all · the · kids · look · indivisible

http://www.mindhacks.com/blog/2009/12/spice_flow_the_new_.html

Forensic Science International recently published an eye-opening study on a new generation of synthetic cannabinoids that have become popular as 'legal highs', provided by a highly organised neuroscience-savvy industry that is ready and waiting with new compounds before the law changes.

The study concerns several legal smoking mixtures, 'Spice' being the most well-known (pictured), which were recently found to contain synthetic cannabinoids.

Cannabinoids are named for their abundance in the cannabis plant, but this class of substance also naturally occurs in the nervous system as part of the normal biological signalling system. In fact, the street drug cannabis has its effect because its various cannabinoids, the most famous being THC, target one or more of the brain's cannabinoid receptors.

Marijuana and its derivatives are illegal in most countries but the brain's cannabinoid system is complex and so it is possible to synthesise other types of drugs in the same class as the plant's active ingredients, which target the same receptor sites, that have similar effects, but which are completely legal.

Although officially labelled as incense and not for human consumption, Spice was typically marketed as one of the many 'herbal smoking mixtures' which traditionally have been sold in head shops on the basis of their druggy associations despite having no psychoactive effects to speak of.

However, this brand became wildly popular and in 2008 scientific analysis found that it also contained the synthetic cannabinoids CP 47,497-C8 and JWH-018 which are structurally similar to THC.

I can't imagine what it was like when this was first discovered. It reminds me of the hair bristling moment in movies when the scientists discover that some form of ultra-advanced technology is behind a spate of odd occurrences.

You see, drugs like speed, heroine, cocaine and ecstasy require legally controlled raw materials but the processing stage is low-tech. That's why some types of speed are called 'bathtub crank', because some of it is literally synthesised in a bathtub, as images of meth lab busts illustrate.

But this is not the case with cannabinoids which require a complex and careful lab process with many stages and sometimes the separation of mirror image molecules (enantiomers) from each other as only one of the 'reflections' is desirable.

These are not trivial process. They can't be done in back rooms and they can't be done by amateurs.

What's more, these aren't just copy-cat syntheses done by your average underground lab who know the illicit process and just want to recreate it. These are new compounds, perhaps reported only a handful of times in the scientific literature and selected for their specific effect on the brain.

The authors of the Forensic Science International paper note "It is evident that the producers of these products have gone about in a very methodical manner to mine the scientific literature for promising psychoactive compounds. Most likely the published CB1 binding affinities were exploited as primary criterion."

CB1 is a specific type of cannabinoid receptor and is the one most activated by THC, the principal active ingredient in marijuana, and it seems the producers were making their selections based on their knowledge of neuroscience and psychopharmacology.

Several countries have now banned, or are in the process of banning, the synthetic cannabinoids found in Spice and related products. In fact, Germany was particularly quick off the mark and outlawed the products in January 2009.

Now this is where it gets interesting because the researchers note that a new product appeared on the market, containing JWH-073 - another synthetic cannabinoid, within four weeks of the ban. JWH-073 has similar similar effects, but isn't covered by the law and so remains legal.

The speed at which it appeared suggests that it had been selected and synthesised in advance, in anticipation of the ban:

Our analysis demonstrated that just 4 weeks after the prohibition took effect a multitude of second generation products were flooding the market. The speed of introduction of new products and the use of JWH-073 as a substitute for JWH-018 not only showed that the producers are well aware of the legal frameworks, but that they likely anticipated the prohibition and already had an array of replacement products on hand (JWH-073-positive products are still available on the German market; last checked: June 5th, 2009).

In other words, the legal high industry is packing neuroscientists and heavyweight lab pharmacologists. It is no longer just head-shop hippies repackaging obscure psychoactive and barely recreational plants as a poor substitute for street drugs. The legal high industry has become professionalised.

Seemingly based on the model of the pharmaceutical industry, it is becoming science-led, regulation savvy and is out-manoeuvring the authorities well before they catch up.

To use drug war terminology, it's an interesting new front because the producers are not trying to evade capture, they're using the agility of science of evade regulation.

Link to PubMed entry for Forensic Science International paper.
Link to .rar archive with pdf of full text inside (weird huh? via Google)
Link to good EMCDDA page on synthetic cannabinoids.

The footage and Linnman's report made the evening news and eventually found its way into the national media, something that only earned him $90 extra bucks and $110 for Brazil "because he had a better union than I did apparently."

"When it airs now, it's kind of tough for me to watch. I don't think it's that good and I've got four grown sons who are able to repeat any part of that story word for word and they do so frequently just to bug me," Linnman said with a laugh.

http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2009/12/fingerprinting_3.html

This research centers on looking at the radio characteristics of individual RFID chips and creating a "fingerprint." It makes sense; fingerprinting individual radios based on their transmission characteristics is as old as WW II. But while the research centers on using this as an anti-counterfeiting measure, I think it would much more likely be used as an identification and surveillance tool. Even if the communications is fully encrypted, this technology could be used to uniquely identify the chip.

http://www.crypticide.com/dropsafe/article/3646

http://www.crypticide.com/dropsafe/?p=3646

Because the themes on this blog make comment quoting and deep-threading a nightmare, a post in response to Elias’ comment:

Hi – Bizarro here.

Nice to meet a superhero of sorts!

1) your refutation of “the intelligent personal agents that are able to process this structured data still have a long way to go before becoming fully actualized. Really?

Ook?

I told Alisa to include this when she asked for feedback on her original post. My reasoning being personal agents do exist but they are still dumb. And the reason they are dumb, is because there is not *enough* machine processable information to allow them to act without human guidance.

That’s just one of the places where we differ; for me, they’re dumb because we’re dumb, and the gap will never close. No amount of knowledge will ever equate to wisdom, and no quantity of facts about somebody will ever replace a relationship or a connection, and something inside us wants a connection.

Wishing for more and more semantic-able data until some sort of critical mass arises, is just another form of Bullwinkle’s “this time fer sure!” – no rabbit is ever going to be pulled out of that hat.

I would agree that “more data = more nifty stuff being built” – witness mashups of UK Parliamentary Expenses versus distance traveled from London, colour-coded on Google Maps.

That was really enlightening a few months ago; but politicians’ expenses are (or should be) public information. Where I have private information about myself, I should choose with whom it is shared. Where I and another party have shared information about myself, a policy needs to be agreed.

There’s nothing hard about that.

We are getting there, but it’s no mass market opportunity yet.

1. how much personal semantic data needs to exist before a solution spontaneously erupts?
2. why should the data be created in the first place?

I’d love to know the answers to those questions.

2) Channeling Adriana? I’m also a member of the VRM Project. So no coincidence we have similar ideas. But to get more evidence of the access point, you can read this blog post I wrote

http://eliasbizannes.com/blog/2008/11/you-dont-nor-need-to-own-your-data/

There is another post I made on the mailing list well over a year ago, and I essentially made the point that your identity data only has value if it is recent…hence why access is more valuable than capturing the data (as you always get the latest data).

If we’re into datestamps:

• I explained the Mine! concept (including “value of data decreases with time”) to Eve Maler in March 2008 – my iPhoto tells me so. Maybe that’s how you picked it up?
• We published the white paper in Feb 2008 which alludes to it in §v0.4
• Further back we mooted the Mine as a technical solution at IIW2007b.
• And Adriana was talking about the dynamics and value of data as a proxy for control in relationships earlier than spring 2007; the nascent VRM community were wedded to Higgins back then, didn’t want to know.

So: it goes back a long way before 2008/11. As an aside the “user-driven” concept was Adriana’s, too, until it got fubared by people who wanted to use it in a tail-wagging-dog kind of way to describe their pet projects. Alas and alack.

Anyway:

So for example, your relationship status and current employer changes dramatically every year, five years, ten years – if Facebook had that data about you five years ago, it’s less valuable than if you updated it two days ago.

Yep. Agreed, totally. That’s where we started from in November 2007. Now, we’re approaching beta for the first Mine! software, and the cool thing is that it doesn’t have a technology adoption curve.

3) Your broader point about a distaste for monetising people’s identity, I think you need to recognise that’s just how the world works. And rather than preach a utopia where companies cannot do so, we need to instead shape a world where we control our data and the benefit surrounding it.

Accusations of / belief in utopianism generally generally come from someone who can only see the world as a zero-sum game – either the good guys win, or the bad ones.

In reality it doesn’t work like that.

• I have lots of data about my Amazon purchases.
• Amazon has that too.
• Amazon doubtless monetise that information.
• I want to do that, too.

I want to share the data on my own terms and technology is arising that permits me to do that; subscribers to my data will get the raw data, direct from the source, ie: me.

That’s very valuable stuff, as you yourself agree, and market dynamics suggests what might happen next.

Rather than prohibiting an existing practice, we need to re-engineer it and do so along the lines of incentives for business as that is how you create change.

Prohibiting? Who said anything about prohibiting? I am just talking about throwing away the middle-men. We are users. We can do that. On the ‘net we are waking up to the idea that we don’t need intermediaries, except at our convenience.

Every iPhone and Android runs Unix, but Unix is “too complex for users”. Every bittorrent client is a webserver, but “running a webserver is too complex for users”.

Just imagine what will have been too complex for users, in 2010!

this posting is syndicated from dropsafe

Stripmining The User, Part II – A Response to EB

http://dev.null.org/blog/archive/2009/12/01#1647_soggformp

http://www.asofterworld.com

My neighbourhood is full of former corner shops, now used as homes or offices. I imagine these shops were pushed out of business by the abundance of huge grocery stores just a few blocks over. I love to see how a space is slid along the continuum from public to private, the plate-glass windows obscured, sidewalks held at arm's-length with fences, gardens, hedges. See my collection (so far) on flickr, or all together here.

http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2009/12/cyberwarfare_po.html

National Journal has an excellent article on cyberwar policy. I agree with the author's comments on The Atlantic blog:

Would the United States ever use a more devastating weapon, perhaps shutting off the lights in an adversary nation? The answer is, almost certainly no, not unless America were attacked first.

To understand why, forget about the cyber dimension for a moment. Imagine that some foreign military had flown over a power substation and Brazil and dropped a bomb on it, depriving electricity to millions of people, as well as the places they work, the hospitals they visit, and the transportation they use. If there were no official armed conflict between Brazil and its attacker, the bombing would be illegal under international law. That's a pretty basic test. But even if there were a declared war, or a recognized state of hostilities, knocking out vital electricity to millions of citizens--who presumably are not soldiers in the fight--would fail a number of other basic requirements of the laws of armed conflict. For starters, it could be considered disproportionate, particularly if Brazil hadn't launched any similar sized offensive on its adversary. Shutting off electricity to whole cities can effectively paralyze them. And the bombing would clearly target non-combatants. The government uses electricity, yes, but so does the entire civilian population.

Now add the cyber dimension. If the effect of a hacker taking down the power grid is the same as a bomber--that is, knocking out electrical power--then the same rules apply. That essentially was the conclusion of a National Academies of Sciences report in April. The authors write, "During acknowledged armed conflict (notably when kinetic and other means are also being used against the same target nation), cyber attack is governed by all the standard law of armed conflict. ...If the effects of a kinetic attack are such that the attack would be ruled out on such grounds, a cyber attack that would cause similar effects would also be ruled out."

[...]

According to a report in The Guardian, military planners refrained from launching a broad cyber attack against Serbia during the Kosovo conflict for fear of committing war crimes. The Pentagon theoretically had the power to "bring Serbia's financial systems to a halt" and to go after the personal accounts of Slobodan Milosevic, the newspaper reported. But when the NATO-led bombing campaign was in full force, the Defense Department's general counsel issued guidance on cyber war that said the law of (traditional) war applied.

The military ran into this same dilemma four years later, during preparations to invade Iraq in 2003. Planners considered whether to launch a massive attack on the Iraqi financial system in advance of the conventional strike. But they stopped short when they realized that the same networks used by Iraqi banks were also used by banks in France. Releasing a vicious computer virus into the system could potentially harm America's allies. Some planners also worried that the contagion could spread to the United States. It could have been the cyber equivalent of nuclear fallout.

A 240-page Rand study by Martin Libicki -- "Cyberdefense and Cyberwar" -- came to the same conclusion:

Predicting what an attack can do requires knowing how the system and its operators will respond to signs of dysfunction and knowing the behavior of processes and systems associated with the system being attacked. Even then, cyberwar operations neither directly harm individuals nor destroy equipment (albeit with some exceptions). At best, these operations can confuse and frustrate operators of military systems, and then only temporarily. Thus, cyberwar can only be a support function for other elements of warfare, for instance, in disarming the enemy.

Commenting on the Rand report:

The report backs its findings by measuring probable outcomes to cyberattacks and determining that the results are too scattered to carry out accurate predictions. This is coupled with the problem of countering an attack. It is difficult to determine who conducted a specific cyberattack so any counter strikes or retaliations could backfire. Rather than going on the offensive, the United States should pursue diplomacy and attempt to find and prosecute the cybercriminals involved in an initial strike.

Libicki said that the military can attempt a cyberattack for a specific combat operation, but it would be a guessing game when trying to gauge the operation's success since any result from the cyberattack would be unclear.

Instead the Rand report suggests the government invest in bolstering military networks, which as we know, have the same vulnerabilities as civilian networks.

I wrote about cyberwar back in 2005.

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I really like jerusalem artichokes so I'm thinking I should have that and it will be a treat, on the other hand, wild boar! Or game and goose liver!

http://london-underground.blogspot.com/2009/12/tube-travel-makes-us-aggressive.html

http://www.crypticide.com/dropsafe/article/3643

http://www.crypticide.com/dropsafe/?p=3643

Regards the ReadWriteWeb article “The Future Is All About Context: The Pragmatic Web” … Well, I really think you should read it for yourself, ‘coz between the lines it is rather shocking.

I don’t much disagree with the first couple of paragraphs; I’m deeply cynical about the “semantic” web and still hew to my belief that “if you create documents that a computer can read, only a computer will want to read them” but although Alisa Leonard-Hansen [ed: henceforth ALH] echoes the AI zealots of my youth when writing:

…the intelligent personal agents that are able to process this structured data still have a long way to go before becoming fully actualized.

…I think ultimately we disagree because I believe (a) the personal agents are already here, (b) they are called ’smartphones’ and (c) they will evolve and improve in ways that we cannot adequately imagine, but they certainly will give people a platform capability which, as a Unix sysadmin, I would have drooled for in 1995.

ALH continues by boosting for “the pragmatic web”[1] and ties that term to some thinking with which I mostly agree, viz: your digital identity equates to your digital footprint:

We need to better understand our identity as it begins to define our experience of the Web and the networked-enabled world we inhabit. Our online identity will increasingly be defined by three “pillars”: who I say I am, what I do and say, and who I connect to (and who connects to me).

To clarify, our online identities are comprised primarily of three specific kinds of data:

• Explicit or prescriptive data (i.e. the data that I input about myself: name, age, occupation, etc.);
• Activity or behavioral data (i.e. what I do and say online);
• Relationship data (i.e. my social graph and what my connections say about me).

Indeed, Adriana has been saying this, better, for years; but then ALH’s article goes horribly wrong; the rest of the article flows from a bunch of unstated premises which I think would be written:

• The user’s identity is not under his control
• This cannot, perhaps even should not be changed or fixed
• This is a good thing because it affords business opportunity
• ALH’s “pragmatic web” is a good thing which must be brought about

Rather than just strawman this, I’ll try to justify how I reverse-engineered these premises:

“The user’s identity is not under his control”

Well, yes, this is a given on Facebook (at least) – you hand over your data poke your friends with vampires, post pictures about yourself vomiting, and then have to fight to control who sees them – if you actually care.

“This cannot, perhaps even should not be changed or fixed”

I justify the “cannot” because there is no alternative presented:

But the centralization of identity data on one or two major networks [...] won’t realize the vision of the pragmatic Web. So, how will the pragmatic Web come to be? How do we realize the power of a dynamic Web that is based on our [ed: distributed and uncontrolled digital footprint] identities?

…and instead we see merry pictures of how having one’s identity hanging-out-there-in-public can be exploited for profit monetised:

The resulting vision is that of a highly personalized, dynamic, relevant and remixable Web experience, yielding greater access to information through discovery, communication and collaboration. For enterprise, this could mean the rise of innovative new business models, based on data-driven value exchange.

I further justify the “should not” because it leads into another pseudopremise:

“This is a good thing because it affords business opportunity”

For me this is justified by the money quote:

Consider this: as media companies scramble to identify new and innovative ways to advertise to the sea of nameless, pixeled users who graze through their content each day, a rich supply of highly valuable identity data lies just beneath the surface, left unmeasured and unmonetized.

There it is, folks: you are all natural inforesources begging to be crushed and rendered into yummy data that feed the advertising industry. You are a chicken and the advertisers want McNuggets. Yes they really think like that; they just don’t put it that way because it sounds bad, but what you browse and what you like are more important than “you”, in this world. You exist as a demographic.

And finally:

“The ‘pragmatic web’ is a good thing which must be brought about”

…well, if you sold these concepts to advertisers and vendors (”So, how will the pragmatic Web come to be? How do we realize the power”) you would believe and write everything from that perspective.

So like in any endeavour, with this pragmatic web we have:

• the motivation (profit)
• the opportunity (data just lying around waiting to be harvested)

…which leaves only:

• the ability (tools and a suitable environment)

…to be created. This is what almost everyone is trying to do, nowadays; it’s where the money is. ALH starts to suggests that Elias Bizannes of DataPortability is also channeling Adriana, with:

One final note on identity data as it relates to enterprise. As Bizannes points out, the value of this kind of identity data rests on the key factors of time and timeliness. Essentially, identity data is valuable only if it is recent. Facebook wouldn’t be able to sell your (permissions-enabled) data to advertisers if it used your explicit data from a year ago rather than from today.

…which is astonishingly similar to The Mine Project’s longstanding philosophy that relationships are maintained by sharing information – and that because currency is valuable then your ability to control peoples’ access to your current data, thoughts and feelings identity, gives you the whip hand in a digital relationship.

However Bizannes apparently holds a Bizzaro approach to this line of thought:

So, Bizannes argues that real-time “access” to someone’s identity matters most, and it’s no longer about data “capture.” Thus, as new business models arise out of monetizing permissions-enabled identity data, the value of the business models will depend on these entities having real-time access to the data.

I really do wonder whether ALH is quoting Bizannes correctly?

Anyway, this is another example of what I call FacebookEnvy[2] – you can smell the line of thought:

• Facebook has all this identity information!
• We should make it open, so that it’s better!
• But we need to keep a back door, so we can monetise it!
• So what we’ll do is, we’ll be intermediaries!
• Like Facebook is!

I shaln’t name them here but this is a growth area of the web at the moment – world-class hot-air merchants developing systems to empower the little guy / the common man, arguing that the way to do benefit humanity is for them to adopt this wonderful new [THING] to interpose between [YOURSELF] and [THE OUTSIDE WORLD].

Pay no attention to the revenue model behind the curtain, and God (or Law, or Protocol) please forbid that users have, control and use platforms for themselves, or that anyone trust what people say about themselves.

But that’s a rant for a future blog post.

- alec

Postscript 1: The Pragmatic Web

I wonder if ALH really means the same “Pragmatic Web” concept that appears to live at http://www.pragmaticweb.info/ – where they publish a manifesto with the following helpful definition:

The vision of the Pragmatic Web is thus to augment human collaboration effectively by appropriate technologies, such as systems for ontology negotiations, for ontology-based business interactions, and for pragmatic ontology-building efforts in communities of practice. In this view, the Pragmatic Web complements the Semantic Web by improving the quality and legitimacy of collaborative, goal-oriented discourses in communities.

Which is all very “semantic” and seems to overlap with ALH’s article, somewhat.

To highlight the value of this “Pragmatic Web”, the authors also write:

To search for potential window manufacturers (WMs), current search engines suffice, although a general ontology may offer improvement. But once negotiations with different window manufacturers begin, a branch-specific ontology is required that includes, for example, the specification of construction materials.

The WM should only use highly insulated window frames and should construct the windows using specific techniques to avoid thermal bridges.

If the WM is not German, the legal regulations might be unknown and so the manufacturer must understand the underlying ontology and commit to it.

It can also occur that the partners must add new concepts to the existing ontology. For example, they might have to agree on a specific type of low-energy house, namely one using three litres of energy per square meter of area with controlled ventilation and using geological heat sources.

Such a concept is not an objective description of a given reality, but is developed within the conversation between the parties, who in their conceptualization of this kind of house take into account many tacit, non-formalizable context factors. The effect of the resultant joint definition may be that contract negotiation is smoothened, or even that the costs are reduced since some requirements may turn out to be superfluous.

[ed: paragraph breaks added for clarity]

Excusing energy being measured in “litres” I can almost see what they are getting at, because even the godlike powers of Google fail providing the ability to deal with queries such as:

http://www.google.de/?q="windows windowtype:upvc legalsystem:german glazedepth:3 heatloss:-3kw +ventilation:true +attractiveness:pretty +tint:clear +style:art-deco"

…and I agree totally that there is insufficient means to describe windows for a mechanical search, and I understand how it can keep some semantic/markup/librarian-types up all night, worrying about it.

But Me? As in most of my semantic-web scenarios, in reality I use an ultrasoft-AI approach:

I do a search and pick up the phone to discuss what I want.

It works. I’d call that the “pragmatic” approach.

Postscript 2: FacebookEnvy

A line of thought: “Facebook does X. We should do X, but open, so it’s better.” Leads to any amount of pseudoinnovation. Replace with TwitterEnvy where appropriate.

this posting is syndicated from dropsafe

Stripmining The User: DataPortability, The “Pragmatic” Web, And A Bad Philosophy

http://www.crypticide.com/dropsafe/article/3642

• My cat being abominably cute: http://bit.ly/88Oq0N #
• note to self: svn update will fsck perms in a deployment #

this posting is syndicated from dropsafe

Twitter Updates for 2009-12-01

Someone just used the email form on the Stop the War on Fun site to send this gem. I assume it's an attempt at spam? Well, if it's a legitimate question, I'm sure someone on the SF Board of Supervisors can help them. They seem like people who would be knowledgeable about cell phones.

From: addesee <jansuto+dikige@gmail.com>

To: Gavin.Newsom@sfgov.org, Mark.Leno@sen.ca.gov, Bob.Hartnagel@sen.ca.gov, Tom.Ammiano@asm.ca.gov, Tara.Mesick@asm.ca.gov, Heather.Fong@sfgov.org, sfpd.online@sfgov.org, George.Gascon@sfgov.org, sfpd.commission@sfgov.org, Eric.L.Mar@sfgov.org, Michela.Alioto-Pier@sfgov.org, David.Chiu@sfgov.org, Carmen.Chu@sfgov.org, Ross.Mirkarimi@sfgov.org, Chris.Daly@sfgov.org, Sean.Elsbernd@sfgov.org, Bevan.Dufty@sfgov.org, David.Campos@sfgov.org, Sophie.Maxwell@sfgov.org, John.Avalos@sfgov.org

Subject: Stop the War on Fun
Date: Mon, 30 Nov 2009 15:34:12 -0800 (PST)

Zip code: 123456

I recently acquired an unlocked iphone 3G. I'm sort of new to cell phones, but i know the plan i want. It is a pay as you o rogers plan. How exactly do i activate my phone with pay as you go.

And this one that I received last night is equally puzzling. How does this spam turn into money? Needless to say, there is no such discount offer and we've never heard of these people, so how does trying to piss off my customers with a lie help them? Why would they send this? There were no links.

From: Mike <infoanswer@eadvertise1.com>
Date: November 30, 2009 12:39:01 AM PST
To: booking@dnalounge.com
Subject: DNA Lounge,
Reply-To: Support@eadvertise1.com

Save 10% on your next visit to DNA Lounge.

Located at 375 11th St, San Francisco.

Print this page and bring it with you for a 10% Savings.

(for details click on clientservices@ecouponsads.com and Send)

To Opt-out put Unsubscribe on the Subject line and return.

YOU ARE NOT COMPETENT ENOUGH TO BE A SPAMMER!
How does that make you feel?

They've killed the Coke sign! This is a tragedy! A travesty. A tragavesty.

Now normally I have a visceral, knee-jerk allergy to advertising in pretty much any form (and I don't even drink Coke, see sidebar), but I have to admit that I have some love for that Coke sign.

It was so old and janky and never worked right! Half of the lights seemed to run on Lucas three-position switch technology (off, dim and flicker) and it was a different half almost every night. I have long had this fantasy that the reason the sign always looked like that is that there is only one guy left in the world who knows how to fix the mechanical relays that drive its pattern logic, and that guy is 95 and has trouble getting up and down the ladder to sweep the birdshit out of the contacts with his vintage Nineteenth-century wire brush.

That's how it is in my head, anyway. If the reality is not actually like that, then I don't want to know.

But anyway, replacing it with a slick, modern LED facimile? Feh! I shake an angry fist.

"Energy Efficient" LED Sign to Be Unveiled in Late December.

The Coca-Cola Company announced today plans to replace the historic neon sign in San Francisco`s South of Market district. Coca-Cola has maintained a display alongside the southbound lanes on the I-80 freeway heading in to downtown San Francisco for more than 75 years. In its place will be a state-of-the-art LED display that is consistent in size and brightness with the existing sign but 80% more energy efficient and is to be powered by 100% sustainable and certified "green" energy. [...]

To begin preparations for installation, power will be shut off to the existing display starting today. Skilled display and lighting workers will begin carefully dismantling and removing the display faces. By December 11, it will be completely disassembled and the installation of the replacement faces will begin. [...] Coca-Cola also plans a `flip-the-switch` ceremony to celebrate relighting the new sign. More details will be forthcoming.

http://www.mindhacks.com/blog/2009/12/a_trip_to_the_gothic.html

We've mentioned the famous 19th century neurologist Silas Weir Mitchell several time before on Mind Hacks, as he is well known for his early reports of phantom limbs and his creation of the 'neurosis of modern life' diagnosis 'neuraesthenia'.

What I didn't know was that in 1896 he also wrote an article in which he gives one of the first reports about the experience of tripping on peyote - a cactus that contains the hallucinogenic drug mescaline.

Weir reports that he became interested in the substance after learning about the traditional use of the plant by Native Americans in New Mexico and acquired some to try himself.

His article appeared in the British Medical Journal where he describes his experiences, and it's quite an amazing document. This is a vivid part where he describes the experience of hallucinating a 'Gothic tower':

When I opened my eyes all was gone at once. Closing them I began after a long interval to see for the first time definite objects associated with colours. The stars sparkled and passed away. A white spear of grey stone grew up to huge height, and became a tall, richly finished Gothic tower of very elaborate and definite design, with many rather worn statues standing in the doorways or on stone brackets. As I gazed every projecting angle, cornice, and even the face of the stones at their joinings were by degrees covered or hung with clusters of what seemed to be huge precious stones, but uncut, some being more like masses of transparent fruit. These were green, purple, red, and orange; never clear yellow and never blue. All seemed to possess an interior light, and to give the faintest idea of the perfectly satisfying intensity and purity of these gorgeous colour-fruits is quite beyond my power. All the colours I have ever beheld are dull as compared to these.

As I looked, and it lasted long, the tower became of a fine mouse hue, and everywhere the vast pendant masses of emerald green, ruby reds, and orange began to drip a slow rain of colours. All this while nothing was at rest a moment. The balls of colour moved tremulously. The tints became dull, and then, at once, past belief vivid; the architectural lines were all active with shifting tints. The figures moving shook the long hanging lines of living light, and then, in an instant, all was dark.

The whole article is freely available online if you want to read the entire account which explores the hallucinatory state in some depth.

Link to 'Remarks on the Effects of Anhelonium Lewinii (the Mescal Button)'.

http://dev.null.org/blog/archive/2009/12/01#0000_tonyabbop

http://www.mindhacks.com/blog/2009/11/the_michigan_wildcat.html

The Providentia psychology blog has an excellent post about old-time champion boxer 'The Michigan Wildcat' Wolgast who fought on despite clear neurological damage and eventually suffered boxer's dementia. He could apparently be found shadow boxing invisible opponents in the sanatorium.

Wolgast won the world lightweight title in 1912 but sustained continuous damage throughout his career and continued way past the point that would be permitted in modern times.

He progressed from minor neurological impairment to 'dementia pugilistica' - a form of dementia caused by repetitive low level damage to the brain.

When his condition gradually deteriorated, Ad Wolgast was readmitted to hospital in 1927. While he remained there for the rest of his life, Ad continued to train in his room.; According to his obituary, that typically involved frequent shadowboxing, bobbing, and uppercuts against imaginary opponents. Ad Wolgast seemed largely unaware of his surroundings except on rare occasions when he would plaintively ask where he was and when he would be allowed to leave. His boxing career may have been long over but it still took two hospital attendants to restrain him whenever he was forced to do something he didn't want to do. By all reports, his "tough guy" reputation and violent temper earned him numerous beatings in hospital but he always recovered quickly enough. He went blind in the final few years of his life.

Link to Providentia on 'The Michigan Wildcat'.

http://thelawwestofealingbroadway.blogspot.com/2009/11/another-unnecessary-tragedy.html

http://www.asofterworld.com/index.php?id=506

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Fingerprints: Signal Processors for Touch

Debregeas et amis say it looks as if the ridges and whorls in fingerprints filter mechanical vibrations in a way that best allows nerve endings to sense them. The mechanoreceptors that do this job are called Pacinian corpuscles. They sit at the ends of nerves and are responsible for sensing pressure and pain. These devices can sense vibrations over a wide area of skin but are sensitive only to a limited range of vibrations. In fact biologists have known for some time that Pacinian corpuscles are most sensitive to vibrations at 250Hz.

Debregeas and co have investigated this problem using a "CYBER FINGER" that they built in their lab, complete with synthetic fingerprints on the same scale as human ones and a microelectromechanical sensor that measures force with a spatial resolution of millimetres. They say that fingerprints resonate at certain frequencies and so tend to filter mechanical vibrations. It turns out that their resonant frequency is around 250Hz.

That means that fingerprints act like signal processors, conditioning the mechanical vibrations so that the Pacinian corpuscles can best interpret them. It's this optimisation process that allows us to sense textures with a spatial resolution far smaller than the distance between Pacinian corpuscles in the skin.

There is a growing awareness that the processing power of the nervous system, including the brain, simply cannot handle the volume of number crunching that has to be done to keep a living body on the road. Instead, it looks increasingly clear that the brain outsources much of this work to the body itself: to the joints, ligaments, muscles, skin etc. Understanding how these materials do all this processing is turning materials science into a branch of computer science. It's even got a name: morphological computing.

People Hear With Skin as Well as Their Ears

The researchers had subjects listen to spoken syllables while hooked up to a device that would simultaneously blow a tiny puff of air onto the skin of their hand or neck. The syllables included "pa" and "ta," which produce a brief puff from the mouth when spoken, and "da" and "ba," which do not produce puffs. They found that when listeners heard "da" or "ba" while a puff of air was blown onto their skin, they perceived the sound as "ta" or "pa."

Dr. Gick said the findings were similar to those from the 1976 study, in which visual cues trumped auditory ones -- subjects listened to one syllable but perceived another because they were watching video of mouth movements corresponding to the second syllable. In his study, he said, cues from sensory receptors on the skin trumped the ears as well. "Our skin is doing the hearing for us," he said.

"What's so persuasive about this particular effect," he added, "is that people are picking up on this information that they don't know they are using." That supports the idea that integrating different sensory cues is innate.

http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2009/11/imbeciles_the_second_round.html

The Digital Economy Bill gets stinkier the longer it sits unflushed in the toilet of the parliamentary process.

Last week I was angry, but now it's personal:

The Digital Economy Bill, published on Friday, will bring in unexpected registration requirements and government control over authors' agents and some publishers, according to copyright experts at national law firm Beachcroft LLP. Such agents — along with certain picture libraries, software resellers, record companies, film distributors and publishers — may need to register with the government, pay annual registration fees and be subject to codes of practice, backed up by criminal sanctions, if provisions regarding the control of 'licensing bodies' are brought in.

This unexpected impact relates to any 'organisation' which licences any copyright material created by more than one different individual — or acts as agent for any such owners. Although the intent of the Bill was to exercise greater control over Britain's major collecting societies, it is likely to catch thousands of agencies which negotiate licences of copyright works in all industries.

This ill-conceived bill, with its extrajudicial three-strikes' sanctions against people merely accused of copyright violation, already looked more like an exercise in licking the arse of rent-seeking media studios than any kind of attempt at enhancing the UK's creative industries. Now it's adding injury to insult. I rely on my literary agent to extract the best terms possible from my publishers. So do the majority of working authors. Agents are paid a commission of the author's take, so the cost of this licensing and registration bureaucracy is going to be passed directly to the authors.

Oh, and to add to the fun: I'm in a legal grey area if this shit goes through. My agent is American, based in the USA. She's part of a partnership and represents more than one British author. If she was in the UK, she'd definitely be in the firing line at this point; as she isn't ... where do we stand? Are foreign agents going to be barred from representing British authors to British publishers if they don't register but conduct their business from overseas? What about foreign agents representing British authors to other foreign publishers? Hello? Has anyone thought this through?

Grr.

http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2009/11/the_psychology_4.html

This is a very interesting paper: Understanding scam victims: seven principles for systems security, by Frank Stajano and Paul Wilson. Paul Wilson produces and stars in the British television show The Real Hustle, which does hidden camera demonstrations of con games. (There's no DVD of the show available, but there are bits of it on YouTube.) Frank Stajano is at the Computer Laboratory of the University of Cambridge.

The paper describes a dozen different con scenarios -- entertaining in itself -- and then lists and explains six general psychological principles that con artists use:

1. The distraction principle. While you are distracted by what retains your interest, hustlers can do anything to you and you won't notice.

2. The social compliance principle. Society trains people not to question authority. Hustlers exploit this "suspension of suspiciousness" to make you do what they want.

3. The herd principle. Even suspicious marks will let their guard down when everyone next to them appears to share the same risks. Safety in numbers? Not if they're all conspiring against you.

4. The dishonesty principle. Anything illegal you do will be used against you by the fraudster, making it harder for you to seek help once you realize you've been had.

5. The deception principle. Thing and people are not what they seem. Hustlers know how to manipulate you to make you believe that they are.

6. The need and greed principle. Your needs and desires make you vulnerable. Once hustlers know what you really want, they can easily manipulate you.

It all makes for very good reading.

Two previous posts on the psychology of conning and being conned.

http://www.crypticide.com/dropsafe/article/3641

• Eye of the storm: pissing rain and then brilliant sun #
• @bblfish …and they will be outperformed technically by Estonia. in reply to bblfish #
• There was a time when one would hang around near the telephone waiting for a call from someone. Nowadays you check e-mail every minute. #
• Have recycled a stoneware beer bottle (Grolsch-type cap) as hot-water-bottle for arthritic cat. Much purring. #
• fabulous and pointless http://instantrimshot.com/ #
• Gutted that Brendan Gregg's dtrace based "dtruss" on OSX lacks "truss -DeadElf" compatibility #
• cat very enamoured of aforementioned new butt-warming device. time for bed. #
• Something vaguely apt about today's bloom county: http://news.yahoo.com/comics/classic-bloom-county #
• Johnston Press websites start charging for news http://bit.ly/4SDALg – bye, guys. I never knew who you were, I won't find out now. #

this posting is syndicated from dropsafe

Twitter Updates for 2009-11-30

http://randomreality.blogware.com/blog/_archives/2009/11/30/4393519.html

A little while ago I posted about a rumour that the LAS would have their budget cut by £25 million come a new government.

After I wrote that Andrew Boff (Conservative member of the London Assembly) got in contact with me and did some asking around in his part of the world.

This is his reply,

I've chased this up with the Conservative Front bench and they have no plans relating to any change in LAS services at all. Andrew Lansley has set out a commitment to cut by a third the cost of administration in the NHS, but equally he's made it clear that front-line services will be protected and hasn't gone into any detail about particular Trusts.

I think that coming up to an election there will be barrage of claims and rumours but I'm fairly confident that this one is probably made up though I don't know who by.

Does this mean that there isn't going to be a cut in our budget? Well, to be honest I'm not sure - but I think that Mr. Boff is genuine in believing so.

Whatever happens he's earned some kudos points from me, even if he is *shudder* Conservative, for paying attention to a lowly blogger like myself.

Now, if only I could get whoever is the minister in charge of ambulance services, and their counterpart in social care to pay attention...

-----

I may be clearing out some browser tabs and emails today. This may mean more posts than normal.

http://blogs.theage.com.au/noisepollution/archives/2009/11/the_aria_awards.html

What is right or wrong with them?

Did you watch the ARIA Annual awards on Channel Nine last Thursday night? If you didn't you may have been one of the 400,000 fewer people who watched this year compared to last year. It came in 16th on the most watched on the night. Why?

Well, they were on a Thursday night rather than the usual Sunday night on Channel Ten who have a younger viewer demographic than Nine, but is that the real reason?

Certainly the production budget seemed considerably reduced from last year, while conscripting two actors as comperes with little relevance to music or experience in a compering role gave the show an awkward stilted quality. They tried hard but the "Who are these people and why are they compering a music award show ?" question would have been in many viewer's minds. Award shows proliferate in various areas on television and so the format of announcing nominees and then declaring the winner or winners who then express the required genuine or feigned surprise and then snigger, mumble or reel off a list of people that no-one has ever heard of, often embarrassing themselves and us in the process. Perhaps a radical creative re-think is called for to freshen-up the format and not just tick the same old boxes over and over again. After-all music should be fun and exciting rather than boring and mundane; even on award shows. Is a little innovation too much to ask?

While I am indifferent to this year's big winners, Empire Of the Sun who took off Best Album, Best Single, Best Group, Best Producer and Best Cover Art, in keeping with the trend of recent years of having one band or performer scooping the pool with multiple awards to the exclusion of other nominees; it can be a little tedious and seem like overkill. They might be good but are they really that good? The question arises, should ARIA reform the nomination and voting process to broaden out both to encourage a greater variety of nominees and winners?

And why must we culturally cringe to some third or fourth rate overseas performer that is usually here plugging a new album or tour as the "special" guest? This year it was Robbie Williams who like most of them is probably ignorant of the Australian music scene but is wheeled out to somehow show us that we are legitimate in overseas eyes and how lucky we are to have them bestow their presence on our little colonial musical outpost. Leave that to the Melbourne Cup!

Then there are the minor quibbles of having a New Zealander, Ladyhawke walk away with two awards at the expense of the people's favourite Jess Mauboy who was nominated for seven awards but ended up with only one. And the inclusion of ACDC who have not recorded or lived in Australia for 30 years and no doubt have tax havens so that they don't even pay tax in Australia.!

Certainly history shows that nominees and winners get a sales bump out of the awards, while every country's music industry has some sort of local music industry awards, so Australia is likely to have such an award show into the foreseeable future. The question is what form and purpose such a show should have.

What do you think?

Album of the Year
Empire of the Sun - Walking on a Dream (Capitol/EMI Music Australia)
Single of the Year
Empire of the Sun - Walking on a Dream (Capitol/EMI Music Australia)
Breakthrough Artist Album
Ladyhawke - Ladyhawke (Modular Recordings)
Breakthrough Artist Single
Ladyhawke - My Delirium (Modular Recordings)
Best Group
Empire of the Sun - Walking on a Dream (Capitol/EMI Music Australia)
Best Female Artist
Sarah Blasko - As Day Follows Night (Dew Process)
Best Male Artist
Daniel Merriweather - Love & War (Universal Music Australia)
Best Rock Album
AC/DC - Black Ice (Albert Productions/Sony Music Entertainment)
Best Pop Release
Empire of the Sun - Walking on a Dream (Capitol/EMI Music Australia)

Best Urban Release
Hilltop Hoods - State of the Art (Golden Era/Universal Music Australia)

Best Dance Release
The Presets - Talk Like That (Modular Recordings)

Best Blues & Roots Album
C.W. Stoneking - Jungle Blues (King Hokum Records/Shock)
Best Country Album
Troy Cassar-Daley - I Love This Place (Liberation Music)
Best Independent Release
Bertie Blackman - Secrets and Lies (Forum 5/MGM)
Best Adult Contemporary Album
Josh Pyke - Chimney's Afire (Ivy League Records)
Best DVD
Sia - TV is my Parent (Monkey Puzzle/Inertia)
Best Children's Album
The Wiggles - The Wiggles Go Bananas! (ABC Music)
Best Comedy Release
Hamish and Andy - Unessential Listening (Roadshow Music/Sony Music Entertainment)

Highest Selling Single
Jessica Mauboy - Running Back (Sony)

Highest Selling Album
AC/DC - Black Ice (Albert Productions/Sony Music Entertainment)
2009 ARIA Awards Artisan Winners
Best Cover Art
Aaron Hayward & David Homer - Debaser - Empire Of The Sun, Walking On A Dream (Capitol/EMI Music Australia)

Best Video
Josh Logue for Mathematics - Empire Of The Sun, Walking On A Dream (Capitol/EMI Music Australia)
Engineer of the Year - * Note two equal winners *
DJ Debris - Hilltop Hoods, State Of The Art (Golden Era/Universal Music Australia)
Greg Wales - You Am I, Dilettantes (Virgin/EMI Music Australia)
Producer of the Year
Empire Of The Sun and Donnie Sloan with Peter Mayes - Empire Of The Sun, Walking on A Dream (Capitol/EMI Music Australia)

2009 ARIA Fine Arts Awards Winners
Best Classical Album
Australian Brandenburg Orchestra/Paul Dyer - Handel: Concerti Grossi Opus 6 (ABC Classics/Universal Music Australia)
Best Jazz Album
Katie Noonan - Blackbird (Sony Music Entertainment)
Best Original Soundtrack/Cast/Show Album
Soundtrack - Balibo (ABC Music/Universal Music Australia)

Best World Music Album
Seaman Dan - Sailing Home (Steady Steady Music/MGM)