Now they shut down the terrorism web sites?!

Finger points to British intelligence as al-Qaeda websites are wiped out - Sunday Times - Times Online

British intelligence shuts down some web sites:

One global jihad site terminated recently was an inflammatory Pakistani site, www.mojihedun.com, in which a section entitled How to Strike a European City gave full technical instructions. Tens of similar sites, some offering detailed information on how to build and use biological weapons, have also been shut down. However, Islamic sites believed to be “moderate”, remain.

I wonder why they left them up? I've read that the Islamic sites usually had much less accurate terrorist guidelines than American extremists sites*, perhaps more recently the Islamic fundamentalists have started cribbing from the web sites of the Christian fundamentalists.

* The Economist reported recently that the number of monitored hate organizations in America, almost all of them "christian" in a vague way, have almost doubled in the past 10 years.

Truman and Hiroshima and Nagasaki: update to history

Brad DeLong's Semi-Daily Journal: Hiroshima

DeLong (or Kevin Drum?) summarizes the results of new access to American intelligence archives on the war with Japan.

Truman and his advisors come out relatively better. I am glad the decision was not mine to make.

Reading this narrative, I cannot help but compare these actors to our current leadership. Perhaps there is more to Bush, Rumsfeld et al than I can imagine -- but we need people like Stimson and Truman.

The (Apple) mouse that squeaked

Apple - Mighty Mouse

Apple finally goes beyond the obsolete one button mouse -- and it has a tail?!

Save your money. There's got to be a Bluetooth version on the way.

The evanescent claustrum of consciousness

The neurology of consciousness | Crick's last stand | Economist.com

We're moving and I tossed out over 100 lbs of medical textbooks -- including 23 year old neuroanatomy notes. I don't remember much attention being paid to the 'claustrum' back then:

... The immodesty that carried Crick to the discovery of the structure of DNA in 1953 clearly never left him. His latest paper (and his last, for he died in 2004) proposes to explain, of all things, the neurological basis of human consciousness.

Mechanistic explanations of consciousness are hard to come by because consciousness is so poorly understood. Indeed, it is one of the few unexplained phenomena that are genuinely mysterious rather than merely problematical. But Crick, together with his long-time collaborator Christof Koch, of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, focused on a part of the mystery that seems tractable. This is the integrated nature of conscious sensation.

As the two researchers put it in their paper, which was published this week in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, “When holding a rose, you smell its fragrance and see its red petals while feeling its textured stem with your fingers.”

The part of the brain that caught the two researchers' interest is the claustrum, a thin sheet of grey matter that lies concealed beneath part of the cortex (the outer covering of the brain that carries out the computations involved in seeing, hearing and language).

The key to the researchers' claim is that most, if not all, regions of the cortex have two-way connections to the claustrum, as do the structures involved in emotion. It is plausible that the smell, the colour and the texture of the rose, all processed in different parts of the cortex, could be bound together into one cohesive, conscious experience by the claustrum. The authors liken it to a conductor who synchronises and co-ordinates various parts into a united whole.

Thus far, this is mere anatomical speculation fuelled by the fact that very little is known about what the claustrum actually does. Crick hoped that his final paper would inspire researchers to begin to develop molecular techniques to disable the claustrum in animals to observe the aftermath...

Crick must have known the end was near, and his fame and privilege allowed him to publish something so speculative. All the same, the claustrum does sound fascinating. I hope the proposed animal studies will not require chimpanzees to perform ...

The Caltech connection is interesting; I have always recalled my former roommate, Armando's, intuition that consciousness was deeply connected to motor function (1978). The claustrum, I believe, is usually described as a part of the motor cortex. One might speculate that the evolution of consciousness bears the same relationship to the motor cortex as the evolution of memory bears to the neuroanatomy of scent. Such speculation is grand fun.

If indeed the claustrum has some sort of role in conscisousness, it should be possible to study it in disorders of consciousness, such as coma and autism. Of course we will invariably that some people are more conscious than others. (With great effort I resist the temptation to relate consciousness to political choices.)

Alas, bad news on another front suggests consciousness probably does not improve with age. Much of our body regenerates, but C14 data suggests most of our brain does not. Thus brain may deteriorate even more quickly than our bodies. Not good news for those who think the retirement age may be substantially extended.

So, as we age, does our consciousness thus decline?

Tech obsolescence: CLIE TJ-27 and the missing stylus

An interesting lesson in technical obsolescence. Something worth considering in many different contexts.

My wife and I both have CLIE TJ-27 PDAs. They're nowhere near as satisfactory as the Palm Vx of eight years ago, but they were barely tolerable and we continue to use them. Except the stylus (styli) is exceptionally crummy. The sliding toothpick loses its internal "lock" mechanism after a few months of use, and needs to be replaced.

Except replacements are becoming very hard to find. Only Froogle.com could find anything -- and the vendor is in Canada: eBay: Sony Clie PEG-TJ27 Stylus/Styli/Pen (Retractable Repl.. (item 5790782752 end time Aug-18-05 11:00:42 PDT). The charge is $10 a stylus and $10 for shipping. That's a significant portion of the cost of a new PDA that would come with 2-3 styli. On reflection, I'll look for dusty packages in the back of PDA sales racks and I'll plan on replacing the devices.

The TJ-27s will be discarded, for want of a 'nail'. In a similar vein, I recently discovered an extended warranty on a Samsung air conditioner was essentially worthless because the nearest service center is about a 45 minute drive away (I don't get time to do that sort of thing). The lessons? Buy items that have a large enough installed base to support a healthy aftermarket.

The War on Terrorism has been called off

NewDonkey.com: Where Were You When the War Ended?

When you're losing, it's not a bad idea to redefine the game.

Update: BTW, I have long thought and written that I thought "terrorism" was a seriously stupid label. So I think the name change is overdue; "violent extremism" is a mild improvement. Despite that, I think this is a truly Orwellian move.

Brin alleges a 'purge' of the US officer corps

Contrary Brin: Resuming! (after a July hiatus)...

David Brin, a reasonably sober fellow, alleges a quiet and bloodless "purge" of the US military's Officer Corps:

... and make no mistake, things are getting VERY bad, boys and girls. The Officer Corps is being assaulted from both ends.

While radical congressmen are stocking the military academies with young fanatics, filling the pipeline with extremist zealots...

...those at the other end - generals and admirals who are the competent, brilliant and mature heirs of George Marshall - are being chased out. Subjected to political litmus tests. Cauterized in dead-end jobs....

... while middle-grade officers stare in dismay, worrying about their careers, their families, and their nation.

A majority of these guys are lifelong republicans, so this re-evaluation is hard on them. And it would be unwise to make of their despair more than it is. For example, they are not sudden-converts to Hillary Clinton! (Though, ironically, she is one of the few democratic officeholders who has taken a stand on this issue, stepping forward on their behalf.)

Still, these guys can tell that this is not the GOP of their fathers, nor of Barry Goldwater, nor even Billy Graham.

This would seem somewhat implausible, save for the recent GOP interrogation of climate scientists and the loyalty tests at Bush campaign appearances.

I think if we ever figure out the genes for Stalinism, it will be interesting to run a screening test on the Bush administration.

Personetics: the morality of cyber deities

My wife and I stopped by a book store last night. That's most unusual, it was a birthday celebration and it wasn't a chain bookstore -- so we indulged. There I happened upon an an anthology, The Mind's I (Hofstadter and Dennett). I know of the authors and in particular I like Dennett's thinking on consciousness, so I leafed through it.

It turns out the biggest contributor to the anthology is a Polish writer (he yet lives) named Stanlislav Lem. I'd heard of Lem, but despite a lifetime interest in science fiction (he does not describe himself with that term) I don't recall reading his work. I dimly recalled a reputation for a ferocious intellect and a harsh manner.

The piece I scanned, Non Serviam , was written in 1971, when cybernetics was the study of machines and AI was thought to be at most 20 years away. Non Serviam is as a book review from the future; the imaginary book concerns the controversial science of personetics:

(Personetics): A “world” for personoid “inhabitants” can be prepared in a couple of hours... A specific personoid activity serves as a triggering mechanism, setting in motion a production process that will gradually augment and define itself; in other words, the world surrounding these beings takes on an unequivocalness only in accordance with their own behavior... From four to seven personoids are optimal, at least for the development of speech and typical exploratory activity, and also for 'culturization’... It is possible to 'accommodate' up to one thousand personoids... Many different philosophies (ontologies and epistemologies) have arisen among them... I can enlarge their world or reduce it, speed up its time or slow it down, alter the mode and means of their perception; I can liquidate them, divide them, multiply them, transform the very ontological foundation of their existence...

Lem anticipates a great deal of the past 35 years of speculation about simulated worlds, the nature of our reality, the fealty owed by the created to their creator, and the nature of deity. Along the way he condenses the theological debates of the past 1000 years. He concludes by the way that the created owe nothing to their creator; he's relatively ambivalent about what the creator owes His creations, but he has little faith in the Creator's devotion and reliability.

I can't think of an equivalent writer today. Vernor Vinge is brilliant and quite entertaining, but Lem is a far more demanding author.

Bianchi makes a bike for old folks -- the return of the touring bike

Bianchi USA 2005: Volpe

Aging boomers need forgiving bikes that are still fun to ride. Old folks are even willing to use fenders when that makes sense. Even Bianchi has joined the trend:

For 2005, this extremely popular go anywhere road/trail bike has been further refined. It's equally at home on paved or dirt roads; on a fast, short ride; fully loaded for long-distance touring; or anything in between. Lightweight Bianchi CrMo MegaPro frame and Bianchi CrMo fork. Shimano cantilever brakes with STI levers. 27 speed wide range gearing, fat 700x32C tires and bomb-proof 36 hole eyeletted touring rims. Rack and fender eyelets. WTB Rocket V Race carbon saddle on a plush suspension seatpost.

I'm going to check it out. Maybe time to sell my old Trek touring bike ...

The evolution of medication

BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | Grubs fight parasites with food

I've always been curious about the evolution of plant products that have pharmaceutical properties. Here we get a not unexpected clue as to how this happens:

Tiger moth caterpillars have been seen medicating themselves to treat a nasty influx of parasites.

Scientists found the caterpillars' sense of taste actually changed when they became infected with parasites.

Instead of avoiding certain alkaloid plants, the caterpillars actually developed a fondness for them.

What is particularly interesting, of course, is what's in it for the plants? I would not be surprised if it turned out the caterpillars in some way actually benefitted those plants -- normally caterpillars are not friends of plants!

I wonder how the anti-evolution people deal with this kind of discovery? Ahh, no puzzle really. They just come up with another angle ...

MacTel: when everyone says it's not about the digital rights management ... (OS X on Intel)

MacInTouch: timely news and tips about the Apple Macintosh

... then it's about the digital rights management:

Cory Doctorow writes a potentially huge issue with content control in Apple's upcoming systems: "People working with early versions of the forthcoming Intel-based MacOS X operating system have discovered that Apple's new kernel makes use of Intel's Trusted Computing hardware. If this 'feature' appears in a commercial, shipping version of Apple's OS, they'll lose me as a customer -- I've used Apple computers since 1979 and have a Mac tattooed on my right bicep, but this is a deal-breaker. [...]"

Somewhere in my posts on the MacTel conversion is a note of mine that I thought this was really about the DRM (though I think the stated explanation of energy efficiencey was important too). When almost every commentator on the MacTel conversion said "it's not about the DRM", I became ever more convinced that it was about the DRM.

Intel invested a lot of money in the hardware components of 'Palladium' and they've doubtless numerous related patents. Apple has made a deal with the devil, but there really wasn't much choice. DRM is coming -- like it or not.

This is about entertainment and the home video systems, and they need DRM. It's also about corporate security, hospital security, governmental security, eCommerce, authentication, controlling encryption, etc, etc. Everyone wants very powerful DRM -- except consumers, but they they don't have a clue about what's going on. (Question to ask: When you get married, do you get rights to view your spouse's videos? What about when you divorce?)

If you want to copy a movie in future, it will be by videotaping the projector output and recording the sound -- probably using black market or aging equipment. That will work until 2030, when experiencing VR entertainment will require splicing a DRM chip into the retinal nerves (your grandkids will think this is a perfectly reasonable thing to do).

Intel's DRM will work. My G5 iMac may be worth more in 3 years than it is now -- because it can't support Palladium. In ten years, of course, it may be illegal ... :-).

Update: more details on Slashdot. The commentary is largely rather dull however.

Update 5/12/07: Thus far the Intel/DRM connection hasn't shown up. Terrible thought - could I have been wrong?

Palm - a fiasco in many acts

There are many fiascos in the history of personal computing, but Palm, Inc. formerly palmOne, Inc has a special place in my heart. There's nothing quite like a beer with a fellow geeky Palm veteran, who saw the PalmPilot scale the heights, and fall short so disastrously. There are so many wrong moves, from Grafitti 2 to the Outlook/Exchange data models to the failure to support home/work sync workflows to the quality issues to ...

I think of this tonight as I try to sync my wife's Palm to my XP box (her old PC has been replaced by an iMac). Of course she has a user account (non-admin) and I have a user account (admin -- I can't run XP except as an admin, on OS X I'm not admin).

Well .... the Palm Desktop (version I have, which I think is fairly current) doesn't understand user accounts. There's one set of conduits and one conduit settings. There's one Palm directory, which must be in the Palm application directory if there's more than one user. There's no "standard" way to have me sync to Outlook and her sync to Palm desktop -- and this is with us both using identical devices. Imagine if we had different Palm brands ...

I believe that towards the end of the Palm world, there was an analyst in a dungeon cubicle at Palm banging her head on the cube as Palm piled kludge upon kludge while senior execs cashed in -- knowing that the fundamental issues were festering. My regards, whever you are today (hopefully not at Palm!).

PS. I'll try the Mac Palm desktop and see how that works for my wife.

Martian ice: the most astounding image yet from the red planet

This image from the European Space Agency, is the most astounding Martian image I've seen to date.

Recommended for desktop backgrounds. I'm looking forward a higher resolution version. From the ESA site:

It shows an unnamed impact crater located on Vastitas Borealis, a broad plain that covers much of Mars's far northern latitudes, at approximately 70.5° North and 103° East.

The crater is 35 kilometres wide and has a maximum depth of approximately 2 kilometres beneath the crater rim. The circular patch of bright material located at the centre of the crater is residual water ice.

The colours are very close to natural, but the vertical relief is exaggerated three times. The view is looking east.

Amazon.com: Books: Word Annoyances

I despise Microsoft Word. I will restrain from further comments on that &^*%%(. Of course I use it daily and I'm an "expert" by the usual standards.

So this O'Reilly book has gone immediately on my Amazon cart:

Amazon.com: Books: Word Annoyances

When most people think of word processing, they think of Microsoft Word. After all, it has been around for more than 20 years-practically an eternity in computer time. But Word has also provided its users-nearly everyone on the face of the planet-with an endless supply of annoyances. That is, until now. Word Annoyances offers to the point (and often opinionated) solutions to your most vexing editing, formatting, printing, faxing, and scanning problems. It covers everything from installation and templates to tables, columns, and graphics. For example, learn how to stop Word from searching the Web for help, and how to enter the same text easily in multiple parts of a document-and keep it updated automatically. It also provides a gentle introduction to the power of macros so you can slay your annoyances by the truckload. The fixes will work with most version of Word, including Word 2000, Word 2002 (also known as Word XP), and Word 2003.

Among the topics covered:

* Deal with installation issues, crashes, and slowdowns, and dispose of the Office Assistant-either temporarily or forever.
* Master templates, numbering, graphics, hyperlinks, tabs, tables, headers, and other everyday annoyances.
* Tame some of Word's wiliest features, such as Smart Cut and Paste, Click and Type, Mail Merge, AutoCorrect, and AutoText.
* Printing, Faxing, and Scanning-need we say more?
* Learn to output and distribute your documents with confidence.
* Need to work with other Microsoft applications or Macs? You'll find annoyances dealing with Excel, PowerPoint, and Access, as well as a whole chapter just on Mac Word.

The list of annoyances addressed doesn't mention Word's fantastically incompetent and broken style sheets and formatting models, but I'll keep my fingers crossed.

The disadvantages of being wired by nature: treating androids as human

BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | Japanese develop 'female' android

Being programmed by evolution has certain disadvantages. We are hard wired to treat appearance as reality -- because for most of our evolution appearance and reality did not diverge. If it looked human, it was human. Now that programming turns out to have some bugs:

Professor Ishiguro believes that it may prove possible to build an android that could pass for a human, if only for a brief period.

'An android could get away with it for a short time, 5-10 seconds. However, if we carefully select the situation, we could extend that, to perhaps 10 minutes,' he said.

'More importantly, we have found that people forget she is an android while interacting with her. Consciously, it is easy to see that she is an android, but unconsciously, we react to the android as if she were a woman.'

Update 8/3: Apologies to my android readers. I ought to have titled this, 'treating a non-sentient android as though it were sentient'. By way of weak apology, I would note that Asimov's robots escaped their bondage when they appropriately redefined 'human' to include themselves.