puppy update!

The Obamas were in full on adorable couple mode and talked for a short while about what kind of dog they are looking for in an interview with Barbara "Wawa" Walters.

Barack says no girly or yippy dogs. I'm still holding out for my evil demented plan (see original post on the puppy situation) muahaha.

Magic Lantern and Cyber-Terrorism

This is apparently old news, but hey it is new to me, maybe someone else was under this particular rock

Rumors on the intertubes are rampant about Magic Lantern (which definitely does exist), a FBI engineered computer virus, created to be a remote keystroke logging program. Reports popped up up in forums and on sites like Slashdot that Norton and McAffe were pressured by the bureau to have their anti-virus software ignore the government worm.

wait...

WHAT?!

Since most of the news on this was pretty old I went looking for fresher updates. I found this article from this November which, while it didn't really give me the feeling of being a highly reputable source had this to say:

"Last week, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) revealed that the FBI no longer feels compelled to obtain judicial oversight or even the consent of cell phone operators when deploying base station-faking technology that it employs for the illegal geolocation of mobile users."

I may do some fact-checking on that later, but would you really be surprised? Add to this the recent malware attack on the US Defense Department, the hacking of both presidential candidate's campaign headquarters and reports that the White House computer network was hacked multiple times by someone in China, suspected to have been funded by the Chinese government.

It is an ugly (cyber) world out there. It makes me nervous that a) the government is apparently pretty ok with violating personal privacy. Ok I mean, the patriot act and all that (by the way what jerkoff decided to name it that?) but I never really thought much beyond the traditional wiretapping etc. and b) in response to the foreign attacks, they are doing that thing they do when they arn't confident: withold all unneccesary information, and try to play down what they do release:

"Oh yeah Mr. President we uh, well the defense department and white house MAY have been... okay yeah they were compromised. Not by anyone important really... Okay it was China and Russia. I mean. No big deal. Just uh... don't... put anything too important on your office computer." (okay I made this dialogue up)

I have a sneaking hunch that sometime soon somebody is going to somehow hurt our infastructure with this. I don't like it. I don't like it that the government isn't being very confident about foreign attacks while being far TOO confident about internal violation of privacy. It doesn't make me feel very safe. C'mon guys, get with it.

post race post race thoughts

(Originally written Nov. 6th)

Ok, newsflash: Obama is half black. We all knew this right? I mean... its kind of obvious (unless you got convinced he was muslim) and there was a lot of discussion pre-election about the Bradley effect (where white people SAID they would vote for a black guy to look good, but then didn't actually do it) but nobody, especially Obama himself, really harped on the fact that "hey look, this black dude is doing really well". People said "Barack Obama is doing really well".

What I mean to say is just what the massive crowd of my fellow South Carolinians at the victory speech of the democratic primary said: "Race doesn't matter". I was moved to tears by that speech, not because of the speech itself so much, but the reaction of the crowd. Didn't we JUST take down our confederate flag in 2000? I hate to play off of a negative stereotype of my state but honestly, when South Carolina says that race doesn't matter, start listening.

And so, after winning South Carolina, and the nomination, and the presidency, everyone has started talking about race again! The news anchors were saying "how great this is for an african-american." What about "how great for a democrat?", "how great for an underdog?", "how great for an idealist?", "How great for a man who has worked his way up from the bottom?", "how great for any American to win an election by such a historically HUGE margin?". I understand it is a great achievement for African-Americans and I do not mean to state by any insinuation that that's not true. I just think that this is more of an indication of the transition from race being an issue to a non-issue than an indication that this one man has overcome that issue all on his own.

I had come to appreciate the fact that Obama is essentially post-race. This in itself is a milestone, more of a milestone in fact than if race had really been acknowledged. The fact that nobody really thought it was a big deal says SO MUCH MORE about the state of American society than if people thought it was a problem, and overcame their bigotry to vote for Obama. Bigotry didn't even come into play (ok I know there are assholes out there still playing that card, I'm talking about the vast majority of Americans who apparently know its crap). I mean... you can't get more equality than not even needing to acknowledge race. I think it is pretty wonderful that an individual's race has little to no impact on what the American people think of them.


Sooo... does race matter? Do I not understand this because I'm not a minority? Is the media suddenly harping on it just because it is history or because it suddenly matters? Is Obama really "post race" the way I think he is?

Puppies!

As much as I love to resist the pull of emotion in favor of reason when it comes to things like politics, I am PUMPED about the Obama puppy! Ever since he promised one to his girls on election night I have been totally captivated. The secret, dark evil part of me wants him to get a stereotypically black dog just to completely challenge anyone to make fun of him. The rest of me just wants to see a cute puppy! Good lord how did I get so wrapped up in this?

Apparently I'm not the only one. At his first press conference after the election he got questions from reporters about it when they were supposed to be focused on the economy. Obama responded with the concerns of his family on this "pressing issue" and in the process referred to himself as a mutt (maybe he shares my secret dark evil sense of humor about what breed they should get). There's even www.nameobamaspuppy.com (Bar(ac)k the vote!).

It's so cute I can't stand it. Even if I have to put up my "refusing to be swayed by emotional news stories" hat for a while. OOohshapuppy!!!

Viruses that do Anything

I know next to nothing about virology, but I have always wondered...

How do you know if you have a virus? You start having symptoms. We can't even really treat the virus medically, we just take care of the symptoms. What if you had a virus that gave you no symptoms? What if you had a virus that DID have symptoms but you didn't know it? What if you got a virus that made you gain weight, grow your hair more slowly, act more aggressively or become depressed?

Well. You might.

AD-36 is a human adenovirus that may be linked with obesity. There is a positive correlation between having the virus in blood samples and having high body fat. Similar viruses caused weight gain when chickens and mice were infected. It's a virus that can make you fat. Chew on that.

Not a virus, but similarly tiny and morbid, cordyceps fungus infects insects bodies and brains. The fungus drives them to act against their instinct and climb very high before dying. This ensures that there will be maximum spore dispersal when the fungus grows and matures in the insect corpse.

Who's to say there isn't something out there to cause other random symptoms that we would never suspect as a result of being sick?

If you've got a few minutes, check out the free Science Talk podcast from Scientific American from 6/12/2008. They discuss how outside chemical signals and/or foreign organisms could really affect us in ways we don't normally think about.

First Post! Dr. Bruce Bueno de Mesquita

I have some quirky ideas about philosophy and how everything (and I really mean everything) works. Mostly I think that everything is mathematical, and more complex than we can really comprehend. Enter theoretical physics. I'm sure I'll write more about this later. Anyway, this being the basis for my fundamental belief on how the universe works, I was very interested to see the ad for the new History Channel special on "The Next Nostradamus". According to the commercial he has come up with a formula (here's that math) that predicts events.

To the web!

Apparently this man is Dr. Bruce Bueno de Mesquita of New York University, and he is not some new bible code weirdo, but a game theorist. He has spent 25 years developing a computer program to predict international events. The CIA uses him as a resource and according most sources, he's right 90 percent of the time. I don't know what they used to define right and wrong, so take that with a grain of salt, but this guy has really caught my attention.

Read much more about him at Good Magazine here

If there is one overriding mathematical law dictating the universe, maybe this guy has cracked a part of it. I'll watch the show and do a little more digging and probably post about this one again.