January 2006

Wordsworth’s “spots of time”

commonplace book, language & literature / /

From Wordsworth’s The Prelude 12.208-218 (1805 edition):

There are in our existence spots of time,
That with distinct pre-eminence retain
A renovating virtue, whence–depressed
By false opinion and contentious thought,
Or aught of heavier or more deadly weight,
In trivial occupations, and the round
Of ordinary intercourse–our minds
Are nourished and invisibly repaired;
A virtue, by which pleasure is enhanced,
That penetrates, enables us to mount,
When high, more high, and lifts us up when fallen.

Wordsworth’s “spots of time” Read More »

The past, echoed now

politics / /

From Gore Vidal’s “President Jonah“:

When the admirable Tiberius (he has had an undeserved bad press), upon becoming emperor, received a message from the Senate in which the conscript fathers assured him that whatever legislation he wanted would be automatically passed by them, he sent back word that this was outrageous. “Suppose the emperor is ill or mad or incompetent?” He returned their message. They sent it again. His response: “How eager you are to be slaves.”

The past, echoed now Read More »

What would it be like to feel no pain?

science, weird / /

From CNN’s “World without pain is hell, parent says“:

Roberto is one of 17 people in the United States with “congenital insensitivity to pain with anhidrosis,” referred to as CIPA by the few people who know about it. …

Other abnormalities quickly surfaced. Roberto was severely susceptible to heatstroke on hot summer days. His parents soon noticed he did not sweat.

“You can’t carry Roberto because he sucks your heat from your body. You’re hot, sweaty. His body can’t sweat like yours so he’s just absorbing all of your heat,” Stingley-Salazar said.

His family was shocked when Roberto started teething. He gnawed on his own tongue, lips and fingers to the point of mutilation. …

Axelrod has studied this family of “no-pain” diseases for more than 35 years. These genetic disorders affect the autonomic nervous system — which controls blood pressure, heart rate, sweating, the sensory nerve system and the ability to feel pain and temperature. …

CIPA is the most severe and fatal type of the seven types of hereditary sensory and autonomic neuropathy, or HSAN. Overheating kills more than half of all children with CIPA before age 3, Stingley-Salazar said.

According to Axelrod, levels of pain vary.

“For some children it’s a mild degree such as breaking a leg, they’ll get up and walk on the leg. They feel that something is uncomfortable but they keep on moving,” she said. “For other children, the pain loss is so severe that they can injure themselves repetitively and actually mutilate themselves because they don’t know when to stop.”

All HSAN disorders are recessive genetic disorders — both parents have to carry the genetic mutation in order to pass it on to a child. But there is less than a 1-in-4 chance that the child will develop it. …

A more common HSAN condition is familial dysautonomia, or FD. There are about 500 cases of FD in the United States, Axelrod said.

The first sign of FD is a child’s inability to suck properly followed by delayed milestones — these children walk and speak later.

Often, FD patients endure severely dry eyes because they are unable to produce tears.

Also, part of this sensory disorder is difficulty “telling where they are in space,” Axelrod said.

The minor effect is constantly bumping into things. The major effect is that 80 percent of these kids suffer curvature of the spine because they have no concept of posture.

What would it be like to feel no pain? Read More »

The new American community: affinity vs. proximity

social software, tech in changing society / /

From “Study: Want Community? Go Online” [emphasis added]:

Nearly 40 percent of Americans say they participate in online communities, with sites around hobbies, shared personal interests, and health-related issues among the most popular. That’s according to a survey conducted by ACNielsen and commissioned by eBay.

The survey was conducted in late September. Of 1,007 respondents, 87 percent say they are part of a community. Of those, 66 percent say they participate in shared personal interest sites. Next comes hobby sites (62 percent), health community sites (55 percent), public issues sites (49 percents), and commerce sites (47 percent). Others participate in social or business networking sites (42 percent), sports sites (42 percent), alumni sites (39 percent), or dating sites (23 percent).

“We are finding that affinity is quickly replacing proximity as the key driver in forming communities,” said Bruce Paul, vice president of ACNielsen. …

“I think that a lot of people initially connect [on online communities] because they share information, which for a site like eBay is beneficial because they learn and grow from each other,” said Rachel Makool, director of community relations for eBay. “Then, of course, relationships form, and they grow from there.”

Researchers note that among offline communities, only membership in religious congregations (59 percent), social groups (54 percent), and neighborhood groups (52 percent) are more common than participation in online communities (39 percent). Professional groups (37 percent), activity groups (32 percent), school volunteer groups (30 percent), and health/country clubs (31 percent) came in behind online communities.

The study also shows that though 30 percent of online community members interact on a daily basis, only 7 percent of offline community members interacted that often. It also reveals that 47 percent of offline communities have an online component, such as e-mailing or chatting online.

The new American community: affinity vs. proximity Read More »

Blogging at IBM

business, social software, tech in changing society / /

From “3,600+ blogs: A glance into IBM’s internal blogging“:

Through the central blog dashboard at the intranet W3, IBMers now can find more than 3,600 blogs written by their co-workers. As of June 13 there were 3,612 internal blogs with 30,429 posts. Internal blogging is still at a stage of testing and trying at IBM but the number of blogs is growing rapidly …

US, Canada and Australia are very active countries but also in small European countries there are quite many internal bloggers. 147 in Sweden and 170 in the Netherlands to mention two examples. …

… the most common topics.

News or events that affect the business
“When IBM sold the personal computing division rumours were flying around before it actually happened and people were blogging about that, giving their opinions about what was going to happen and how it would affect IBM.”

Metablogging
“It’s a new technology of special interest to people who blog.”

Administrative things
“The little changes going on in the company — the water-cooler talk.”

Product announcements
“Not necessarily of general interest but of interest to the specific community working with the product.”

Hints and tips
“…for example about what bloggers have found interesting on the intranet.”

Blogging at IBM Read More »

Why people don’t use firewalls

security / /

From the Windows OneCare Team Blog’s “Windows OneCare Firewall – Keepin’ it Green, Part I“:

Through a combination of surveys, emails and customer communication, we maintain a close watch on the “health” status indicators, such as, percent of users with anti-virus out of date, or the ratio of customers that are regularly backing up files.

… Recently, we have noticed a slight increase in the number of people turning off their firewall, with a corresponding decrease in the number of green machines.

Based on our investigation, there are four primary reasons people are turning off their firewall.

1. Do not think a software firewall is necessary
2. Do not like the (sometimes incessant) pop-up dialogs
3. An application failed to install with firewall turned on
4. An application fails to work with firewall turned on

Why people don’t use firewalls Read More »

Forced to commit suicide by brain parasites

science, weird / /

From New Scientist‘s “Parasites brainwash grasshoppers into death dive“:

A parasitic worm that makes the grasshopper it invades jump into water and commit suicide does so by chemically influencing its brain, a study of the insects’ proteins reveal.

The parasitic Nematomorph hairworm (Spinochordodes tellinii) develops inside land-dwelling grasshoppers and crickets until the time comes for the worm to transform into an aquatic adult. Somehow mature hairworms brainwash their hosts into behaving in way they never usually would – causing them to seek out and plunge into water.

Once in the water the mature hairworms – which are three to four times longer that their hosts when extended – emerge and swim away to find a mate, leaving their host dead or dying in the water. …

Now Biron and his colleagues have shown that the worm brainwashes the grasshopper by producing proteins which directly and indirectly affect the grasshopper’s central nervous system.

Forced to commit suicide by brain parasites Read More »

Night terrors

science, weird / /

From Science News’ “Night of the Crusher: The waking nightmare of sleep paralysis propels people into a spirit world“:

As a college student in 1964, David J. Hufford met the dreaded Night Crusher. Exhausted from a bout of mononucleosis and studying for finals, Hufford retreated one December day to his rented, off-campus room and fell into a deep sleep. An hour later, he awoke with a start to the sound of the bedroom door creaking open—the same door he had locked and bolted before going to bed. Hufford then heard footsteps moving toward his bed and felt an evil presence. Terror gripped the young man, who couldn’t move a muscle, his eyes plastered open in fright.

Without warning, the malevolent entity, whatever it was, jumped onto Hufford’s chest. An oppressive weight compressed his rib cage. Breathing became difficult, and Hufford felt a pair of hands encircle his neck and start to squeeze. “I thought I was going to die,” he says.

At that point, the lock on Hufford’s muscles gave way. He bolted up and sprinted several blocks to take shelter in the student union. “It was very puzzling,” he recalls with a strained chuckle, “but I told nobody about what happened.”

Hufford’s perspective on his strange encounter was transformed in 1971. He was at that time a young anthropologist studying folklore in Newfoundland, and he heard from some of the region’s inhabitants about their eerily similar nighttime encounters. Locals called the threatening entity the “old hag.” Most cases unfold as follows: A person wakes up paralyzed and perceives an evil presence. A hag or witch then climbs on top of the petrified victim, creating a crushing sensation on his or her chest.

It took Hufford another year to establish that what he and these people of Newfoundland had experienced corresponds to the event, lasting seconds or minutes, that sleep researchers call sleep paralysis. …

Sleep paralysis differs from nocturnal panic, in which a person awakens in terror with no memory of a dream. Neither does sleep paralysis resemble a night terror, in which a person suddenly emerges from slumber in apparent fear, flailing and shouting, but then falls back asleep and doesn’t recall the incident in the morning.

Curiously, although the word nightmare originally described sleep paralysis, it now refers to a fearful or disturbing dream, says Hufford, now at the Penn State Medical Center in Hershey, Pa. Several hundred years ago, the English referred to nighttime sensations of chest pressure from witches or other supernatural beings as the “mare,” from the Anglo-Saxon merran, meaning to crush. The term eventually morphed into nightmare—the crusher who comes in the night. …

Many who experience sleep paralysis also report sensations of floating, flying, falling, or leaving one’s body. The condition’s primary emotion, terror, sometimes yields to feelings of excitement, exhilaration, rapture, or ecstasy. “A small number of people, while acknowledging fear during initial episodes of sleep paralysis, come to enjoy the experience,” Cheyne says. …

Two brain systems contribute to sleep paralysis, Cheyne proposes. The most prominent one consists of inner-brain structures that monitor one’s surroundings for threats and launches responses to perceived dangers. As Cheyne sees it, REM-based activation of this system, in the absence of any real threat, triggers a sense of an ominous entity lurking nearby. Other neural areas that contribute to REM-dream imagery could draw on personal and cultural knowledge to flesh out the evil presence.

A second brain system, which includes sensory and motor parts of the brain’s outer layer, distinguishes one’s own body and self from those of other creatures. When REM activity prods this system, a person experiences sensations of floating, flying, falling, leaving one’s body, and other types of movement, Cheyne says. …

There is a kinship between waking nightmares starring Night Crushers and reports of alien abductions, McNally and Clancy find. For more than a decade, they have been studying people who claim to have been abducted by aliens from outer space. McNally and Clancy are convinced that these claims derive from sleep-paralysis hallucinations.

Night terrors Read More »

How a 75-year-old jewel thief did it

commonplace book, fiction / /

From MSNBC’s “75-year-old jewel thief looks back“:

When Doris Payne went to work, she stepped into her fancy dress, high heels and donned a wide-brimmed hat. Her creamy, mocha skin was made up just so, her handbag always designer. Sometimes a pair of plain gold earrings would do. Always, she looked immaculate, well-to-do. …

New York. Colorado. Nevada. California. They all beckoned, and so did Greece and France, England and Switzerland as she plied her trade over five decades. …

There was the February day, eight years ago, when she strolled into the Neiman Marcus store on the Las Vegas Strip and asked to see a pair of diamond earrings. …

Employee Linda Sbrocco showed her several — this one … no, this one … how about that one? Soon Sbrocco was swapping jewelry in and out of cases at a dizzying pace. Payne slipped rings on and off, and had Sbrocco do the same.

Then Payne was gone. And so was a $36,000 marquis cut, 2.48-carat diamond ring.

This was how Doris Payne went about her work as an international jewel thief. …

Every month or every other month — no one knows how many times over more than 50 years — she strolled into a jewelry store and strolled out with a ring worth thousands of dollars.

Occasionally, she was caught. Mostly, she was not. …

She grew up in Slab Fork, W.Va., where her daddy worked in the coal mines and her mother sewed dresses and did alterations for extra money. Payne was the baby, the youngest of six who liked school and loved to show her illiterate father places on the world maps she made out of salt and flour, places she would someday visit. …

“It’s not stealing because I’m only taking what they give me,” Payne said. …

The Jewelers Security Alliance, an industry trade group, got on to Payne in the 1970s. Bulletins went out, warning jewelry stores about a slick, well-dressed black woman who was stealing diamond rings.

Where others might hit a store for several pieces of jewelry, Payne only took one or two expensive rings at a time. But what really made Doris Payne different was that she was so prolific and so good. …

In the early 1970s, Payne tried her skills overseas. First Paris. Then Monte Carlo, where she flew in 1974 and paid a visit to Cartier, coming away with a platinum diamond ring. When she got to the airport in Nice, custom agents suspected she had the ring and stopped her. The ring was never found.

During the investigation, Payne says she was kept in a “fifth-rate motel” by the Mediterranean. One day she asked the woman in charge for nail clippers and for a needle and thread to mend her dress. She used the clippers to pry the ring from its setting, sewed the diamond into her girdle and then tossed the setting into the sea, she says.

She wore her girdle day and night, even when it was wet from washing. Her room was searched every day, but the diamond remained hidden.

She wasn’t always so lucky. She’s been arrested more times than she can remember. One detective said her arrest report is more than 6 feet long — she’s done time in Ohio, Kentucky, West Virginia, Colorado and Wisconsin. …

Through the decades, she has used at least 22 aliases, among them Audrey Davis, Thelma White, Sonya Dowels, Marie Clements, Donna Gilbert.

How a 75-year-old jewel thief did it Read More »

1,000,000 miles in 30 days

business, commonplace book, true stories / /

From MSNBC’s “Very, very frequent flyer hits 1 million goal“:

On his blog “The Great Canadian Mileage Run 2005,” [Marc] Tacchi reported on Wednesday that he had racked up 1,003,625 mileage points and spent 56 of the last 61 days in an airplane. …

The 30-year-old embarked on his venture using Air Canada’s North America Unlimited Pass — a C$7,000 ticket that allowed passengers limitless travel within the continent between October 1 and November 30. …

A typical day would start with a 10 a.m. flight to Victoria, British Columbia, about 70 km (45 miles) from Vancouver. He would fly back and fourth between the two cities about six times and then catch an overnight flight 4,300 km (2,700 miles) to Toronto.

In Toronto, he would immediately board a return flight. …

By reaching the 1 million mile goal, Tacchi gets the equivalent of about 10 round-trip business class flights from Canada to Australia, which he has estimated would normally cost about C$70,000.

He plans to redeem his travel points to take his family to Miami at Christmas, then maybe go to Hong Kong or Thailand.

When he wasn’t flying to collect travel points, Tacchi works as a contract pilot. Once a week, he flies a Boeing 747 cargo plane to Europe or Asia.

1,000,000 miles in 30 days Read More »

How actors remember their lines

commonplace book / /

From “Research puts actors’ memory on center stage“:

According to the researchers, the secret of actors’ memories is, well, acting. An actor acquires lines readily by focusing not on the words of the script, but on those words’ meaning – the moment-to-moment motivations of the character saying them – as well as on the physical and emotional dimensions of their performance.

To get inside the character, an actor will break a script down into a series of logically connected “beats” or intentions. Good actors don’t think about their lines, but feel their character’s intention in reaction to what the other actors do, causing their lines to come spontaneously and naturally. The researchers quote the great British actor Michael Caine: “You must be able to stand there not thinking of that line. You take it off the other actor’s face.”

The key, the researchers have found, is a process called active experiencing, which they say uses “all physical, mental, and emotional channels to communicate the meaning of material to another person.” It is a principle that can be applied off-stage as well as on. For example, students who studied material by imagining conveying its meaning to somebody else who needed the information showed higher retention than those who tried to memorize the material by rote.

How actors remember their lines Read More »

Edward R. Murrow on the business of news

business, politics, technology / /

From Edward R. Murrow’s 15 October 1958 speech to the Radio-Television News Directors Association:

One of the basic troubles with radio and television news is that both instruments have grown up as an incompatible combination of show business, advertising and news. Each of the three is a rather bizarre and demanding profession. And when you get all three under one roof, the dust never settles. The top management of the networks with a few notable exceptions, has been trained in advertising, research, sales or show business. But by the nature of the coporate structure, they also make the final and crucial decisions having to do with news and public affairs. Frequently they have neither the time nor the competence to do this. It is not easy for the same small group of men to decide whether to buy a new station for millions of dollars, build a new building, alter the rate card, buy a new Western, sell a soap opera, decide what defensive line to take in connection with the latest Congressional inquiry, how much money to spend on promoting a new program, what additions or deletions should be made in the existing covey or clutch of vice-presidents, and at the same time– frequently on the same long day–to give mature, thoughtful consideration to the manifold problems that confront those who are charged with the responsibility for news and public affairs.

Edward R. Murrow on the business of news Read More »

New technologies & the urge to control

commonplace book, history, politics, tech in changing society, technology / /

From David L. Hudson, Jr.’s “Update on the Internet and the First Amendment“:

For example, as First Amendment scholar Rodney
Smolla explains, when Gutenberg developed the printing press
circa 1450, the Archbishop of Mainz created a censorship body,
and the Venice Inquisition issued a list of banned books.

The expansion of printing led English officials to pass
restrictive licensing laws that allowed the crown to impose
prior restraints on publication. When movies were first introduced
in the early 20th century, the United States government
argued for tight censorship controls because it was believed that
movies would easily influence children.

New technologies & the urge to control Read More »

MTBU: Maximum Time to Belly Up

business, security / /

From The Register’s “How ATM fraud nearly brought down British banking“:

And there wasn’t time for the banks to fix the problem if anyone went public with it. Their MTBU was too short. MTBU? That’s “Maximum Time to Belly Up”, as coined by the majestic Donn Parker of Stanford Research Institute. He found that businesses that relied on computers for the control of their cash flow fell into catastrophic collapse if those computers were unavailable or unusable for a period of time. How long? By the late 1980s it had fallen from a month to a few days. That’s not a good thing; it meant that a collapse of the computers that any UK clearing bank relied on would destroy it in less than a week.

MTBU: Maximum Time to Belly Up Read More »

My new book – Hacking Knoppix – available now

business, personal, science, technology / /

Knoppix is one of the great innovations in open source software in the last few years. Everyone that sees it wants to use it, since it is that rarest of software tools: the true Swiss Army Knife, capable of use by unsophisticated, experienced, and wizardly users, able to perform any of several hundred (if not thousand) tasks in an efficient and powerful way. Best of all, it’s super easy to employ, ultra-portable, and platform- and hardware-agnostic.

Knoppix camps on your system without canceling out your regular installation or messing with your files. And it’s really fun to play with. Hacking Knoppix provides all kinds of ways to customize Knoppix for your particular needs, plus the scoop on various Knoppix distros. Learn to build a Knoppix first-aid kit for repairing cranky Windows and rescuing precious data, or create your own Live CD. In short, Hacking Knoppix will transform your ordinary powerless Knoppix-curious individual into a fearsome Knoppix ninja, able to right wrongs, recover data, and vanquish the forces of ignorance and Windows usage once and for all.

Our approach in Hacking Knoppix is smart, detailed, and fun. We know our stuff, and we want our readers to understand and enjoy all the outrageously cool things that Knoppix makes possible. If a topic is kind of hard to understand, we’ll explain it so that lesser experienced readers get it and more experienced readers still learn something new; if a point needs in-depth explanation, we’ll give it in an interesting fashion; and if it needs a splash of humor to relieve the tedium, we’ll slip in something humorous, like a banana peel in front of Bill Gates.

  • Knoppix is an innovative Linux distribution that does not require installation, making it ideal to use for a rescue system, demonstration purposes, or many other applications
  • Shows hack-hungry fans how to fully customize Knoppix and Knoppix-based distributions
  • Readers will learn to create two different Knoppix-based live CDs, one for children and one for Windows recovery
  • Teaches readers to use Knoppix to work from a strange computer, rescue a Windows computer that won’t boot, repair and recover data from other machines, and more
  • Includes Knoppix Light 4.0 on a ready-to-use, bootable live CD

Read sample excerpts, including Unraveling the Knoppix Toolkit Maze (1.7 MB PDF), the complete Table of Contents (135 kb PDF) & the Index (254 kb PDF).

Buy Hacking Knoppix from Amazon!

My new book – Hacking Knoppix – available now Read More »

kanso and shizen and presentations

business, commonplace book, teaching, technology / /

From Garr Reynolds’ “Gates, Jobs, & the Zen aesthetic“:

A key tenet of the Zen aesthetic is kanso or simplicity. In the kanso concept beauty, grace, and visual elegance are achieved by elimination and omission. Says artist, designer and architect, Dr. Koichi Kawana, “Simplicity means the achievement of maximum effect with minimum means.” …

The aesthetic concept of naturalness or shizen “prohibits the use of elaborate designs and over refinement” according to Kawana. Restraint, then, is a beautiful thing. … Restraint is hard. Complication and elaboration are easy…and are common. …

The Zen aesthetic values include (but are not limited to):

  • Simplicity
  • Subtlety
  • Elegance
  • Suggestive rather than the descriptive or obvious
  • Naturalness (i.e., nothing artificial or forced)
  • Empty space (or negative space)
  • Stillness, Tranquility
  • Eliminating the non-essential

kanso and shizen and presentations Read More »

More validation of the Long Tail

business, tech in changing society / /

Don’t know what the Long Tail is? Check out the seminal Wired article, or read the blog.

From The New York Times‘ “The Net Is a Boon for Indie Labels“:

CD and digital album sales so far this year are down 8 percent compared with the same period a year ago, according to Nielsen SoundScan data. And while sales of digital tracks through services like iTunes have risen 150 percent, to well over 320 million songs this year, that rise is not enough to offset the plunge in album sales. Overall sales are down less than 5 percent if the digital singles are bundled into units of 10 and counted as albums, according to estimates by Billboard magazine.

Still, despite the slide, dozens of independent labels are faring well with steady-selling releases by, among others, the Miami rapper Pitbull and the indie bands Hawthorne Heights, Bright Eyes, Interpol and the Arcade Fire. Independent labels account for more than 18 percent of album sales this year – their biggest share of the market in at least five years, according to Nielsen SoundScan data. (If several big independent companies whose music is marketed by the major music labels distribution units are included, the figure exceeds 27 percent.) …

In a world of broadband connections, 60-gigabyte MP3 players and custom playlists, consumers have perhaps more power than ever to indulge their curiosities beyond the music that is presented through the industry’s established outlets, primarily radio stations and MTV.

“Fans are dictating,” said John Janick, co-founder of Fueled by Ramen, the independent label in Tampa, Fla., whose roster includes underground acts like Panic! At the Disco and Cute Is What We Aim For. “It’s not as easy to shove something down people’s throats anymore and make them buy it. It’s not even that they are smarter; they just have everything at their fingertips. They can go find something that’s cool and different. They go tell people about it and it just starts spreading.”

There are several signs that as more consumers develop the habit of exploring music online they are drawn to other musical choices besides hitmakers at the top of the Billboard chart – a trend that suggests more of the independent labels’ repertory will find an audience.

On the Rhapsody subscription music service, for example, the 100 most popular artists account for only about 24 percent of the music that consumers chose to play from its catalog last month, said Tim Quirk, Rhapsody’s executive editor. In the brick-and-mortar world, he estimates, the 100 most popular acts might account for more than 48 percent of a mass retailer’s sales.

“It’s no longer about a big behemoth beaming something at a mass audience,” Mr. Quirk said. “It’s about a mass of niche audiences picking and selecting what they want at any given time.”

More validation of the Long Tail Read More »

Risk management

security / /

From Glenn Fleishman’s post to the Interesting People mailing list:

I heard the strangely frank head of TSA on NPR this morning–perhaps he forgot he was speaking to the public?–talk quite honestly about what I would describe as “yield management for risk.”

Basically:

* The pilots are now protected, so the plane won’t be weaponized even if many passengers were to die on board.
* Passengers will overwhelm someone armed with relatively minor weapons, even if some passengers die. That’s acceptable risk.
* A lot of stuff on planes can be used as weapons already (he didn’t elaborate).
* The evaluated risk of smaller knives is low in their testing — meaning whatever air marshalls wear for protection will resist punctures from smaller knives.

He said the focus is now on explosive detection.

Risk management Read More »