Tracking references with Bloglines and Google Blog Search

I tried the Google's blog search on one of my blogs to see how much they index:

Google Blog Search: blogurl:http://jfaughnan.blogspot.com/

Superficially it looks quite up to date (latest was yesterday), but they only go back to July 2005. From what I read that's their current limit, but they will extend backwards over time.

Once they get all my posts indexed this will be a great service for searching my own site. In the meantime, it will be intersting to compare the results of these searches to searching on usenet or the web.

You can subscribe to the search results as an RSS feed, so if there's a topic you want to follow you can add that as a search to your blog reader.

For example, this is a link to a search that finds recent references to Gordon's Notes (as you can see, there are few links!). At the bottom of this page is an Atom feed link that references the same search.

I took the URL from the Atom feed link and entered it in my Bloglines collection. So now when I review my blogs there's an entry that will track any references to Gordon's Notes. Kind of neat, really.

The New Balance 991: Cult of the Geek Running Shoe

What running shoe does a geek wear?

The requirements are steep.

It must come in different widths, to suit the neaderthal geek and the anorexic geek. It must never change, so one can order a new version of the same shoe online every 2-4 years. It must be suited to bicycle pedals, frisbee toss, walking the dog, work and lounging. It ought to be very plain, but have highly reflective materials for night time safety. Did I mention it must never change?

There's really only one choice. The New Balance 991. Astoundingly, still made in the USA (by prisoners? illegal aliens?). Worn by Steve Jobs. They made some minor cosmetic changes 4-5 years ago and haven't modified it since (the outcry must have been terrible).

My last pair still worked, but it was getting extremely shabby. It took a few minutes online to get the new ones, which fit exactly the same way the old ones did. The only delay was looking for a C width, but (alas) nowadays they only come in B, D, 2E and 4E. I stuck with my B width, which works very well. The size range is quite impressive:

New Balance:
2A: 8-13,14,15,16
B: 8-13,14,15,16
D: 7-13,14,15,16
2E: 7-13,14,15,16
4E: 7-13,14,15,16

You know you're a geek when you mail order the same running shoe every 3 years. I intend to be cremated (recycled?) in a pair.

Google Earth Integrates National Geographic Africa: this is so bloody amazing

Here's the quiet announcement on Google's Blog:

Google Blog: The illuminated continent: "Have you ever dreamed of Africa while reading National Geographic? The exotic photographs and thoughtful articles take you there with a magical sense of place. Today we embraced that magic by releasing Google Earth data layers that index National Geographic stories, images, journals, and even a live webcam in Africa.

Just start Google Earth, enable the National Geographic layers, and begin exploring.

Across Africa, you will see the familiar yellow National Geographic logo. Zoom in to see the title of each feature article or photograph. Click the icon and a pop-up balloon shows a photo and description along with links to the content. Follow those links to read the entire story right where it happened. Not only will you learn about Jane Goodall's Fifi, you'll see her home. Joining the stories and images are layers for National Geographic Sights & Sounds multimedia resources, a live WildCam in Botswana, and a collection of Mike Fay's Megaflyover images.

The Megaflyover images are stunning. Mike spent more than a year taking 92,000 high resolution photographs of the continent. That project is described in Tracing the Human Footprint, an article in the September 2005 National Geographic. He selected 500 of his favorite scenes of people, animals, geological formations, and signs of human presence and annotated them in Google Earth. Look for the red airplane icons as you fly over Africa. Each of these marks a spot where a high resolution image awaits your own personal voyage.

I bought that issue of NG for the articles and the map. I kept the map, now this will be a fantastic complement.

Maybe I'm not too old to work at Google. If I dye my hair, get plastic surgery, move the family to California ...

An evolutionary biology blog on the ASPM and Microcephalin papers

Excellent commentary on an anthropologist's blog. Evolutionary biology is one of his key interests. I'll add him to my bloglines list.

John Hawks Anthropology Weblog : Recent human brain evolution and population differences

See also my prior post.

The joy of bugs -- Access and Excel

It's been a while, but I experienced the joy of using advanced features of Microsoft software.

1. Create link to Excel spreadsheet in Access database.
2. Sort, view data in Access.
3. Click on properties button, get warning that properties can't be changed.
4. Click cancel (ok, i won't bother)
5. Lose connection to Excel spreadsheet
6. Discover spreadsheet is now gibberish
7. Regret not creating other copy prior to step #1

I suspect I could not duplicate this I tried, but I'm not going to try. This is the price one pays for using features of Microsoft products that are not tested by millions every day ...

Hold off on iTunes 5.0 updates until Apple fixes the bugs

Gordon's Tech: iTunes 5 - don't upgrade

The Mailinator Spam Map - where spam comes from

Mailinator:Spam Map

The US and China of course, but Brazil is big too.

Whatever happened to parental controls on software?

I'm intrigued by things that we need that vanish, particularly in software. It's an interesting form of market failure.

Ten years ago one could buy very good third party 'shells' for Windows 3.1 and Mac Classic designed to allow children to work in a controlled software environment.

Now there's nothing comparable for OS X and XP. I knew XP had nothing to offer, but I was a bit more optimistic about Tiger: Gordon's Notes: Tiger and parental control software,

Alas, Tiger isn't all that much better than Panther -- it looks like there are decent parental controls, but if you try to use them you soon learn that they are fundamentally unworkable. I suspect they never really tested them with parents and children. They're not useless, but they don't really protect the child's environment from the child -- and it's a pain to recreate that environment.

So OS X is better than XP, but not good enough. Annoying.

The children in the cages - sentencing Ohio

The BBC has a short piece on what I expect is getting coverage on tv: BBC NEWS | World | Americas | Eleven US children 'found caged'.

Astoundingly, I will reserve judgment.

Putting children in cages is probably not a good idea. These parents probably have, at best, some significant issues (the article does not reference other aspects of abuse or neglect). I wonder though, how well the state of Ohio supports the care of what appear to have been special needs children (presumably even before the cages).

It would be a good thing if this story were to lead to a thoughtful and considered discussion of the care of special needs children, and increased research funding to study which interventions and approaches have the better short and longer term outcomes.

Alas, that would be unlikely.

In a better world, we'd judge the state of Ohio as well as these parents, and possibly sentence every adult in the state to a day of community service. (Minnesota, of course, is likely no less guilty.)

Nasty, snappish and dull -- the president of the USA

I'm not sure we've had many "nice" presidents. Still, some have been more agreeable than others. Clinton is generally considered, even by his political enemies, to have been a decent sort -- despite a famous temper.

In contrast, Bush has long had a reputation, in some circles, for being a nasty and vengeful man. Now that reputation is spreading -- despite the vengeance so many have felt.

Washington Post - Dan Froomkin - Now They Tell Us

Judging from the blistering analyses in Time, Newsweek, and elsewhere these past few days, it turns out that Bush is in fact fidgety, cold and snappish in private. He yells at those who dare give him bad news and is therefore not surprisingly surrounded by an echo chamber of terrified sycophants. He is slow to comprehend concepts that don't emerge from his gut. He is uncomprehending of the speeches that he is given to read. And oh yes, one of his most significant legacies -- the immense post-Sept. 11 reorganization of the federal government which created the Homeland Security Department -- has failed a big test.

Maybe it's Bush's sinking poll numbers -- he is, after all, undeniably an unpopular president now. Maybe it's the way that the federal response to the flood has cut so deeply against Bush's most compelling claim to greatness: His resoluteness when it comes to protecting Americans.

But for whatever reason, critical observations and insights that for so long have been zealously guarded by mainstream journalists, and only doled out in teaspoons if at all, now seem to be flooding into the public sphere.

The last paragraph is the most interesting. Bush's nature was common wisdom among journalists. They, however, did not put that impression into print. One wonders ... why not? Fear, perchance?

Gore did not have trouble understanding his speeches.

This Newsweek article provides more background. On careful reading this article is actually pretty sympathetic and emphasizes that Bush, once he recognized the scale of the problem, was deeply troubled and engaged. Even I can believe that. The fundamental problem remains however that Katrina played to all the weaknesses of this administration, and those weaknesses spring from George Bush. If he wants to rescue his legacy, he needs to shake up his administration and bring in the disloyal.

Update 9/13:

I was pleasantly surprised that someone left a comment on this post. I think of this as a mono-blog. The poster is correct that no-one in the Bush administration is willing to go on record as saying Bush is nasty, vengeful and distracted. On the other hand, almost no-one denies he is vengeful, so lack of commentary is not surprising. O'Neill was an insider who said all of this of course, but he was so thoroughly obliterated by Bush's gang that even his mother doesn't remember him very well.

As a proxy I offer the words of Molly Ivins, who's known Bush since before he stopped drinking. She adopts what is becoming the critics consensus on Katrina -- this is what you get when you staff government with people who hate government:

Some of you may have heard me observe a time or two -- going back to when George W. was still governor of Texas -- that the trouble with the guy is that while he is good at politics, he stinks at governance. It bores him, he's not interested, he thinks government is bad to begin with and everything would be done better if it were contracted out to corporations.

We can now safely assert that W. has stacked much of the federal government with people like himself. And what you get when you put people in charge of government who don't believe in government and who are not interested in running it well is... what happened after Hurricane Katrina.

Many a time in the past six years I have bit my tongue so I wouldn't annoy people with the always obnoxious observation, "I told you so." But, dammit it all to hell, I did tell you, and I've been telling you since 1994, and I am so sick of this man and everything he represents -- all the sleazy, smug, self-righteous graft and corruption and "Christian" moralizing and cynicism and tax cuts for all his smug, rich buddies.

Next time I tell you someone from Texas should not be president of the United States, please pay attention.

Neo-feudalism

Meet the Fakers - Kristoff - New York Times

Feudalism redux.

... the world's richest 500 individuals have the same income as the world's poorest 416 million people.

Here Kristoff means combined income. It is an astounding ratio, almost 1 to a million. Assuming many people can be "bought" for 10 times their income, each of these 500 lords could pay for 50,000 vassals and still retain half their income. That's a pretty large barony.

Diminished responsibility: the next cultural battleground

My wife and I were chatting about the genetics of cognition when conversation turned to one of the great emotional touchstones of the conservative momement -- "individual responsibility"

My wife tells me of a conversation she had with a neuroscientist who studies brain maturation in adolescents. After the neuroscientist explained about the extraordinary transformations and faults of the adolescent brain, my wife remarked on the obvious connection to diminished responsiblity. The scholar was appalled "but they are still responsible for their actions ...". My wife, who is far nicer than I, changed the subject.

Like much conservative language "individual responsibility" is best understood as a denial rather than an affirmation, in particular it is a denial of the concept of 'diminished responsibility'. Republicans hate the idea that age, brain maturation, retardation, or other disorders of cognition should in any way mitigate punishment. This is why, for example, they are keen to execute children (ok, teenagers). If one treats children differently from adults, then why not hold retarded adults to a different standard than average adults? The age exemption is a big step down a slippery slope to the terror of relativism.

But what are the roots of this terror? I'm not sure. There is, however, a theological component. If humans can see that a person's responsibility may be diminished in proportion to their consciousness, then could a deity do no less? Who then, would ever go to Hell? Either no-one goes, or as CS Lewis suggested -- God judges each person on the basis of what they did with what they were given. If that were so, many New Orleans looters could bask in paradise, and many born-again Republicans whither in damnation.

Scary thought indeed.

The evolution of the human brain: ASPM, microcephalin and FOXP2

First the article summary, then the discussion.

The Globe and Mail: Is your mind changing? Scientists think so

In two papers published today in the journal Science, Dr. Lahn and his colleagues report that the specific gene mutations they have found appear to have swept across certain areas of the globe so quickly that they are practically the norm. With prevalence rates higher than 70 per cent in Europe, for example, the researchers argue that chance alone cannot explain the changes, which first sprung up at the same time that modern humans developed culture and language...

...Testing 1,184 DNA samples from around the world, the researchers found, for example, that the frequency in West and sub-Saharan Africa is less than 10 per cent...

...They found that a particular series of mutations in the microcephalin gene appears to have been passed on and is now, surprisingly, carried by large numbers of people from different ethnic backgrounds. They estimate this series first emerged about 37,000 years ago, around the time modern humans settled Europe and began producing art.

The changes they found in the ASPM gene are far more recent, springing up about 5,800 years ago, coinciding with the rise of cities and the first record of written language.

This is one in a series of fascinating findings over the past few years, but the research is only beginning. I've blogged previously on the ASPM gene (it's undergone many mutations compared to chimps) and the timing of language and alleged gene relationship (including FOXP2), most recently there was the Ashkenazi IQ article.

The timing of the most recent alleged ASPM mutation is new to me. The African/European gene frequency data is a wee bit controversial, in almost all genetic measures, however, there's a lot more variation in Africa than Europe (founder effect).

This is new science, and we know that about half of the conclusions of major studies are reversed within 5-10 years. It's premature to put too much weight on it. I do suspect, however, that science will tell us that potential IQ is related to only a handful of genes, that we'll learn that all human brains have an extremely high defect rate, and we'll learn that our notions of 'responsibility' are based on faith rather than evidence.

I also agree with the researchers that people will pay a great deal to increase the intellect of their offspring -- more than they'll pay to make them tall or pretty or long lived. I think deliberate manipulation rather than natural selection will drive further changes to these genes.

Update 9/15: The ASPM variant is about 5700 years old. Amerindians crossed into the Americas at least 10,000 years ago. It turns out that virtually no Amerindians had this gene.

Distemper and the death of the american dog

I was sure I'd blogged on this years ago, but I can't find anything. Odd. (Update 7/11/13 - it was 11/2004)

The point of this blog is to discuss the possibility that distemper wiped out the native american dog as it's doing in the african dog. First the back-story. This article is a good place to start:

Humans Brought Domesticated Dogs to New World More Than 12,000 Years Ago, UCLA Biologists, Colleagues Report

... these data suggest Native American dogs have not genetically contributed to modern dog breeds,' Wayne said. 'DNA sequences from hundreds of dogs from dozens of modern breeds from throughout the world do not show traces of American ancestry. Native dogs may still have living descendants in some unsampled New World population, but their absence for a large sample of modern dogs reinforces the dramatic impact that the arrival of Europeans had on native cultures.

This UCLA article focuses on research showing early Americans traveled with dogs into the new world over 12K years ago, but it also mentiones that native American dogs died out shortly after the Euro invasion.

Why do the Native dogs disappear? I don't buy the explanation of selective breeding. Dogs ain't picky and I can't believe early American practiced rigorous canine birth control. It had to be the canine equivalent of smallpox -- a disease that was nasty and prevalent in the crowded swamp of industrial europe but was lethal in the healthy empty world of the americas. But what disease?

I'd guess distemper. Recently I read that wild African dogs are now dying of epidemic distemper. Seems to fit. The Euros carried viruses that killed many of the native americans, it's not surprising that their dogs would have done the same thing.

PS. Humans and dogs have coexisted for a long time, it is extremely likely that we have altered each other's evolution (symbiotes and parasites always alter each other's genome). BTW, I thought I'd blogged on my wild speculation that it was the domestication of dogs that allowed humans to develop technology and agriculture (geeks and women can domesticate dogs and use a powerful and loyal ally to defend themselves against thuggish alphas) -- but I can't find that either. Sigh. Aging brain.

Update 7/11/2013: Years after I wrote this I suspected it was wrong. After all, wolves weren't wiped out, and dogs and wolves interbreed. More recent studies show that the pre-Columbian dogs were not completely replaced. Their mortality may resemble that of pre-Columbian humans of the new world. I still wonder about the distemper/measles connection.

See also:

• Gordon's Notes: Did canine distemper arise from measles in the new world? 12/2011
• BBC News - Asian tigers at risk from domestic dog distemper virus 6/2013

The NYT Magazine reviews the war on terror

Taking Stock of the Forever War - New York Times

'Declaring war on 'terror,'' as one military strategist later remarked to me, 'is like declaring war on air power.'

A superb quote. The title of the article is taken from a famous science fiction story. This article is required reading for all citizens.

Four years after the collapse of the towers, evil is still with us and so is terrorism. Terrorists have staged spectacular attacks, killing thousands, in Tunisia, Bali, Mombasa, Riyadh, Istanbul, Casablanca, Jakarta, Madrid, Sharm el Sheik and London, to name only the best known. Last year, they mounted 651 "significant terrorist attacks," triple the year before and the highest since the State Department started gathering figures two decades ago. One hundred ninety-eight of these came in Iraq, Bush's "central front of the war on terror" - nine times the year before. And this does not include the hundreds of attacks on U.S. troops. It is in Iraq, which was to serve as the first step in the "democratization of the Middle East," that insurgents have taken terrorism to a new level, killing well over 4,000 people since April in Baghdad alone; in May, Iraq suffered 90 suicide-bombings. Perhaps the "shining example of democracy" that the administration promised will someday come, but for now Iraq has become a grotesque advertisement for the power and efficacy of terror.

The author off-handedly points out that we've lost the Iraq war we started, and, incidentally, so have the Iraqi people. I'm not sure history will indict Bush for the decision to invade Iraq -- though I suspect it will. I am sure, however, that he will be indicted for not firing Rumsfeld and moving Rove aside.

The sun is setting on American dreams in Iraq; what remains now to be worked out are the modalities of withdrawal, which depend on the powers of forbearance in the American body politic. But the dynamic has already been set in place. The United States is running out of troops. By the spring of 2006, nearly every active-duty combat unit is likely to have been deployed twice. The National Guard and Reserves, meanwhile, make up an unprecedented 40 percent of the force, and the Guard is in the "stage of meltdown," as Gen. Barry McCaffrey, retired, recently told Congress. Within 24 months, "the wheels are coming off." For all the apocalyptic importance President Bush and his administration ascribed to the Iraq war, they made virtually no move to expand the military, no decision to restore the draft. In the end, the president judged his tax cuts more important than his vision of a "democratic Middle East." The administration's relentless political style, integral to both its strength and its weakness, left it wholly unable to change course and to add more troops when they might have made a difference. That moment is long past; the widespread unpopularity of the occupation in Iraq and in the Islamic world is now critical to insurgent recruitment and makes it possible for a growing insurgent force numbering in the tens of thousands to conceal itself within the broader population.