21 Days

These are not easy feelings.
Losing you.
Gone.
Gone is not a good thing.
Not to be too pendantic and afraid but,
Gone is a big word.
Good living is hard to come by.
It's not easy like so many say.
Good living is not easy to achieve.
It's difficult.
Can I do it again from here?
Gone is a big word.
Am I condemned now?
Losing you.
Without you.
Gone.
Gone is not a good things.
Gone is a big word.
The bottom of a black hole.
Gone is a big word.
Chance.
Chance is a lesser word.
Chance brought me.
Takes me.
Leaves me.
What a terrible thing.
Chance.
Gone is a big word.
I want to drive to Napa the town to buy a shirt at the best shirt shop in northern California. Robe that naughty body in voices I choose. I select. I don't design. Fate is not a thing for thinking. Fate is worn. Like a shirt.
Gone is a big word.
I spent three ours last night. One hour on the beach tossing balls to my dog at lowest tide under brightest moon weeping in marine breeze. Wet. One hour thumbing through one hundred photographs in our album of life. Wet in tears. One hour blank and void and crow. Drowned. These infinite things arrive as first memories of the rest of my life.
Gone is a big word.
Tonight I said to myself, "Self...."
I've always liked that.
But without you gone is a big word.

 

Minding the Planet

[via Future Now] This article presents some thoughts about the future of intelligence on Earth. In particular, I discuss the similarities between the Internet and the brain, and how I believe the emerging Semantic Web will make this similarity even greater.... 

While today most of the intelligence on Earth still resides within human brains, In the near future, perhaps even within our lifetimes, the vast majority of intelligence will exist outside of human brains on the Semantic Web....  "Minding the Planet: From Semantic Web to Global Mind"

Seven Futures

[via Future Now] A new set of public forecasts by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), a DC-based think tank, are available on the web. They offer seven areas of scenarios through the year 2025 The seven areas comprise scenarios in:

• Population 
• Resources 
• Technology  
• Knowledge 
• Economy 
• Conflict 
• Governance

And did you know?

• To feed the eight billion people expected by 2025,
  the world will have to double food production…
• 1.7 billion people currently lack access to safe drinking water…
• More than 60% of the increase in energy demand comes from developing countries.
  These countries' share will increase from 30% to 43%...
• Freshwater makes up only 2.5 percent of the Earth's total volume of water.
  Three-quarters of this freshwater is frozen in the polar ice caps...

 
The global economy has skyrocketed to $47 trillion, over four times the level in 1975, and is expected to continue to grow at the average annual rate of 3.6% or higher… The accumulated wealth of the 225 richest individuals in the world is equivalent to the combined annual revenue of 2.7 billion people at the bottom of the global income ladder…

Getting Physical

A University of Colorado, Aurora, study of 12 primary care practices involving 200 adult patients beginning treatment for depression has found 66 percent presented exclusively with physical symptoms. Psychological presenters were more likely than physical presenters to complete an adequate course of antidepressant treatment. Forty-one percent of the physical patients significantly improved on antidepressants vs 80 percent of the psychological ones, suggesting the need for different approaches to intervention, according to the study’s authors. [via mcman]

by my grave and weep

Do not stand by my grave and weep
I am not there, I do not sleep
I am a thousand winds that blow
I am a diamond glint on snow
I am the sunlight on ripened grain
I am the gentle autumn rain.

When you awake to the morning hush
I am the swift uplifting rush
Of quiet birds in circling flight
I am the soft starshine at night
Do not stand by my grave and cry
I am not there, I did not die.
- Mary Frye, 1932

Speech stories

Innovation Weblog points to StoryBlog, "a repository of stories for use in presentations." Here's one story sent in by Ankesh Kothari:

A university professor went to visit a famous Zen master. While the master quietly served tea, the professor talked about Zen.

The master poured the visitor's cup to the brim, and then kept pouring.

The professor watched the overflowing cup until he could no longer restrain himself. "It's overfull! No more will go in!" the professor blurted.

"You are like this cup," the master replied, "You are full of ideas. You come and ask for teaching, but your cup is full; I can't put anything in. Before I can teach you, you'll have to empty your cup."

Moral: keep an open mind.

Bye bye DeBeers?

the economist on death of the diamond cartel

[via anildash}

Roots of ideas

[via NewsScan] HONORARY SUBSCRIBERS: SIDNEY AND BEATRICE WEBB     

Today's Honorary Subscribers are the English economists Beatrice Potter Webb (1858-1943) and her husband Sidney James Webb (1859-1947) who, as prominent leaders of the Fabian Socialists, played a major role in building Britain's Labor Party. They also worked together to help create the London School of Economics and Political Science.   

The Webbs had a hand in most of the political and social reforms of their time, their activities leading to reforms that aided the poor, strengthened the labor movement, and improved public education. In 1913 they founded the New Statesman, a weekly periodical to promote their socialist views. They also co-authored a number of important books, including "The History of Trade Unionism" (1894), "Industrial Democracy" (1897), and "Soviet Communism" (1935).   

Sidney James Webb was born in London, where his father was a bookkeeper. In 1885 he was befriended by George Bernard Shaw, who brought him into the Fabian Society. This organization of British socialists became his philosophical home base for the rest of his life, and it was largely due to his leadership that social research became the society's chief interest.  Webb entered politics as a member of the London County Council in 1892. In the council, he helped reshape education programs in London. During World War I be became active in the Labor Party and was elected to its executive committee. In 1918 he prepared the statement that first committed the party to socialism. In 1922, he was elected to Parliament, and after that he held Cabinet posts in several Labor governments.

In 1929 he became Baron Passfield, but his wife, true to her socialists beliefs, refused to be called Lady Passfield.  Beatrice Webb was born Martha Beatrice Potter and came from a wealthy and socially prominent Gloucester family. The philosopher Herbert Spencer was a family friend, and under his influence Beatrice became a social worker. In trying to understand the roots of poverty, she found she had a talent for social research. Her small 1891 study on the Co-operative Movement in Great Britain has become a classic. Her research interests brought her into contact with Sidney Webb, and they were married in 1892. Her wealth allowed the couple to devote themselves to the interests of the British labor movement. From 1906 to 1909, she served on the Royal Commission on the Poor Law, which investigated poverty in Britain. Together with her husband, she wrote a minority report for the commission that called for passage of legislation that would guarantee a minimum standard of living for all citizens.

During the 1920's and 1930's, she revised and edited the detailed diary she had kept since 1872. The resulting books, "My Apprenticeship" (1926) and "Our Partnership" (1948), form an eloquent record of the Webbs' productive careers.  In 1928 the Webbs retired to their home in Hampshire. They both died there, Beatrice in 1943 and Sidney in 1947.

Internet public radio

PublicRadioFan.com:
"PublicRadioFan.com features program listings for hundreds of public radio stations around the world. Follow the audio links to hear your favorite programs and discover new ones. "

Magnetic refrigerators

Roland Piquepaille writes "Magnetic refrigerators offer significant advantages when compared with current vapor-compression ones, such as gains in energy efficiency, lower cost of operation or elimination of environmentally damaging coolants. Unfortunately, all the materials which have been tested in the last fifty years suffer from hysteresis losses, lowering the energy available for cooling. But now, National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) researchers have found a solution, reported in "Nanomaterial Yields Cool Results." By adding a small amount of iron to a gadolinium-germanium-silicon alloy, they enhanced the cooling capacity by 30 percent. This very significant step may help move the promising technology of magnetically generated refrigeration closer to market. This overview contains more details and references." [via NanoDot]

Smart Dust and remote systems

"Smart dust" could soon transform industrial production as well as everyday life.

"An air scrubber in an Intel chip plant failed,shutting down operations while it was fixed. A sensor in the machine could have predicted the failure, but it had been several weeks since an engineer with a handheld device had checked that sensor on his quarterly rounds of about 4,000 such devices.

It won't happen again, Intel says. That scrubber is now part of a wireless network of sensors checked every five minutes -- by 'smart dust.'

Smart dust is also referred to as 'motes' or simply 'sensor networks.' It basically involves networks of tiny devices that sense conditions or movement, transmit data and control equipment. The technology is showing up everywhere from factories to trucks to office buildings." [from the venerable but defunct FutureBrief]

Wireless Controls

The use of wireless networks of sensors and machinery has been expanding rapidly in such applications as the management of lighting systems and the detection of construction defects. Recent examples include a wireless communications system to tell precisely when to irrigate and harvest grapes to produce premium wine and a system to monitor stresses on aging bridges to help states decide maintenance priorities. Hans Mulder, associate director for research at Intel, says that systems such as these "will be pervasive in 20 years." Tom Reidel of Millenial Net comments: "The range of potential market applications is a function of how many beers you've had," but adds: "There's a whole ecosystem of hardware, software and service guys springing up." (New York Times 26 Jul 2004)

---

I promoted Cybersensor (probably the incarnation of this firm) to build oil patch remote sensor capability as far back as 1990. Using low cost wireless and wired boxes, converting control systems for remote management was becoming achievable more than 15 years ago.

Most folks did not understand the usefulness of the new paradigm. And some of the executives that did see the future, saw only their personal future and only if manipulating Wall Street. Cybersensor did not break through, although it may now offer attractive systems.

Thinking of the evolution of industrial controls is interesting. The iron age factory required iron age valves and crafted metal gauges and cranks and wheels and strong crews. The machine age brought us electrical relays and bakelite harnesses and expensive crews.

Today, we can fly over an industrial complex and view our machinery in operation in detail. We can tweak reactors and pumps. We can tie production output to favorable prices. Our data model is our control model.

We all know this...

Why small companies are smarter than big ones 
There are two ways to manage technology at work: the big-company way and the small-company way. Rafe Needleman has tried both. Guess which one he prefers? Here are some of the lessons he's learned. READ FULL REPORT

Efficient markets theory

The Wisdom of Crowds:
Why the Many Are Smarter Than the Few
and How Collective Wisdom Shapes Business, Economies, Societies and Nations

"The problem with the global village is all the global village idiots."-- Paul Ginsparg 
"You don't do good software design by committee."-- Donald Norman 
"There's no justice like angry-mob justice."-- Principal Seymour Skinner 
"A person is smart. People are stupid."-- Agent K

Bipedal Dog

[via BoingBoing]

Faith the Amazing Biped Dog certainly has an impressive gait.

Faith was born with just one front leg and it was on backwards.

A vet graciously removed the dying limb and, with help from her family, Faith has overcome her handicap: "Even though Faith has this defect we taught her to stand, hop, and eventually walk on her two back legs, like a human.

Link

Blinking Red

I know we're all supposed to believe that the report is easy on the Bush administration. But, you know, it really isn't. It doesn't come out and say "Bush and Condi really screwed the pooch." But, if you read this chapter, [pdf] one really comes away thinking "Bush and Condi really screwed the pooch." [via Eschaton]

[via Kottke] The 9/11 Commission released their findings today (Washington Post PDF of the Executive Summary). I've created an HTML version of the Executive Summary with permalinks for each paragraph for easy linking and copy/paste.

Efficient markets theory

A few commonly held fallacies about the efficient markets theory

• that it is basically a neutral, academic theory with few implications for the real world
  
• that it is basically all about the stock market (to be honest, most of the discussion revolves around the US stock market)
  
• and that, to quote James Surowiecki, “whether or not markets are perfectly efficient, they’re better than any other capital allocation method that you can think of.

None of these are true.

Once the world was in the grip of efficient markets as a concept (and the IMF was in the grip of what Joe Stiglitz has memorably called “third-rate students from first-rate universities”, a first-rate university being what Chicago indisputably is), it was hardly surprising that the concept would find itself being applied to the most pressing capital allocation problem of the age; the need to industrialise the Third World. “Development economics” as a sub-field of economic geography rapidly withered on the vine – and who wouldn’t let fruit wither on the vine if they had a free lunch? – as it became conventional wisdom that all one had to do was to open up a country’s capital markets to foreign speculation and sit back and watch. The idea being that markets were efficient, so capital would flow naturally to where it could be best used, in the process providing a better signal to emerging market governments about the correctness of their policy mix than mere humans at the IMF could ever offer. That was the plan.

Well, we all know how that worked out. A “bubble” and “panic” are all rather amusing when they affect funny speculative technology companies with amusing names and young arrogant staff in Aeron chairs. When they affect an entire economy, throwing millions out of work in a country with no functional welfare state, they are rather less of a laugh. And the “emerging markets”(as developing countries were rebranded) proved to be extraordinarily susceptible to booms and crashes. What happened was that when First World interest rates fell, money would flood into a developing country which had become fashionable, vastly in excess of any realistic assessment of the productive investment opportunities there. Because it couldn’t be credibly invested, this surplus money would usually finance a consumption boom, a current account deficit and an appreciation of the exchange rate. After a while, the country would become “uncompetitive” and the money would flood back out again, leaving the economy to deal with a now-unsustainable current account deficit. The only way to deal with this would be to push up the domestic interest rate, which usually had the effect of causing a serious recession. If the country was unlucky, this recession could easily lead to a bank collapse, the proposed solution to which was to “open up the banking sector to foreign capital”. Lather, rinse, repeat.

It’s a tragicomedy.

The efficient markets theory was an academic theory which had genuine, massive human consequences, and they were all baleful.

Is it rational to be ethical?

Many philosophers, including rationally speaking.org,  have wrestled with this most fundamental of questions, attempting to clarify whether humans are well served by ethical rules or whether they weigh us down. Would we really be better off if we all gave in to the desire to just watch out for our own interests and take the greatest advantage to ourselves whenever we can?

Ayn Rand, for one, thought that the only rational behavior is egoism, and books aiming at increasing personal wealth (presumably at the expense of someone else’s wealth) regularly make the bestsellers list.

Plato, Kant, and John Stuart Mill, to mention a few, have tried to show that there is more to life than selfishness. In the Republic, Plato has Socrates defending his philosophy against the claim that justice and fairness are only whatever rich and powerful people decide they are. But the arguments of his opponents—that we can see plenty of examples of unjust people who have a great life and of just ones who suffer in equally great manner—seem more convincing than the high-mindedness of the father of philosophy.

Kant attempted to reject what he saw as the nihilistic attitude of Christianity, where you are good now because you will get an infinite payoff later, and to establish independent rational foundations for morality. Therefore he suggested that in order to decide if something is ethical or not one has to ask what would happen if everybody were adopting the same behavior. However, Kant never explained why his version of rational ethics is indeed rational. Rand would object that establishing double standards, one for yourself and one for the rest of the universe, makes perfect sense.

Mill also tried to establish ethics on firm rational foundations, in his case improving on Jeremy Bentham’s idea of utilitarianism. In chapter two of his book Utilitarianism, Mill writes: “Actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness; wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness.” Leaving aside the thorny question of what happiness is and the difficulty of actually making such calculations, one still has to answer the fundamental question of why one should care about increasing the average degree of happiness instead of just one’s own.

Things got worse with the advent of modern evolutionary biology. It seemed for a long time that Darwin’s theory would provide the naturalistic basis for the ultimate selfish universe: nature red in tooth and claw evokes images of “every man for himself,” in pure Randian style. In fact, Herbert Spencer popularized the infamous doctrine of “Social Darwinism” (which Darwin never espoused) well before Ayn Rand wrote Atlas Shrugged.

Recently, however, several scientists and philosophers have been taking a second look at growth theory and its relationship with ethics, and are finding new ways of realizing the project of Plato, Kant, and Mill of deriving a fundamentally rational way of being ethical. Elliot Sober and David Sloan Wilson, in their Unto Others: the Psychology and Evolution of Unselfish Behavior, as well as Peter Singer in Politics, Evolution and Cooperation, argue that human beings grow as social animals, not as lone, self-reliant brutes. In a society, cooperative behavior (or at least, a balance between cooperation and selfishness) will be selected in favor, while looking out exclusively for number one will be ostracized because it reduces the fitness of most individuals and of the group as a whole.

All of this sounds good, but does it actually work? A recent study published in Science by Martin Nowak, Karen Page and Karl Sigmund provides a splendid example of how mathematical evolutionary theory can be applied to ethics, and how in fact social evolution favors fair and cooperative behavior. Nowak and coworkers tackled the problem posed by the so-called “ultimatum game.” In it, two players are offered the possibility of winning a pot of money, but they have to agree on how to divide it. One of the players, the proposer, makes an offer of a split ($90 for me, $10 for you, for example) to the other player; the other player, the responder, has the option of accepting or rejecting. If she rejects, the game is over and neither of them gets any money.

It is easy to demonstrate that the rational strategy is for the proposer to behave egotistically and to suggest a highly uneven split in which she takes most of the money, and for the responder to accept. The alternative is that neither of them gets anything. However, when real human beings from a variety of cultures and using a panoply of rewards play the game the outcome is invariably a fair share of the prize. This would seem prima facie evidence that the human sense of fair play overwhelms mere rationality and thwarts the rationalistic prediction. On the other hand, it would also provide Ayn Rand with an argument that most humans are simply stupid, because they don’t appreciate the math behind the game.

Nowak and colleagues, however, simulated the evolution of the game in a situation in which several players get to interact repeatedly. That is, they considered a social situation rather than isolated encounters. If the players have memory of previous encounters (i.e., each player builds a “reputation” in the group), then the winning strategy is to be fair because people are willing to punish dishonest proposers, which increases their own reputation for fairness and damages the proposer’s reputation for the next round. This means that—given the social environment—it is rational to be less selfish toward your neighbors.

While we are certainly far from a satisfying mathematical and evolutionary theory of morality, it seems that science does, after all, have something to say about optimal ethical rules. The emerging picture is one of fairness—not egotism—as the smart choice to make.

Do you really think so? Like the `language instinct' (see this summary of Pinker, 1994), humans have what we might call an `ethics instinct': a mental predisposition towards learning and reasoning about ethics.

Wars cause opinions.

Lorenzo Vidino writes:
“Oriana Fallaci" is not a household name in the United States, but it cannot be uttered in Europe without generating a heated reaction. Even though her 2002 book, The Rage and the Pride, was translated into English (by Fallaci herself) and sold many copies in the U.S., it was on the other side of the ocean that intellectuals, politicians, and ordinary citizens passionately debated the views of the celebrated Italian journalist. The Rage and the Pride is either loved or hated; the positions Fallaci takes in it leave no middle ground. Outraged by the events of 9/11, Fallaci criticizes both Muslims (bent, according to her, on conquering the West and annihilating its culture) and Europeans (described as spoiled, hypocritical, and blind to the mortal threat represented by Islamic expansionism). Fallaci's views as expressed in the Rage and the Pride caused an uproar in politically correct Europe, death threats and lawsuits included. Now, two years later, Fallaci has published a new book, entitled La Forza della Ragione (The Force of Reason), which continues the discourse she began in The Rage and the Pride.

And the Generals hear it too.
To succeed as an element of a wider plan to transform the military into an effective, information-age force, these changes must both be revolutionary in concept and implementation. And that guarantees a vicious bureaucratic guerrilla war within the U.S. armed services. A summary of the proposed transformation of the armed services reveals two fundamental concepts, new to all but some exceptional units in U.S. military history. One is an emphasis on moving more rapidly on the battlefield at all levels of warfare. The second concept is harder to implement: The Pentagon describes it as “Flexible decision-making [that] allows field forces to react quickly to changes in the battle.” These changes, bolder than any in American history, will move the U.S. military from the Industrial Age – employing a mobilization doctrine which relies on attrition warfare – into the 21st century where it will be redesigned and equipped to employ genuine maneuver warfare strategy and tactics when it fights.

But what happens to those that matter?
Is The PX System A Big Rip Off? I am a C-130 flight engineer and was stationed at Tabuk, Saudi Arabia for the war. We didn't have a mess hall, enough latrines, (human waste ran openly on the ground, we had cases of dysentery) no water for showers or even trash bags. But, we had an AAFES store. We could buy what they were giving away free at other bases. So I guess my point Sir is that service personnel are "cash cows", I mean the government has to recoup some of the money they give us in those massive pay raises, right?

wired.com: "In the history of American warfare, around 15 percent of the country's casualties have been caused by so-called friendly fire. In recent wars, sophisticated U.S. weaponry and increasingly confusing battlefield situations have propelled that number to more than 20 percent."

Don't be worried...

[via disinfo] Technology that disrupts copyright does so because it simplifies and cheapens creation, reproduction and distribution. The existing copyright businesses exploit inefficiencies in the old production, reproduction and distribution system, and they'll be weakened by the new technology. But new technology always gives us more art with a wider reach: that's what tech is for. Tech gives us bigger pies that more artists can get a bite out of. That's been tacitly acknowledged at every stage of the copyfight since the piano roll. When copyright and technology collide, it's copyright that changes.Cory Doctorow, Microsoft Research DRM Talk, 17 June 2004

Mark Pesce, author of The Playful World: How Technology Is Transforming Our Imagination (Ballantine Books, New York, 2000), has given a paradigm-breaking speech to Australia's Smart Internet CRC on Open Source Television. © 2004, Mark D. Pesce. Rights for reuse granted the Creative Commons Attribution License.Mark PesceLecturer, Digital Media ProgrammeAustralian Film Television and Radio School 

 

Was Evans Cuban?

DisInfo Personals: "Robert Evans is my hero and I hope to live out his dream like he did."

Inflatable church?!?

"Sorry folks, no services today; we sprung a leak."

Inflatable Church Mobile Chapel for Marriage or Revival

[via SMD ]

RFID is coming

I can't believe it's going to take five years to get to the point where:

RFID Journal says a new report from ABI Research predicts that within 5 years, 50% of cell phones will include RFID chips to use Near Field Communication (NFC), a two-way technology. link to Technology Trends

This opens up all kinds of point of purchase opportunities as well as location based services. Not only will you be able to make purchases by swiping your phone at a reader (20cm range) but other innovative services and experiences will be triggered by such a technology. Sure there are significant security/privacy issues but that can all be worked out. [via Thinking by Peter Davidson]

Eyes have shapes

The epidemics of myopia in countries such as Singapore and Japan are due solely to changes in lifestyle, they say, and similar levels could soon be seen in many western countries as lifestyles there continue to change.

"As kids spend more time indoors, on computers or watching telly, we are going to become just as myopic," says Ian Morgan of the Australian National University in Canberra.

Myopia is on the increase in most places, but in countries such as Singapore it has reached extraordinary levels. There, 80 per cent of 18-year-old male army recruits are myopic, up from 25 per cent just 30 years ago.

Employers such as the police are having problems finding people who meet their requirements. There is also an increasing incidence of extreme myopia, which can lead to blindness.

There is little doubt about at least one underlying cause. Children now spend much of their time focusing on close objects, such as books and computers. To compensate the eyeball is thought to grow longer. That way less effort is needed to focus up close, but the elongated eye can no longer focus on distant objects.

Filter innovation

newscientist.com: "To make their filters, Fluxxion places a 15-centimetre-wide silicon wafer disc - the sort microchips are made on - in a vacuum and uses a plasma beam to blast 3 billion 0.45-micrometre holes through the wafer. The wafer is then rinsed. The ultra-fine filter is a boon to brewers who need to remove cloudy yeast residues. Conventional beer filters are made of either densely packed fibres or a dusty material called kieselguhr, which consists of fossilised hard-walled algae called diatoms. In each case the passages through the filter are long and tortuous, and vary enormously in width, so they can demand pumping pressures nearing 1 atmosphere. But the silicon filter has short passages of consistent and precisely controlled size, so the pumping pressure need be only around one-tenth of an atmosphere.

Fluxxion is testing it on milk to see if it can filter out bacteria and thus avoid pasteurisation, which can impair the taste.

The firm is also experimenting with filters with 0.2-micrometre holes, to see if they can remove viruses from blood plasma."

Issue breakdown

In short, there is nothing fundamentally wrong
about changing our psychology.

It's Okay to Change Your Mind:
While it calls for caution, there are good reasons to redesign human nature

Southpaw notes

Handedness develops in the womb: The hand humans favor as a ten-week-old fetus is the hand they favor for the rest of their lives, suggests a new study

Note on Russia

Since the US military will be fighting its future wars against armies possessing Russian weapons - or derivatives thereof - Washington should pay closer attention to what is happening across the wide spaces of the Russian Federation, for three reasons.

The third reason has to do with Russia's current military doctrine, which adheres to the concept of multipolarity. The articles of the doctrine state Russia's conviction that social progress, stability and international security can only be accomplished in a multipolar world. The doctrine further states that the Russian Federation will work toward the establishment of such a world with all the means at its disposal. Russia cannot be one of the potential powers in this multipolar scenario if its military lacks advanced technologies and if it cannot be considered a state-of-the-art military force on par with US and Western armies. Therefore, it is to be expected that Russia will attempt to field its armies with the country's best military achievements.

The second reason has to do with Russia's growing assertiveness in its "near abroad", or the states of the former Soviet Union. Russia considers these states in its rightful economic, political and military sphere of influence...

And: Already Russia is the second-largest worldwide exporter of military technology after the United States.... Part of such success - limited, but nonetheless crucial to the survival of the Russian military industry - stems from the fact that even in these difficult times, some of Russia's military factories and its covert cities, once the sites of ultra-secret projects, are still operational and continue to work on essentially the same projects as before the demise of the Soviet Union: the development of military technologies that are on par with or better than those available in the West.

RFID surveillance

They've got your number

The Montreal Gazette has published a long piece about surveillance, especially the use of RFID chips, though the "news peg" is the use of "black box" information from a car. (The data from the airbag system, used in court, showed the car was travelling at 157kph when it struck and killed a Montreal University student.) The sidebar -- published at the bottom of the Web page -- runs through a typical day and shows the sort of data trail you can leave behind.

Good funny blog

And that brings me to my story. Road kill. Buzzard buffet on the backroad. Between Glen Rose and Hico, I began to notice ominous flocks of turkey buzzards roosting in the last of winter's bare-limbed trees. Now, some fancy bird watchers - orinthologists - would say the correct term for this graceful, soaring bird is a vulture. To that I would answer, you can put your boots in the oven, but that don't make them biscuits. [via Time Goes By]

Europeans:

Readers Digest: Europeans on Europeans

RD surveyed 4,000 people in 19 countries to find out which country or nationality was considered most likable, least likable, the rudest, the sexiest, most open-minded, etc. [via NeatNewStuff]

Quiet dog tags

Pets should be seen...

...but their tags should not be heard when you're trying to sleep, read, or concentrate. TAG-A-ROUNDS were created to eliminate the annoying noise created by pet tags (rabies tag, city license, ID tag, etc.) clanging together. TAG-A-ROUNDS also keep pet tags readable by eliminating the wear caused by tags rubbing against each other. Just because your dog wakes up at two o'clock in the morning to scratch fleas doesn't mean that you should have to wake up, too.

Violence gene

"Bad Behavior" Mutation Found

Gene variant that predisposes to violence can be overcome by good parenting

Good mothers stop monkeys going bad
Proper parenting can abolish the effects of a "bad" gene for aggression and stop young monkeys going off the rails, suggests a new study

Dummies Guide to Change

Robert Paterson's Weblog: "Understanding how to initiate change is becoming a central issue for our time. Fortunately nature has given us a model that has a much better chance of working than all the change book's ideas so far. Over the last 2 years I have been seeking the best compression of the ideas of Everett Rogers - the father of Diffusion Theory and his popular disciple Malcolm Gladwell of Tipping Point fame. I have edited a number of other people's work into what I hope is the easiest, most complete and most accessible review of their thinking. This is not my original work but is my original editing! I hope that this helps you in your change project. How can you put your organization on the leading edge of the competitive landscape?"

GPS Farming

Satellite technology helps farmers tend fields efficiently
July 19, 2004
CanWest News Service
Steve Makris
CROSSFIELD, Alta. - Satellite navigation technology developed by a Calgary company is, according to this story, helping farmer Doug Mackacek tend his fields more efficiently.
The story says that CSI Wireless takes over the steering of his tractors and self-propelled equipment. The auto-steering, based on global positioning system (GPS) technology, uses information from a network of permanent satellites to accurately determine the location of the tractor. Mackacek can set a straight-line course in a rectangular-shaped field, or navigate multi-curved rows with the accuracy of a 20-centimetre overlap. Mackacek, a second-generation farmer near Crossfield, north of Calgary, was quoted as saying, "Driving manually all day long during seeding leads to fatigue and mistakes like overlaps or missed sections of more than a metre," adding that farmers can waste several thousand dollars each year by over-seeding or using too much fertilizer and other soil treatments. "In a farm our size, this technology can pay itself off in two years,'' he said. "I can catch up on paperwork while in the cab or monitor the sprayer equipment. We can put in long hours, even into the night."

If not he, nobody

Mark Twain stunned the political establishment by announcing his candidacy for the presidency. An independent in politics since the '80s, he's running as a third party candidate. Initial polls show 100% support for his positions on the issues, with the strongest support coming from those who agree with these positions:

Foreign Policy: It is easier to stay out than get out.

Crime: Nothing incites to money-crimes like great poverty or great wealth.

The Economy: The lack of money is the root of all evil.

Family Values: It is better to have bad morals than none at all.

Education: I have never let my schooling interfere with my education.

Defense: An inglorious peace is better than a dishonorable war.

Politics: All the talk used to be about doing people good, now it is about doing people.

Congress: It could probably be shown by facts and figures that there is no distinctly native American criminal class except Congress.

Mark Twain is confident that he will retain 100% support throughout his campaign. "I'll make whatever promises the people want," he told reporters. "Better a broken promise than none at all."

How rumors begin...

I was reluctant to take the time to read this snippet because the email was only 8pt single-spaced Times Roman. (Anyone over the age of 40 is likely to be uncomfortable -- a fact few web designers discuss.)

Several years ago, there was considerable interest in adding hydrogen peroxide to irrigation water to enhance oxygen in the root zones of plants. At the time, some investigators reported increased crop yields with hydrogen peroxide, but, as far as we know, no commercial apparatus was developed. Perhaps the results of recent experiments conducted in Australia will rekindle interest in oxygenated irrigation systems. The Australian researchers injected 0.6 pints per 1,000 square feet of 50% hydrogen peroxide solution via subsurface drip irrigation tape into heavy clay plots following flooding of the soil. Zucchini plants grown in the plots produced 29% more fruits weighing 25% more than the fruits produced without hydrogen peroxide treatment. The researchers also tried injecting hydrogen peroxide at a rate of 0.1% by volume with the irrigation water provided to container-grown vegetable soybean plants in "heavy cracking" clay soil that was kept water-saturated. Yields of soybean pods (fresh weight) went up by 82-96% relative to the yields with no hydrogen peroxide.

Several years ago, there was considerable interest in adding hydrogen peroxide to irrigation water to enhance oxygen in the root zones of plants. At the time, some investigators reported increased crop yields with hydrogen peroxide, but, as far as we know, no commercial apparatus was developed. Perhaps the results of recent experiments conducted in Australia will rekindle interest in oxygenated irrigation systems. The Australian researchers injected 0.6 pints per 1,000 square feet of 50% hydrogen peroxide solution via subsurface drip irrigation tape into heavy clay plots following flooding of the soil. Zucchini plants grown in the plots produced 29% more fruits weighing 25% more than the fruits produced without hydrogen peroxide treatment. The researchers also tried injecting hydrogen peroxide at a rate of 0.1% by volume with the irrigation water provided to container-grown vegetable soybean plants in "heavy cracking" clay soil that was kept water-saturated. Yields of soybean pods (fresh weight) went up by 82-96% relative to the yields with no hydrogen peroxide.

So along comes the punchline, a third party.

Clearly, oxygenated irrigation is a highly promising way to boost production of crops growing in waterlogged heavy clay. We believe there could be a substantial market for a mechanism that automatically injects hydrogen peroxide into drip irrigation systems.

Yeh. But we were talking about oxygen.

Quick wraps with sloganeering are usually hustles.

We were talking about hydrogen peroxide, a byproduct marketplace that could indeed become quite lucrative, but says nothing about the sample if oxygen that is being sold here.

I hereby copyright the word "ixygen" and I foresee it's use in many markets. Signed Brian Hayes...2004

I am ashamed of progenitors and promoters who cannot behave without one or two rules of propogation. I am more than ashamed, I am suspicious of anyone that seeks to gain from lies and shenanigans. Shenanagigans, Humans gigging shenanigans, we could call them.

I am ashamed when I see the combustion of conscience. Now, that's oxygen deprival!

Shameless & Spineless

Fair and Balanced Blogging

To be fair to Julian Bond and his message at the Take Back America Conference quoted yesterday, I should also include what he said about the Democratic politics.

And what about the opposition party? Too often they’re not in opposition; they’re an amen corner. With some notable exceptions, they’ve been absent without leave in this battle for America’s soul. When one party is shameless, the other can’t afford to be spineless.

(Speech [.doc ], June 2, 2004)

Cellular Mechanic

The Cellular Mechanic

Carlos Bustamante is a mechanic. He tinkers with machines to see what makes them tick. He talks a lot about torque and force, compression and tension. Bustamante is not an engineer though. He's a UC Berkeley professor of molecular and cell biology, physics, and chemistry. And the devices he studies are the microscopic machines behind life itself--cells, proteins, molecular motors, and DNA. "Until recently, biochemists and biophysicists did not think of cell processes using mechanical terms..." says Bustamante.

Deconstructing purchasing

The Economist wrote how the Internet is becoming a key part of the search-find-obtain process for consumers:

What is going on...is arbitrage between different sales channels, says Mohanbir Sawhney, professor of technology at the Kellogg School of Management in Chicago. For instance, someone might use the internet to research digital cameras, but visit a photographic shop for a hands-on demonstration. "I'll think about it," they will tell the sales assistant. Back home, they will use a search engine to find the lowest price and buy online. In this way, consumers are "deconstructing the purchasing process", says Professor Sawhney. They are unbundling product information from the transaction itself.

Alternative energy concepts

Alternatives Energy Sources

News.com discusses the options:

Companies promoting solar power and other alternative-energy concepts are rapidly attracting venture funding, research grants and, just as important, the interest of many of the tech industry's deep thinkers and influential figures.

"We have a huge energy issue in this century, and it will not be solved by policy. The only real solution is technology," said Jim Plummer, dean of Stanford University's School of Engineering. "The alternative is to shut down our economy."

Lowell, Mass.-based Konarka Technologies, for instance, has raised $32 million from, among others, ChevronTexaco, utility company Electricite de France and venture capital firm Draper Fisher Jurvetson. Konarka, which counts Nobel Prize winner Alan Heeger as a founder, says it will deliver solar cells made of thin layers of plastic to its customers--large manufacturers--by the end of the year.

In Silicon Valley, Nanosys of Palo Alto is working with Matsushita on sprayable solar coatings for roofs. Meanwhile, Nanostellar, which was founded by William Miller, CEO emeritus of SRI International, hopes to produce cleaner, cheaper catalytic converters. Other companies with alternative-energy ideas include Ocean Power Deliver (wave power); Clarke Energy (natural gas from landfills); and Bowman Power (microturbines).

Additionally, fuel cell and battery companies such as MTI MicroFuel Cells, PolyFuel and Solicore are finding markets for their products.

One of the alternative-energy areas drawing the most interest is a technology known as thin-film solar cells.

Traditional solar cells--the hardware used for solar energy in decades past--are rigid silicon chips that must be built in expensive fabrication facilities and eventually get installed in somewhat ungainly roof racks. With thin films, manufacturers use ink-jet nozzles to spray photovoltaic materials onto sheets of plastic or roof tiles in precise patterns. Not only does this cut costs, but the electricity-generating materials are unobtrusive as well.

Impossible thinking.

The Power of Impossible Thinking

[via Atanu Dey] Knowledge@Wharton asks what's common to the 4-minute mile, Starbucks and the moon landing and answers:

Impossible thinking. It is what put men on the moon, allowed Starbucks to turn a commodity product into a powerful global business and permitted Roger Bannister to run the four-minute mile. While not every "impossible thought" can become a reality, very often the greatest obstacle to transforming our organizations, society and personal lives is our own thinking. This may seem to be a simple idea in theory - that what we see and act upon is more a product of what is inside our heads than out in the world - but it has far-reaching implications for how we approach life and decision making. In a new book entitled, The Power of Impossible Thinking: Transform the Business of Your Life and the Life of Your Business, Wharton marketing professor Jerry Wind and Colin Crook, former chief technology officer at Citibank, present a process for "impossible thinking."

This process starts with the recognition of the power of "mental models" but then offers practical approaches to challenges such as: How do you know when to jump to a new model? What do you do with the old models after the revolution? Where do you discover new models? How do you make sense of the world in an environment of overwhelming data? How do you transform your organization and the thinking of others? How do you harness the power of intuition?

Some excerpts from the interview with Wind and Crook:

To challenge your thinking, you need to interact with diverse people and be able to see the potential wisdom of weird ideas...We need to keep an open mind and approach life as a series of experiments. We need to observe the experiments happening around us and create new ones. Instead of accepting the world as we think it is, we need to keep testing it to find out what it is and what works.

In the book, we consider practical steps to change your thinking and the world. The first step is to become much more explicitly aware of why you see the world the way you do and what that implies. Second, you need to test the relevance of your current mental models against the changing environment. Do they still fit? If you need to change models, you need to generate new models and develop an integrated portfolio of models. Third, you need to overcome inhibitors to change by reshaping the infrastructure that supports the old models and changing the thinking of others. Finally, you need to quickly generate and act upon new models by experimenting, using intuition and continuing to assess and strengthen your models.

One of the ways we can deal with [complexity] is is through a process of zooming in and zooming out. If you can alternate your focus between the detail and a broader view, you can see the detail and the context, the trees and the forest.

It's not real money

Lost Online Sales Taxes Not As Big As Thought

A billion here, a billion there... it's not real money, so who cares? State governments have been going bonkers for years about all that "lost revenue" from those damn geeks buying products online and not paying the necessary sales tax. There are all sorts of laws and schemes afoot to try to collect more of those taxes from asking you to be honest to making merchants calculate and collect the taxes for you. While many smaller e-commerce firms are scared what that might cost, the state governments keep trotting out huge sales tax loss numbers. Well, now, it turns out that the numbers they've been trotting out have been wrong. No surprise there.