The ACLU's estimate of NSA activity

So what's the NSA up to that Bush couldn't use the FISA courts? The current consensus is that the most controversial things they're doing are:

1. Using messaging metadata and algorithmic analysis to target individuals for wiretaps that would otherwise not be identified.
2. Applying wiretaps to the individuals identified via #1 based on evidence (algorithmic ratings) that, by itself, would be very insufficient to justify a wiretap.

If you listen to what Bush says, he focuses on the intercepts, not on the legality of how the intercepts were selected.

The upshot of this is they're probably monitoring a lot of journalists, and a lot of family members of the true targets. They may learn interesting things in the monitoring of journalists, such as the identity of anyone in the government, NSA, or CIA who's blabbing about the NSA's programs.

The ACLU fills in the details:

American Civil Liberties Union : Eavesdropping 101: What Can The NSA Do?

Data mining is a broad dragnet. Instead of targeting you because you once received a telephone call from a person who received a telephone call from a person who is a suspected terrorist, you might be targeted because the NSA's computers have analyzed your communications and have determined that they contain certain words or word combinations, addressing information, or other factors with a frequency that deviates from the average, and which they have decided might be an indication of suspiciousness. The NSA has no prior reason to suspect you, and you are in no way tied to any other suspicious individuals %u2013 you have just been plucked out of the crowd by a computer algorithm's analysis of your behavior.

If we don't put a stop to this, we will pay a very high price. I really do believe that, at the moment, the Bush administration is a greater threat to our future than al Qaeda (in large part, of course, because the non-Iraq part of the 'War on Terror' did make sense and al Qaeda appears to be both weak and to have a very thin bench team).

Bush on cutting imports: really, it was a joke

Rarely does the leed of an newspaper article cut so deeply (via Shrillblog):

KR Washington Bureau | 02/01/2006 | Administration backs off Bush's vow to reduce Mideast oil imports

WASHINGTON - One day after President Bush vowed to reduce America's dependence on Middle East oil by cutting imports from there 75 percent by 2025, his energy secretary and national economic adviser said Wednesday that the president didn't mean it literally...

Bush's people feel they've proved beyond a reasonable doubt that 20% [1] of the voting American public are blithering idiots. Maybe they give him lines like these to test the resilience of this hard-core non-sentience. Perhaps they're trying to tell us "stop me before I kill again".

[1] Bush's approval rating is usually about 42%. About half of his hard core base feel he is serving messianic duties. I don't agree with that, but if that's one's belief then it's not idiotic to support him. That leaves my 20% estimate.

How often will sentience evolve on earth? From anthropology to the Fermi Pardox - via the Drake Equation

Hawks reviews research that suggests that "modern" evolutionary innovations are more likely to be repeatable (non-singular) than "ancient" innovations. He connects this to the Drake equation, the companion to the Fermi Paradox that attempts to estimate the prevalence of technological civilizations in our galaxy. He points out that since the only instance of sentience we know of is quite recent, it is likely that sentience is not a particularly singular innovation.

Personally, I'd bet we're not the first. Stephen Baxter wrote an immensely underappreciated science fiction novel (Evolution) that painted a rather persuasive picture of how sentience might come and go across the history of life on earth -- only once and briefly producing interplanetary technology (after this transiently spacefaring species passes, there's not much left for others to work from).

Hawks is inclined to think we're the first, but most likely not the last. Indeed, if we live out this century, I think it's likely we'll create other sentiences, both biological and otherwise. If we don't make it, the biological ones will still emerge some day, some place. Maybe they'll do a better job that us.

Back to the Drake Equation. The more we start to shift our estimates for the terms of the Drake Equation, the more the Omega term, L, looms larger (sorry). This term is often estimated based on the Fermi Paradox. Wikipedia (currently) has an excellent discussion of this relationship:

The remarkable thing about the Drake equation is that by plugging in apparently fairly plausible values for each of the parameters above, the resultant expectant value of N is generally often >> 1. This has provided considerable motivation for the SETI movement. However, this conflicts with the currently observed value of N = 1 — one observed civilization in the entire universe. Other assumptions give values of N that are <<>

This conflict is often called the Fermi paradox, after Enrico Fermi who first publicised the subject, and suggests that our understanding of what is a "conservative" value for some of the parameters may be overly optimistic or that some other factor is involved to suppress the development of intelligent space-faring life...

... L = the expected lifetime of such a civilization

Estimated by Drake as 10 years.

The value of L can be estimated from the lifetime of our current civilization from the advent of radio astronomy in 1938 (dated from Grote Reber's parabolic dish radio telescope) to the current date. In 2005, this gives an L of 67 years.

In an article in Scientific American, Michael Shermer estimated L as 420 years, based on compiling the durations of sixty historical civilizations. Using twenty-eight civilizations more recent than the Roman Empire he calculates a figure of 304 years for "modern" civilizations. Note, however, that the fall of most of these civilizations did not destroy their technology, and they were succeeded by later civilizations which carried on those technologies, so Shermer's estimates should be regarded as pessimistic.

The Wikipedia article estimates a low value for "safe" earth like planets, I read the most recent findings as much more encouraging but I'm far out of my expertise range.

If "safe" planets turn out not to be rare, then we're back to Drake's solution to the Fermi Paradox -- a 10 year lifespan for a technological civilization. My bet is that the small number is not so much L, as it is fc*L, so even if L is not short something happens to technological civilizations that causes them to lose interest in both physical exploration and communication with the likes of us. Something that produces a communicative sentience for no more than 10-40 years.

The passing of the Telegram

Western Union no longer sends telegrams. If I'd known they still sent them, I'd have tried to send one just for history's sake. Typewriters, telegrams, carbon paper ... these are some of the things I used to know.

The secret to better crime results: don't record the data

The St. Paul Police department is practising the time-honored method of improving one's results -- don't record troublesome data points. It works as well for crime measurement as it does for Texas schools.

In this case some low life smashed our rear van window -- in bright daylight outside our local library. When they were called, the police said they don't do police reports on this kind of crime.

What is not measured -- did not happen. It works for Bush, and it works for the local police.

Ampulex and the cockroach slave: another Zimmer zinger

Karl Zimmer is a great help to those on diets. Read his articles just prior to lunch.

The Wisdom of Parasites. The Loom: A blog about life, past and future

... As an adult, Ampulex compressa seems like your normal wasp, buzzing about and mating. But things get weird when it's time for a female to lay an egg. She finds a cockroach to make her egg's host, and proceeds to deliver two precise stings. The first she delivers to the roach's mid-section, causing its front legs [to] buckle. The brief paralysis caused by the first sting gives the wasp the luxury of time to deliver a more precise sting to the head.

The wasp slips her stinger through the roach's exoskeleton and directly into the cockroach's brain. She apparently using sensors along the sides of the stinger to guide it through the brain, a bit like a surgeon snaking his way to an appendix with a laparoscope. She continues to probe the roach's brain until she reaches one particular spot that appears to control the escape reflex. She injects a second venom that influences these neurons in such a way that the escape reflex disappears.

From the outside, the effect is surreal. The wasp does not paralyze the cockroach. In fact, the roach is able to lift up its front legs again and walk. But now it cannot move of its own accord. The wasp takes hold of one of the roach's antennae and leads it--in the words of Israeli scientists who study Ampulex--like a dog on a leash...

We have insufficient respect for the Emergent Designer (ED) -- the pseudo-deity of evolution. The ED is not a cuddly sort. Its humor is bleak indeed.

How many human psychiatric disorders (think OCD) are the result of adaptive mutations that compensate for a parasitic influence, but subsequently become disorders when the parasite is absent?

Google's feet of clay: Gmail and spam

Google's share price had a minor hit the other day when they "disappointed" on earnings. I can't make sense of their valuation, even though I do think they're a great company.

I can, however, point out that one of their flagship products, Gmail, has serious issues. For historical reasons I get to see how five different spam filtering systems work: Yahoo, Earthlink, Spamcop, the open source systems used by many smaller ISPs, and Gmail's system.

Gmail is not just slightly inferior. It is qualitatively inferior. It is so bad it's mindboggling. The other four all work quite well, making relatively few false positive or false negative errors. Gmail errs in both directions, misclassifying spam as mail and mail as spam.

This isn't new. They've had the same problem for over a year. The only reason I stick with them is their fantastic UI and amazing search capabilities, but if Yahoo ever updates me to their new UI I may switch (I can redirect my mail flows fairly easily since I control the routing domains).

Why doesn't Google invest in the open source systems that work for everyone else? The scale they work on is rather different from that of a small ISP, so they may face impossible scalability challenges. I wonder though, if arrogance plays a role -- the belief that their algorithms will devise a better solution. If it's really arrogance, then their share price may fall more than 10% over the next year.

The best commentary on the state of the union address

Fafblog is marvelous ...

Fafblog! The State of the Universe Address

...Would you take all that away by letting isolationist courts tax the Jesus fetus? Never! Because history is written in courage, and courage will remember us in the future how we were today: pandering, desperate and barely coherent!

My prediction on the Bush health care plan ...

The smart Republican (they're all dead now, but they once existed) thing to do would be to eliminate the corporate tax break for health insurance and apply the funds to a mixture of subsidies and individual tax breaks. That would be a Reagan type of move -- the guy who brought us the Earned Income Tax Credit. (I used to think Reagan was an idiot. True, he was demented during his second term, but compared to Bush II he was a brilliant pillar of light.)

Instead, Bush the Incoherent will introduce a meaningless tax credit that will complicate the tax code, transfer wealth from the Weak to the Strong, worsen the deficit, and have no material impact on healthcare.

The New York Times finds a spine?

It won't last, but today the shrunken residue of a once great newspaper shows a tiny hint of a vertebral column:

Spies, Lies and Wiretaps - New York Times

... Mr. Bush made himself the judge of the proper balance between national security and Americans' rights, between the law and presidential power. He wants Americans to accept, on faith, that he is doing it right. But even if the United States had a government based on the good character of elected officials rather than law, Mr. Bush would not have earned that kind of trust. The domestic spying program is part of a well-established pattern: when Mr. Bush doesn't like the rules, he just changes them, as he has done for the detention and treatment of prisoners and has threatened to do in other areas, like the confirmation of his judicial nominees. He has consistently shown a lack of regard for privacy, civil liberties and judicial due process in claiming his sweeping powers. The founders of our country created the system of checks and balances to avert just this sort of imperial arrogance.

They've done this before -- threatened to show some courage. In each case they've collapsed into equivocation.

If the NYT dedicates itself to exposing Bush/Cheney, and limiting the damage they're doing, and if they pound home time and again the fundamental issues without being misdirected -- then I'll say they have a spine. Until then, they're spineless.

Idiot America

David Brin led on this one, but Pharyngula is taking up the flag: Idiot America.

I don't think it's just America, though we've led the way in the western world. The rejection of the enlightenment, and the ridicule of expertise is pretty much universal -- from Washington to Tehran to Moscow. Beijing possibly being the exception.

Too bad the original Esquire article is behing a Paywall, but Pharyngula has excerpted the juicy parts. I hope he connects up with David Brin.

A creek in the congo: Future Shock

Sometimes I think the world isn't changing very quickly. Mostly 2006 seems much more like 1986 than I'd expected back then.

But then I enter our dog's name (Kateva) and come up with a map of a creek in the Congo and a link to a Google Earth image. This is the result of 3 separate web services.

Suddenly 2006 seems much less familiar.

DeLong on Franco

Odd that we should be thinking of Francesco Franco these days. DeLong ends a posting on Spain's tyrant with a guide to spotting fascism:

Brad DeLong's Semi-Daily Journal

German philospher Ernst Nolte's classic Fascism in Its Epoch set out six key characteristics of fascism:

1. Strong belief that--through social darwinism--morality is ultimately tied to blood and race, understood as descent and genetic relationship.

2. Strong rejection of the classical "liberal" belief that individuals have rights that any legitimate state is bound to respect

3. In its place, an assertion that individuals have duties to the state, seen as the decision-making organ of the collectivity.

4. A rejection of parliamentary democracy and other bottom-up institutions to assess the general will.

5. The assertion that the general will is formed by the decrees of the leader.

6. A strong fear of twentieth-century Communism, and an eagerness to adapt and use its weapons--suspension of parliaments, mass propaganda, rallies, street violence, and so forth--to fight it.

In China, it is common to criticize the regime by allusions to historical figures. DeLong was posting on Chinese New Years. Coincidence or subtlety?

Newsweek has the scoop on the NSA

This Newsweek article is Pulitzer prize winning material. The fact that so many insiders were willing to talk, albeit off the record, tells us just how scared Bush appointees are of what Bush and Cheney are doing to America. It's not just commie pinko traitors like me who are starting to fear Dick Cheney more than Osama bin Laden (emphases mine):

Palace Revolt - Newsweek Politics - MSNBC.com

... Addington's [jf: Addington is Cheney's Chief of Staff, a real bad actor] problems with Goldsmith were just beginning. In the jittery aftermath of 9/11, the Bush administration had pushed the top-secret National Security Agency to do a better and more expansive job of electronically eavesdropping on Al Qaeda's global communications. Under existing law—the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA, adopted in 1978 as a post-Watergate reform—the NSA needed (in the opinion of most legal experts) to get a warrant to eavesdrop on communications coming into or going out of the United States. Reasoning that there was no time to obtain warrants from a secret court set up under FISA (a sometimes cumbersome process), the Bush administration justified going around the law by invoking a post-9/11 congressional resolution authorizing use of force against global terror. The eavesdropping program was very closely held, with cryptic briefings for only a few congressional leaders. Once again, Addington and his allies made sure that possible dissenters were cut out of the loop.

There was one catch: the secret program had to be reapproved by the attorney general every 45 days. It was Goldsmith's job to advise the A.G. on the legality of the program. In March 2004, John Ashcroft was in the hospital with a serious pancreatic condition. At Justice, Comey, Ashcroft's No. 2, was acting as attorney general... Goldsmith raised with Comey serious questions about the secret eavesdropping program, according to two sources familiar with the episode. He was joined by a former OLC lawyer, Patrick Philbin, who had become national-security aide to the deputy attorney general. Comey backed them up. The White House was told: no reauthorization.

The angry reaction bubbled up all the way to the Oval Office. President Bush, with his penchant for put-down nicknames, had begun referring to Comey as "Cuomey" or "Cuomo," apparently after former New York governor Mario Cuomo, who was notorious for his Hamlet-like indecision over whether to seek the Democratic presidential nomination in the 1980s. A high-level delegation—White House Counsel Gonzales and chief of staff Andy Card—visited Ashcroft in the hospital to appeal Comey's refusal. In pain and on medication, Ashcroft stood by his No. 2.

A compromise was finally worked out. The NSA was not compelled to go to the secret FISA court to get warrants, but Justice imposed tougher legal standards before permitting eavesdropping on communications into the United States. It was a victory for the Justice lawyers, and it drove Addington to new levels of vexation with Goldsmith.

Bush was driving this as much as Cheney. But what's with Ashcroft being heroic?

Why would a virus fatten an animal?

We know parasites such as toxoplasma change the behavior of their hosts [1]. That seems to make nice evolutionary sense. But why would a virus induce obesity in some animals?

Contagious obesity? Identifying the human adenoviruses that may make us fat | Science Blog

Ad-37 third virus implicated in animal obesity

The theory that viruses could play a part in obesity began a few decades ago when Nikhil Dhurandhar, now at Pennington Biomedical Research Center at LSU, noticed that chickens in India infected with the avian adenovirus SMAM-1 had significantly more fat than non-infected chickens. The discovery was intriguing because the explosion of human obesity, even in poor countries, has led to suspicions that overeating and lack of exercise weren't the only culprits in the rapidly widening human girth. Since then, Ad-36 has been found to be more prevalent in obese humans.

In the current study, Whigham et al. attempted to determine which adenoviruses (in addition to Ad-36 and Ad-5) might be associated with obesity in chickens. The animals were separated into four groups and exposed to either Ad-2, Ad-31, or Ad-37. There was also a control group that was not exposed to any of the viruses. The researchers measured food intake and tracked weight over three weeks before ending the experiment and measuring the chickens' visceral fat, total body fat, serum lipids, and viral antibodies.

Chickens inoculated with Ad-37 had much more visceral fat and body fat compared with the chickens infected with Ad-2, Ad-31 or the control group, even though they didn't eat any more. The Ad-37 group was also generally heavier compared to the other three groups, but the difference wasn't great enough to be significant by scientific standards.

The authors concluded that Ad-37 increases obesity in chickens, but Ad-2 and Ad-31 do not. "Ad-37 is the third human adenovirus to increase adiposity in animals, but not all adenoviruses produce obesity," the study concluded.

There is still much to learn about how these viruses work, Whigham said. "There are people and animals that get infected and don't get fat. We don't know why," she said. Among the possibilities: the virus hasn't been in the body long enough to produce the additional fat; or the virus creates a tendency to obesity that must be triggered by overeating, she said.

It certainly makes sense to try and figure out how host adiposity could benefit a virus, but for no good reason I suspect a tendency to produce fat is a side-effect that's irrelevant to the virus.

[1] BTW, why do some dogs compulsively eat grass? Since grass eating is associated with Giardia infection, one might consider that bug. Or maybe a parasite who's life cycle involves deer ticks and who causes colitis in dogs ...

Newsweek: the price of questioning Dick Cheney

One of the most fascinating and important stories to be reported in the last several months. This should be read closely.

Palace Revolt - Newsweek Politics - MSNBC.com

...These Justice Department lawyers, backed by their intrepid boss Comey, had stood up to the hard-liners, centered in the office of the vice president, who wanted to give the president virtually unlimited powers in the war on terror. Demanding that the White House stop using what they saw as farfetched rationales for riding rough-shod over the law and the Constitution, Goldsmith and the others fought to bring government spying and interrogation methods within the law. They did so at their peril; ostracized, some were denied promotions, while others left for more comfortable climes in private law firms and academia. Some went so far as to line up private lawyers in 2004, anticipating that the president's eavesdropping program would draw scrutiny from Congress, if not prosecutors. These government attorneys did not always succeed, but their efforts went a long way toward vindicating the principle of a nation of laws and not men.

The rebels were not whistle-blowers in the traditional sense. They did not want—indeed avoided—publicity. (Goldsmith confirmed public facts about himself but otherwise declined to comment. Comey also declined to comment.) They were not downtrodden career civil servants. Rather, they were conservative political appointees who had been friends and close colleagues of some of the true believers they were fighting against. They did not see the struggle in terms of black and white but in shades of gray—as painfully close calls with unavoidable pitfalls. They worried deeply about whether their principles might put Americans at home and abroad at risk. Their story has been obscured behind legalisms and the veil of secrecy over the White House. But it is a quietly dramatic profile in courage. (For its part the White House denies any internal strife. "The proposition of internal division in our fight against terrorism isn't based in fact," says Lea Anne McBride, a spokeswoman for Vice President Dick Cheney. "This administration is united in its commitment to protect Americans, defeat terrorism and grow democracy.")

The chief opponent of the rebels, though by no means the only one, was an equally obscure, but immensely powerful, lawyer-bureaucrat. Intense, workaholic (even by insane White House standards), David Addington, formerly counsel, now chief of staff to the vice president, is a righteous, ascetic public servant.

... Addington and a small band of like-minded lawyers set about providing that cover—a legal argument that the power of the president in time of war was virtually untrammeled. One of Addington's first jobs had been to draft a presidential order establishing military commissions to try unlawful combatants—terrorists caught on the global battlefield. The normal "interagency process"—getting agreement from lawyers at Defense, State, the intelligence agencies and so forth—proved glacial, as usual. So Addington, working with fellow conservative Deputy White House Counsel Timothy Flanigan, came up with a solution: cut virtually everyone else out. Addington is a purist, not a cynic; he does not believe he is in any way ignoring or twisting the law. It is also important to note that Addington was not sailing off on some personal crusade; he had the full backing of the president and vice president, who shared his views. But, steeped in bureaucratic experience and clear in his purpose, Addington was a ferocious infighter for his cause...

Cheney's chief of staff. Remember the name Addington. Remember too that this war is the Long War -- projected at over 20 years by the DOD. Twenty years of presidents and their staff growing increasingly accustomed to unlimited power. What's the chance American democracy could survive that? Who's the greater threat to our future -- Zawahiri or David Addington?

The more we learn of the Bush regime, the more disturbing they appear.