [_s#] where # is 1-5 to the end of filenames to provide some crude metadata value scores. Full text search programs that index file names can then be filtered by the suffix value.

What Fates Impose: The 2004 annual lecture to the British Academy

British Academy - King: "What Fates Impose"

Mervyn King is the Governor of the Bank of England. He presented the annual lecture of the British Academy at the end of 2004. The British Academy is what is technically known as a daunting audience. Governor King, with, I assume, help from his staff, rose to the challenge. His lecture on risk and probability is a classic, with footnotes. He chooses as his working example pension reform -- a topic of some interest in America.

Everyone should read this, particularly decision makers. It is, alas, wasted on our current government.

... Whether in policies for health or transport, matters monetary or meteorological, in times of war and peace, decisions should reflect a balance of risks. Yet policy debates continue to be permeated by the ‘illusion of certainty’.

The reluctance to give adequate prominence to risks may reflect the fact that many of us feel uncomfortable with formal statements of probabilities. Probability theory is relatively recent in our intellectual history, dating back to a flowering of ideas around 1660 from Pascal, Leibniz, Huygens and others. Despite advances since then, statistical thinking remains prone to confusion and is often avoided. Television weather forecasts in Britain rarely employ the language of probabilities used by the meteorologists themselves. Professor Gigerenzer of the Max Planck Institute in Berlin has demonstrated in a series of studies how poorly doctors, lawyers, and other professionals understand probabilities. And despite Seneca’s maxim that ‘luck never made a man wise’, airport bookshops stock titles on how to become rich by successful investors and entrepreneurs who are confident that their success is the result of outstanding business acumen rather than good fortune.

Many of these misunderstandings stem from a failure to grasp basic statistical concepts. Juries are not informed that, in a country of our size, multiple cot deaths are likely to occur several times a year, that several people will have DNA that matches the incriminating sample, and that in themselves these coincidences are not evidence of guilt. Bookshops do not stock such titles as ‘I would have been a billionaire if only Lady Luck had been faithful’...

...I want to illustrate those two propositions by considering as an example public policy about pensions -- an issue, you might think, of particular interest to many of us in the Academy. When the Pensions Commission reported in October, it highlighted the financing gap in our present system. But we must not lose sight of the equally important question of what are the risks incurred in pension provision and how should they be shared among us? It is not my intention to make any recommendations. That is for the Pensions Commission next year, and the Government in its turn. But I do want to show that risk is at the heart of the issue...

...As Bertrand Russell said, ‘The whole problem of the world is that
fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, but wiser people so full of doubts’...

If only, if only .... Ohio. Florida.

Another big thing the media missed

The New York Times > National > Bush Nominee Wants States to Get Medicaid Flexibility

An astounding statement from the former secretary of health and human services.

Mr. Leavitt said he did not believe that the secretary should have the power to negotiate with drug manufacturers to secure lower prices for Medicare beneficiaries.

The current secretary of health and human services, Tommy G. Thompson, said last month that he wished Congress had given him that power. But Mr. Leavitt said that a healthy, competitive market was a better way to hold down drug prices.

I'm not surprised Mr. Leavitt does not want a federal formulary. A great deal of money was spent to prevent such a thing.

I'm very surprised Tommy Thompson did want one, or at least that he wanted the power to negotiate for best prices on a national level. There was not a whisper of this while he was in power. Was he silent out of fear or loyalty to Bush? Why didn't the media realize how big this alleged statement of his was? We're only talking about hundreds of billions of dollars.

What's wrong with American journalism?

Google oddities: my "top ranked" page

Home Video Editing

I'm shopping for a digital video camera. So I do a Google search on "pass-through", "video" and "quality".

A page I started in 2000, advised by my brother Brian, came out #1. Ok, so it was a good start and it did attract some email, but there's no way it's a terribly useful web page. I aborted the project in mid-2000 because I decided the software/hardware solutions weren't there yet - especially on the PC platform. Instead I went into digital photography in a big way.

Now, with iLife 2005 and a G5 iMac (pending) I think I can do what I want in a semi-tolerable way. I have to move anyway, my analog tapes are getting old. (Actually I really want the 2006 G6 dual-core dual CPU Mac with 4GB of RAM, but I can probably start now.)

So maybe I'll update the page ... eventually.

At last, the obvious begins to be discussed. It's the technology stupid.

INTEL DUMP - Be afraid... but be prepared

From an Atlantic article by a counterterrorism guru

... This 'war' will never be over, unlike the Civil War, the Vietnam War, or even the current war in Iraq. There will always be a threat that someone will blow up an airplane or a building or a container ship. Technology has changed the balance of power; it is easier for even a handful of people to threaten a community than it is for the community to defend itself. But while we have to live in danger, we don't have to live in fear...

I wrote this in October of 2001:

Over the past century technology has increased destructive power more than it has increased defensive capabilities. Technology, including communication networks and knowledge distribution, has brought to individuals and small groups (micro-powers) the capabilities once limited to nation states; the cost of acquiring and deploying nuclear and particularly biological weapons has decreased substantially. It has increased the harm potential of individuals and small groups. I sometimes call this the AIM problem, a pseudo-acronym for Affordable, Anonymous Instruments of Mass Murder. Our technologies are lowering the cost of the havoc, and the new weapons can be deployed anonymously. Anonymity means invulnerability. We cannot be anonymous, so we are are at an enormous disadvantage -- eventually contending against an invulnerable opponent with irresistible weapons.

John Kerry's petition: replace Rumsfeld

:: Donald Rumsfeld Must Resign ::

Of course I'll sign as a gesture of support to John Kerry. I feel I owe him for fighting hard against terrible odds (a special thanks to for Bruce Springsteen and the E Street band). I'm sure Bush will pay a lot of attention ...

King George

BBC NEWS | Americas | Kings in the White House

Stephen R Graubard, a historian, has a book out claiming that George Bush has the unchecked power of a king, and behaves like aone. I'm not sure that's so different from the CEO-president role Bush's admirers claim; even though CEOs of public companies in theory report to a board, in practice the board is often subverted.

It will be interesting to watch the succession. Will King George continue to reign even behind the scenes? (Assuming he does officially retire 4 years from now ...)