New to Google: very focal searches (single slot value)

Google Blog: Fill in the blanks

Sometimes one wants to use a search engine to find a very specific piece of information rather than to learn about a topic. If search engines were truly intelligent, you could just pose a question the same way you would ask a person. An alternative is to get the search engine to 'fill in the blank.' So instead of asking [who invented the parachute?], you can enter the query [the parachute was invented by *]. (The blank, or wildcard, search is marked by * - an asterisk.)

There is so much text on the web that this method often works well, but to make it more effective, we've improved the way results are found in response to queries containing such blanks. This includes allowing softer pattern matching, if necessary, and promoting results in which the blank filler is relatively more frequent in the context of the query.

The tibia is a part of the *.

This is exceptionally interesting.

Humor at the NSA: your van is ready now

Wired News: Router Flaw Is a Ticking Bomb

Lynn: Air Force (Office of Special Investigations). NSA, is what I'm told, but he wouldn't show me his credentials. There were a lot of flashy badges around from lots of three-letter agencies. So they take me to a maintenance area and I'm surrounded by people ... and one of them says (to another guy), 'You've got the van ready?' I'm going, 'Oh my god.' And they go, 'Just kidding!... Oh, man, you rock! We can't thank you enough.' And I'm just sitting there, like still pale white. They all shook my hand.

I get the feeling that they were in the audience because they were told that there was a good chance that I was about to do something that would cause a serious problem. And when they realized that I was actually there to pretty much clue them in on ... the storm that's coming ... they just couldn't say enough nice things about me...

Pharming - there's no dodging this net risk

Pharming - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Click on a bookmark. Go to your bank site. Enter your user name and password. Continue to work. And now you're penniless.

This is a 'man in the middle attack' in computer security parlance. Such attacks are well understood from a theoretical perspective. What's happened here is that they're now being impelemented remotely. The latest revelation that Cisco routers can be hacked and reprogrammed is hardly reassuring.

This seems a much more severe problem than "phishing" attacks.

We too are manipulated by our parasites

Manipulative Malaria Parasite Makes You More Attractive (to Mosquitoes) - New York Times

It is becoming clear that many, if not all, parasites alter the behaviors of their hosts. Research shows malaria-infected mosquitoes vary their biting behavior depending on the parasite's life cycle. Now we learn that infected human children smell more attractive to mosquitoes:

After studying 12 sets of children, the scientists discovered a striking pattern. 'Gametocyte-infected children attracted about twice as many mosquitoes as either uninfected ones or ones infected with nontransmissible stages,' Dr. Koella said. 'The results really jump out.'

The infected children did not show symptoms like fever, a common situation in Africa. Nevertheless, the researchers treated them with anti-malaria drugs on the day of their study. Two weeks later, after the medicine had cleared the parasites, the scientists repeated the experiments with the same three children. They found that the cured children were no more attractive to the mosquitoes than the others.

I'm starting to worry that the 'toxoplasma alters personality' claim may be valid.

Throughout most of human history we carried a very large number of parasites in our bodies -- particularly worms. How has losing those worms changed our behavior?

Update 8/10: Still thinking about our friends the worms. Some think the absence of worms is the cause of some inflammatory bowel diseases (ulcerative colitics especially). So if worms would make their hosts careless about hygeine, and probably careless about many things, would removing our parasitic worms give rise to obsessive-compulsive disorder? Does being wormless make some people unusually rigid and puritanical? Does having worms promote careless behavior?

Snowball earth

Bacteria froze the Earth, researchers say | CNET News.com

I need to buy (or borrow, our bookcases are full) a modern book on geo-history. When I was a kid snowball earth was still a mystery ...

... Several [Caltech] graduate students, along with supervising professor Joe Kirschvink, have released a paper presenting their explanation of what caused "Snowball Earth," a periodic deep freeze of Earth's atmosphere that has been theorized for years. The Caltech team argues that 2.3 billion years ago, cyanobacteria, or blue-green algae, gained the ability to break down water, which in turn released a flood of oxygen into the atmosphere.

That oxygen reacted with the atmospheric methane, which insulated the Earth at the time, and broke it down. While the oxygen-methane reaction created the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide, the protective nature of the barrier cracked.

Temperatures plunged to minus 50 degrees Celsius, and ice at the equator grew to 1 mile thick. Although this process took several million years, substantial damage to the methane layer could have occurred in the first 100,000 years.

Obsidian Wings doesn't care for Donald Rumsfeld

Obsidian Wings: Thanks, Don.

Every administration is supposed to have a bad guy. The Bush administration seems to feel Rove is not enough.

Some of you may have noticed that I loathe Donald Rumsfeld. I don't particularly loathe Bush -- I think he's a disaster as a President, but I can't seem to raise any real emotion towards him personally. But I do loathe Rumsfeld. And this is a lot of the reason why. I think that when we order kids to go off to fight and die in our name, we owe them as much support as we can muster. It should go without saying that we move heaven and earth to armor their vehicles, that we not nickel-and-dime their health care when they return, and so on. And it should go without saying that when we're unsure how many troops we will need, we err on the side of caution. I can easily understand how it might cross someone's mind to wonder whether generals overstate the number of troops they will need. (As I understand it, it's a standard response when the military doesn't want to do something: announce that it can't be done with less than half a million troops.) I can understand questioning them about this. I have a much harder time understanding how someone could just assume that he's right and all the people who have spent their lives thinking about military operations are wrong: for every one person who thinks like this and is a genius, there are (I'm estimating, of course) thousands who are just pig-headed idiots; and how someone could fail to consider the possibility that he was in the second group, not the first, is a mystery to me. But I absolutely cannot fathom how someone could be so confident in this assumption that he was willing to act on it in wartime, when the price of your being wrong will be a lot of dead soldiers, not to mention failing to achieve your objectives. That's a level of blind arrogance that I find breathtaking, and the idea that families across the country have buried their children because of it fills me with an enduring icy fury.

Extraordinary and irrationally persistent self-confidence is the mark of many powerful men -- but not of the great. Bush and Rumsfeld seem to have this virus. They are not the first such to lead the way to disaster.

I am not as kind to Bush as the author is. I believe Bush is very smart, and he has chosent to retain and reward Rumsfeld.

The Strib on Bush's attack on science - a good, short, editorial

Minneapolis Star Tribune Editorial: Origins/Don't mix science, religion

Straightforward, short, clear, well written. Our home town paper is improving lately!

President Bush says both evolution and "intelligent design" should be taught in schools "so people can understand what the debate is about." Trouble is, there is no real debate; you can't have a debate between a religious belief and science. They're apples and oranges. They don't equate. Sure, you can discuss the intelligent design concept in schools, but that should happen in a humanities or social science course. Evolution should be taught in biology class. Mixing is not wise, especially in the biology class.

In the study of knowledge, researchers refer to the "cognitive domain" and the "affective domain." Cognition involves processes like comprehension, analysis and synthesis. Affective learning involves awareness and valuing. Science is cognitive. Intelligent design is from the affective side. The problem is that intelligent design seeks to disguise itself as cognitive. It is not.

Intelligent design argues that science can't explain all of creation's complexity and that, therefore, there must be an intelligent designer behind it all. Actually, all it means is that science's job is unfinished. It will always be unfinished. Maybe there was an intelligent designer and maybe there wasn't, but the question is irrelevant to science.

This is a tired but dangerous topic. Science is so incredibly valuable to human society -- indeed, you could say that the ability to do science defines humanity -- that we should no longer tolerate the nonsense that seeks to place intelligent design and evolution on the same plane, in competition. Scientists don't try to explain how many angels can dance on the head of a pin, and the theologically inclined shouldn't try to connect the natural selection of evolution to an intelligent designer -- at least not in a science class.

Lest we totally offend those with religious sensibilities, we have great respect for the earnest worship of a deity. That, too, enhances humanity greatly. But religion and science are a bit like cornstarch and water: You can add water to cornstarch, but the reverse doesn't work well. It's OK to add science to religion, but adding religion to science yields an unusable product that dishonors both the religion and the science.

In a sign of the times this article is accompanied by online ads, including some for some esoteric books.

One by one biologists have presented plausible hypotheses and experimental data to resolve the "exceptions" favored by the ID people. This work has advanced our understanding of natural selection; often adversity is strengthening. Biologists are showing their spine, and strengthening their reasoning.

There is one argument biologists cannot refute -- because it's about religion, not science. If you begin with the assumption that humanity is the 'end point' of evolution, then natural selection utterly fails. Natural selection is random and highly contingent, there is nothing inevitable about us. That's the real clash. Almost every religion has the underlying assumption that we are "the point", the reason for things. That attitude is indeed utterly inconsistent with our theories of natural selection and evolution.

That's ok. If you believe that, then you believe the absolutely logical and reasonable position of the catholic church -- that evolution occurs guided by the Hand of God the Designer. That's utterly plausible -- but thus far it's not science. If we start to be able to do experiments with godhood then it may become science; but thus far all the experiments we've tried (prayer studies mostly) have failed.

Gordon's Notes: "Tired of hearing about the war?" Satire it was.

I received a note about this posting of mine objecting (politely) to my statement that Trudeau's description of BD's war injuries was "boring".

To clarify, Gordon's Notes: Tired of hearing about the war? Change the channel, is satire. Of course when I wrote it I could hear my own voice 'dripping' with sarcasm, but that doesn't come across that well in a semi-anonymous blog.

Apologies to anyone who thought I was advocating "changing the channel" to get away from news of veteran suffering. I meant precisely the opposite. We should raise our taxes to pay for the care disabled veterans are going to need. We should also impeach George Bush, but those two objectives are independent. Even Bush's supporters may be willing to raise taxes to care for our disabled and the families of the dead and disabled, I doubt I'll be able to convince many of them to boot him out of office.

Tired of hearing about the war? Change the channel.

Forget the War? Many Can't - New York Times

Torture. Suffering. Death. War is thrilling at first, but it does drag after a while. Doesn't everyone find Doonesbury boring these days, as Trudeau persists in exploring the very unfunny experiences of BD? [Update: I'm being sarcastic. See the comments.]

Bob Herbert is particularly stuck on this topic. Just can't seem to shake it. You'd think he'd know his ratings must be falling. Here he tells yet another story no-one will read:

...I interviewed Specialist Gonzalez on Tuesday in the quiet, air-conditioned offices of Disabled American Veterans, which is helping to prepare him for the transition to civilian life. He sat rigidly on the edge of a sofa, his left hand clinging to the knee of his wife, Any, who is 27. They were married last February.

'She has to be my eyes now,' he said.

I asked Specialist Gonzalez if he had ever become depressed during his ordeal. 'Yes, I did, sir,' he said. 'Actually, I've been getting more depressed lately than in the beginning.'

After a pause, he said, 'Frustration makes me sad sometimes. And I have mood changes. From very happy to kind of sad from one moment to another. And I've become judgmental. Criticizing others. I do that most of the time. Even Any. People have pointed it out to me.'

His ability to concentrate has deteriorated, he said. 'I have to accept it. My room is like a whole map where I keep big chart boards to remind myself which day I went to the gym, which bills I have to pay, so I don't pay them again.'

These are the kinds of sacrifices some Americans are making because of the war. If we're already sick of hearing about the troops getting killed, there's not much hope left for increased attention to those who are wounded.

Specialist Gonzalez said his chief worry, the concern that keeps him awake at night, is what lies in wait when he finally leaves the hospital and returns - newly married and without many of the tools he previously took for granted - to the 'real world.'

The New York Times magazine covered this topic in an excellent article last year. It's been noted elsewhere [1] that the combination of modern body armor, the use of high potency explosive devices in Iraq, and sophisticated trauma care has shifted the spectrum of morbidity for US soldiers from death to head injury.

These veterans with post-traumatic brain disorders will never fully recover (barring radical stem cell therapies that will be developed, thanks to Bush, not in the US but in China). They may work again, but they will never follow the road they started on. I recall one calculation that estimated that for every fatality noted in Iraq there were 5-10 significant head injuries with some measure of lifelong effect. That would put the number of cognitively impacted veterans now at 9,000 to 17,000.

Let's say the cumulative total for the 10 year Iraq war ends up being on the order of 50,000 disabled veterans. If each one is compensated for their lifelong disability at about $2 million each, that's $100 billion in addition to their medical care.

We should increase our taxes to pay for their disability. Or we could send the bill to George Bush -- not because he chose to invade Iraq, but rather because he chose to retain the incompetent architects of the occupation.

[1] I can't find my 2003/2004 post on this topic -- which is how I discovered Blogger's search function is really weird. Hard to believe Blogger is owned by Google! Well, at least the performance and reliability has recovered from last year.

Mars is for the elderly

New Scientist Breaking News - Cosmic rays may prevent long-haul space travel

Maybe I'll get to be an astronaut after all. Barring major genetic modification or technical breakthroughs, space travel may be too hazardous for the young. Those past reproductive ages, perhaps only 30 years from death, might be risking only 5-10 years at the end of their life. Unfortunately dementia seems to be fairly likely, based on mouse experiments.

Space diets may yet go high fiber.

The latest GOP Orwellian ploy: Creationism as "social context"

Gordon's Notes: No surprise: Bush wants creationism taught in the schools

The GOP is stunningly Orwellian, and it's even infected Bush's "science" advisor:

On Tuesday, the president's conservative Christian supporters and the leading institute advancing intelligent design embraced Mr. Bush's comments [advocating the teaching of creationism in science classes] while scientists and advocates of the separation of church and state disparaged them. At the White House, where intelligent design has been discussed in a weekly Bible study group, Mr. Bush's science adviser, John H. Marburger 3rd, sought to play down the president's remarks as common sense and old news.

Mr. Marburger said in a telephone interview that "evolution is the cornerstone of modern biology" and "intelligent design is not a scientific concept." Mr. Marburger also said that Mr. Bush's remarks should be interpreted to mean that the president believes that intelligent design should be discussed as part of the "social context" in science classes.

The phrase "social context" is critical here. It's the latest creationist ploy in their attack on science. We can expect to hear a great deal about it, including when we teach meteorology, geography, economics, sociology, biology, cosmology and anything else that offends the christian right.

I love social context. Let's teach it -- in a class on the history of science. Heck, let's teach Bush's favorite creation narrative in every school in America. Just don't call it science.

PS. Impeach Marburger.

Is it really legal to transfer music from your CDs to an iPod?

The iTunes Music Store (Part 3)

Most of us think this is covered by 'fair use' personal copy exemptions. An extensive Macintouch posting suggests things are much fuzzier:

...There is also the concept of 'fair use' which allows you to republish for the purpose of review, commentary, parody, etc. The standard is fuzzy with regard to how much you can copy and where the boundaries of fair use actually apply.

Duplication for personal use (when not using a device with SCMS) is not permitted under the copyright law, except using a loose interpretation of fair use. Same for the right to copy music to your hard drive and load into an iPod. The recording industry says that these activities are not valid applications of fair use, but it has not sued anybody for them, so the matter remains a gray area.

There's quite a bit in the post. If a user purchases a lot of FairPlay protected music, and Apple has to prevent burning/playing of non-FairPlay protected music ...

Update: Looks like it is legal!

No surprise: Bush wants creationism taught in the schools

Bush: Intelligent Design Should Be Taught

I wish the reporters had asked the obvious question - should we teach various versions of intelligent design, such as cyber-deities, Hindu deities, turtles, etc? Of course if they did that, they'd be journalists. At least they asked the key question.

WASHINGTON -- President Bush said Monday he believes schools should discuss 'intelligent design' alongside evolution when teaching students about the creation of life.

During a round-table interview with reporters from five Texas newspapers, Bush declined to go into detail on his personal views of the origin of life. But he said students should learn about both theories, Knight Ridder Newspapers reported.

'I think that part of education is to expose people to different schools of thought,' Bush said. 'You're asking me whether or not people ought to be exposed to different ideas, the answer is yes.'

The theory of intelligent design says life on earth is too complex to have developed through evolution, implying that a higher power must have had a hand in creation.

Christian conservatives _ a substantial part of Bush's voting base _ have been pushing for the teaching of intelligent design in public schools. Scientists have rejected the theory as an attempt to force religion into science education.

I think there's a consensus emerging in the rationalist world that Bush's strongest characteristic is not his faith in free markets or in a Christian God, but rather his deep suspicion of reason, logic, rationality and science (he's ok with technology, but not science). Not for the first time, he declares himself as 'arational'.

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.