On human memory

I've been thinking again about human memory -- that hacked and refactored offspring of scent storage.

I've only a lay knowledge of the neurosciences, but from what I read I suspect the picture that's emerging is both fascinating and disturbing. I think the emerging consensus is:

1. We don't really remember very much at all. We have 'hints' and 'fragments' and 'aspects' in our memory, but most of what we think we "remember" is in fact recreation and synthesis from often very sparse hints. This is why it's trivially easy to create false memories, and why witness testimony is so unreliable.

2. All of our cognitive structures are crude and defective, but memory structures are particularly archaic and limited and evolve very slowly -- if at all.

3. The 'creative and synthetic capacities', imagination, the ability to invent based upon pieces of information, began as a hack to extend the limited capacities of our memory subsystems. By implication creative and synthetic people may have memories that are in one sense "better", in another "untrue".

4. If memory evolution is the rate limiting step in our cognitive capabilities, then we can think of language and socialization as a way to create a distributed memory service (each person could specialize in one social narrative, and key myths and technologies could be transmitted from one specialized parental store to a child).

5. The ability to read and write was a transcendental leap around the limitations of memory. When we fully understand how reading occurs we will be stunned by what a fantastic "hack" reading is. It will be seen as a collection of frail mutations and perverted subsystems.

6. Some people have exceptional memories ("photographic"). Is this a new mutation or does it have a downside? I tend to suspect the latter or I think it would be far more common. It is very worthy of study.

All of which places things like 'brain memory chips' [1] and continuous capture of one's lifetime audiovideo stream in a different historical context -- just another step around an archaic subsystem that can't keep up with the evolving brain. In our home we've taken one step along that path by constantly cycling family images on the computer displays -- creating not-utterly-authentic memories of a life of uninterrupted joy.

Balance the budget? It was trivial, thanks.

National Budget Simulation

Old budget was $3748.1268 billion
($2673 billion in spending, $1075.1268 billion in tax expenditures and cuts).

New budget is $3122.95 billion
($2542.55 billion in spending, $580.4 billion in tax expenditures and cuts).

You have cut the deficit by $625.18 billion.
Your new deficit is $-224.17 billion.

A piece of cake. Mostly I got rid of foolish programs and nonsensical deductions and reversed the Bush idiocy. It's not that hard to balance the budget!

The lost war: Wellstone was right

Time reviews the war: TIME.com: Saddam's Revenge -- Sep. 26, 2005. Essentially they say we've lost.

I suppose it depends on how one defines losing. I still think Rumsfeld (the idiot) intended from the start to partition Iraq, and that may still come to pass. In terms of our stated goals, however, I agree that we've lost. Time to bail and try to prepare the good guys to survive the civil war.

There are a few lessons we can draw. One is that, as my wife notes, in a fight between Saddam and Bush the Yalie would be minced meat. The other is that Paul Wellstone was right and I was wrong.

I felt the invasion was likely to be badly executed (especially after we lost Turkey!), and that Bush had gone to great lengths to ensure we'd have no allies but Blair -- but that it was plausible that we had no choice. (On reflection, it was actually Blair who persuaded me. Even then I thought Bush was a dolt and Rumsfeld was worse, but I trusted Blair.)

Paul Wellstone, our senator, didn't buy it. He'd supported (along with all other Americans) the Afghan invasion, but on Iraq he voted No. He died shortly thereafter in a plane crash (no, it really was an accident). We traded Wellstone for Norm Coleman. Kind of like trading your Lexus for a Ford Pinto.

I should have listened to Paul. I'm sorry Paul, you were right.

Palm stops flogging its ex-horse

This was a mercy killing.

Technology News Article | Reuters.com: SEATTLE (Reuters) - Microsoft Corp. (MSFT.O: Quote, Profile, Research) and its longtime rival in the mobile software market, Palm Inc. (PALM.O: Quote, Profile, Research) are set to unveil on Monday a cell phone that will run Microsoft's software, sources said on Friday.

The Palm Platform had great promise once. My Palm III astounded and delighted me; more so even than my iPod. There was genius made real.

The genius passed. Maybe it was the loss of a few unrecognized key contributors. Maybe it was greed. Maybe it was Microsoft. Whatever the cause, after the Vx the Palm Platform careened downhill. SONY introduced PalmOS devices that lost data when the battery died. Palm stopped working on sync problems, and never developed a robust way to sync and home and work. Netscape, Novell and Lotus died, leaving the corporate PIM to Exchange/Outlook. Sync didn't work, and Palm was years late in responding. Executives stopped carrying Palms. Palm never revised their software to fit XP's (or OS X's) multi-user environment. Palm licensees began to fork the desktop application, confounding multi-device households.

The final straw was abandoning Grafitti (Grafitti Two is Jot, it's technically unrelated).

Today's Palm Platform is a shadow of its former self, a shuffling zombie. Farewell Palm, you now join the Newton in the halls of 'hardware that deserved better'.

Apple, the ball is now in your court. Again.

As expected - routine torture of Iraqi prisoners for fun and amusement

This is in keeping with the historic record of what humans do with those in their power -- in the absence of rigorous oversight and the presences of extreme stress:3 in 82nd Airborne Say Abuse in Iraqi Prisons Was Routine - New York Times

... We would give them blows to the head, chest, legs and stomach, and pull them down, kick dirt on them," one sergeant told Human Rights Watch researchers during one of four interviews in July and August. "This happened every day."

The sergeant continued: "Some days we would just get bored, so we would have everyone sit in a corner and then make them get in a pyramid. This was before Abu Ghraib but just like it. We did it for amusement."

At least one soldier said he had been acting under orders from military intelligence personnel to soften up detainees, whom the unit called persons under control, or P.U.C.'s, to make them more cooperative during formal interviews.

"They wanted intel," said one sergeant, an infantry fire-team leader who served as a guard when no military police soldiers were available. "As long as no P.U.C.'s came up dead, it happened." He added, "We kept it to broken arms and legs."

The soldiers told Human Rights Watch that while they were serving in Afghanistan, they learned the stress techniques from watching Central Intelligence Agency operatives interrogating prisoners.

The Army captain who made the allegations gave Human Rights Watch and Senate aides his long account only after his efforts to report the abuses to his superiors were rebuffed or ignored over 17 months, according to Senate aides and John Sifton, one of the Human Rights Watch researchers who conducted the interviews.

American 'exceptionalism' is rank nonsense. We are no more or less virtuous than other humans -- and that's not a high standard. In the absence of rigorous oversight and discipline bored men torture for fun.

This is a part of the consequences of Rumsfeld's decisions to under-resource the occupation, and it is consistent with the culture he promulgated. Rumsfeld should have been fired long ago. Bush should be impeached for not firing Rumsfeld.

Wikipedia - becoming astounding

Years ago I tried to find a clear and useful reference on 'comparative advantage', a foundational theory in economics. I was frustrated by a great deal of noise, and at that time the Encyclopedia Britannica didn't help.

Today I tried again, and Wikipedia had a good summary. I knew Wikipedia was good, but it's becoming astounding.

Update 9/25: See the comments. Brittanica actually has a reasonable article. Hard to believe that's new, so either I misremembered using them or I bobbled my old search. So I'll still say Wikipedia is amazing, but I should have been nicer to EB.

Educational apartheid in America -- noble intent, crummy article

The public schools in many american cities are utterly dismal and largely black: Still Separate, Still Unequal: America's Educational Apartheid JONATHAN KOZOL / Harper's Magazine v.311, n.1864 1sep2005.

It's an eloquent albeit long-winded article, but why is it dismal? Because when I search on the string 'property tax' I get no hits. How can someone write an article on public schools in America without discussing how they're funded?

Katrina has been called America's shame, but it's only third best. America's true and staggering shame is the funding of eduction through local taxes, particularly property taxes. Satan could not have invented a better method of perpetuating poverty. (Second best shame? Health care of course.)

A covert source of Krugman columns -- post NYT OpEd paywall

The Unofficial Paul Krugman Web Page

I don't know how long this site will stay up, but it's republishing Krugman's columns.

Google secure access

The interesting part of Google's latest 'dropping of the dime' (wireless SF network service):

Gordon's Tech: Google secure access -- and one ring to rule them

Google secure access, combined with Gmail, is turning Google into a vast identity management service. Next up is providing backup service and Google's PayPal annihilator.

There's no way Google won't be taking out PayPal. eBay must be in panic mode now. I like Google and despise Microsoft, but I hope Microsoft isn't completely zombied by their claustrophobic bureaucracy. We will need a counterbalance to Google someday soon.

Remote Desktop Connection for the Mac -- pretty good, but not perfect

I've used Remote Desktop Client for Mac intermittently over the years, but now I have a 100MBps switched connection between my 20" iMac and my XP box. Not only that, but the standard apple kb is really more a PC kb than a Mac kb. So I figured I'd try again.

Annoyingly, even with all this horsepower, there's still keystroke lag. In fact, RDC felt about as fast when I used my G3 iBook and a slow 802.11b connection. I guess the rate limiting step is neither local CPU nor network. Overall, not worth the bother for two machines that are side-by-side.

I still need to test out Apple's VNC implementation, but I gather it's even slower.

I'm tired of waiting for Apple or Microsoft to finally jump into the thin client market. They're taking their time ...

Very disappointing news on schizophrenia

Study Finds Little Advantage in New Schizophrenia Drugs - New York Times

The article might have been titled - no great meds for schizophrenia:

The study, which looked at four new-generation drugs, called atypical antipsychotics, and one older drug, found that all five blunted the symptoms of schizophrenia, a disabling disorder that affects three million Americans. But almost three-quarters of the patients who participated stopped taking the drugs they were on because of discomfort or specific side effects.

I suspect the 75% discontinuation rate is similar in older meds.

I'm disappointed. I was still seeing patients when the first of these meds came out, and I was very pleased with the benefits some of my schizophrenic patients seemed to receive.

We desperately need more basic science and clinical research in the treatment and management of schizophrenia -- one of the most terrible of all diseases.

Good-bye NYT, Hello WaPo

The NY Times (and NYT contributions to the IHT) OpEd page has gone behind a paywall. I wouldn't mind paying $20 a year for the columnists, but they want $50. For that I'd have to be getting the entire newspaper -- or they'd have to negotiate a package with something else (ie. Slate + NYT OpEd, Britannica + NYT OpEd, etc). I'm surprised they're charging so much for so little.

It will be interesting to see if they win this battle, or cave on price, or add something better.

Meanwhile, I've switched my news page link to the Washinton Post (WaPo).

Weird SPAM from SPAMIS -- using my email address

Another weird twist in the old spam and identity theft saga. This spam is a message from "me" to me. I didn't send it though, it's spam. The header says it originates in keromail.com, but of course that could be faked (thought that site is pretty weird).

Getting spam from someone who's hijacked my email address is not new, but this appears to be spam from someone who has an axe to grind with Microsoft. They're not trying to get rich, they're spamming the world to attack Microsoft.

I have a bad feeling this sort of thing will catch on. Sigh.

From: jfaughnan@spamcop.net
To: jfaughnan@spamcop.net
Date: Sep 16, 2005 9:59 AM
Subject: BREAKING NEWS: Microsoft Plans to Outsource Over 10,000 Jobs to China
...

MICROSOFT PLANS TO STOP SUPPORTING THE AMERICAN ECONOMY
BY OUTSOURCING MORE THAN 10,000 JOBS OVER 10 YEARS TO CHINA

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2002468560_msftgoogle03.html

....
COMMENTS AT: http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/09/04/2256208&tid=109&tid=218

----- ---- --- -- - -
Public Service Announcement Brought to You by SPAMIS :
Strategic Partnership Against Microsoft Illegal Spam
----- ---- --- -- - -

[ SPAMIS NOTIFICATION ]:
Thanks to Individual and Server Contributions, SPAMIS is Now "FULLY READY"
to Begin Increasing Microsoft Public Service Announcement Emails to 20 Times
the Amount of Internet Email Users by 25 Times the Current Sending Rate &
Speed When a Certain Activity Transpires to "ANY" Past, Present or Future
SPAMIS Member(s) and/or "ANY" SPAMIS Affiliate(s).
[ CURRENTLY IN WAITING FOR THIS ACTIVITY TO TRANSPIRE TO BEGIN ]
[ SPAMIS / PO Box 1259, Seattle, WA 98101 - USA ]

So what's the 20x bit about? Some kind of blackmail scheme?

If Bill Clinton were president for a day ...

Bill Clinton talks about what he'd do, were he president for a day:

Clinton's worldview - FinanceAsia.com

...If I had 24 hours, I would at least lay down where I think we ought to go in the Middle East to finish the business between the Israelis and the Palestinians after the withdrawal from Gaza.

I would put a healthcare plan before the Congress that would end this insane system we have that's bankrupting the American economy and is leaving huge numbers of people out. And I would do my dead-level best to change the energy and environmental direction that the current government has.

And of course, now I would have to give them a budget plan to get rid of the deficit I got rid of once, and now - (chuckle) - he's brought it back.

Those would be the things I would do in my day as president.

Deep sigh. Bang head against wall. Contemplate future cave-based historians weeping at the election (bad) and re-election (unforgivable) of George Bush II.

Clinton gives more detail on globalization, employment and the Bush tax cuts:

...On trade, the fundamental problem is that in this decade America has found no new source of jobs. Now when you do a trade deal, the benefits normally cover 90% of the people and the real burdens only fall on maybe 1% of the people. The problem is that the benefits are diffused and the burdens are concentrated. America should, whenever we do trade agreements, have an economic impact statement in which we cost out how much it's going to hurt the people who lose their jobs and their livelihoods and then invest in them and make sure they are restored and they can do something new, something different and they can manage this transition; otherwise, you are always going to have politicians who don't want to do that for ideological reasons, being protectionists.

Instead, they gave me four tax cuts. So you got this ragged edge of the American economy because even though we've been having pretty good growth on the numbers over the last couple of years, we're not generating jobs, we're not generating new income. And if we had, for example, decided to do what I just suggested, gone into on aggressive clean-energy future, we would have created millions of jobs just doing that - but we didn't.

So all of our growth is in corporate profits, housing (because interests rates have been low so there's a huge housing boom in America but that always bursts sooner or later) and consumer spending, financed because the Chinese buy our debt along with others every year.

The other big problem is the legitimate concern in America, or a genuine concern, over the Chinese military build up - and whether China is basically being nice now but some day, once they get the most modern military equipment in the world, is going to provoke some sort of a showdown with Japan, which will draw us in, and throw the world into a turmoil. And there are people in the Pentagon who push that line every single day. Just like there are people in the military in China who, every single day say that someday we're going to have to confront the Americans. They're too aggressive, They're too over-reaching. The Japanese are becoming militant again.

They key is: Where are the people? And where are the leaders? There will always be people who will have an institutional interest in finding an enemy - and finding division. And I don't think we've answered that question yet. So yeah, I'm concerned about it.

We live in a dark age of American politics. It's Taft all over again.

More encouraging news from brain science: your frontal lobes are toast

Assuming you're middled aged that is: PLoS Biology: Gene Expression in the Aging Brain.

Recent articles claim that while the average age of non-neural tissue is 10 years, brain tissue age matches chronologic age. (Yeah, a few years ago there was a claim that brain tissue actually regenerated, but that's looking like wishful thinking now.). Now it appears the frontal lobes, the seat of judgment and foresight, wear out fastest.

Brain rot. It affects all of us, and it starts in our twenties. By our forties our brains are definitely hurting (quick, get into management!) and by our sixties we're ready to retire -- except, oops, we can't any more.

There will be a lot of fighting for those grocery bagging jobs @ 2020.

In the meantime, despite all the 'use or it lose it' cliches, it's worth noting that this decay of the frontal lobes (aka, the person) may be related to protein oxidation -- which is related to mitochondrial activity. Perhaps it's better to give those lobes a rest. Stop reading this blog and turn on the TV! Or better yet, go to bed.