peristaltor

I've got to say, I'm pretty surprised by the reaction I've gotten for my simple assertion that flaws in computer architecture have led to innocent lives being destroyed. Everyone knows there are gaps in security. When it comes to the consequences of those gaps, though, it seems no one realizes that, in a law-abiding society, for one person to be wrongly accused of a crime is itself a crime. The police don't get extra points for convicting the innocent. If our society does not work to close all of the circumstances that lead to wrongful conviction, we cannot declare ourselves a just people.

I'll leave the topic of who is to "blame" for getting a virus on a computer aside for a moment. Let's consider other ways that one's security can be compromised.

Decades ago, a friend got her first credit card. Well, not really; at first all she got was the bill for her first card. The card itself never arrived. Did she have to pay the over (IIRC) US$850? Not at all. She was able to prove that she never got the card. Visa had to eat that one.

Credit cards are not the only problem. Long-time readers will remember that years ago someone tried to inflate the amount on one of my checks.


"That'll be a hundred extra bucks, please!"

Did I have to pay? No again. A quick-witted bank teller caught the suspicious check, asked the forger for all the ID she could before she ran away, and notified me. The cops now have an arrest warrant out, and for all I know may have served it years ago.

A similar thing happened to The Wife, though the jerks got away with it. She mailed her US$8 gas bill through a US Postal Service sidewalk collection box. A month later, the bill comes with a past due amount. Less than three hours after she dropped the check in the mail -- in a box located outside the USPS main Seattle headquarters -- the box was robbed, her "tamperproof" check was "washed" of all her ink, new ink was added and the modified check -- complete with a signature that didn't resemble hers at all -- and was cashed 4 miles away. She didn't pay that one only because she was able to show the signature wasn't even close.

My point here is that every time a financial transaction takes place, we -- and I mean all of us, each time -- place ourselves at risk of fraud, of some intermediary or participant intervening in the normal course of events and trying to skew the process in their favor. Yes, you may never use your credit or debit card to make online purchases; but that doesn't stop the cashier at the bookstore or the restaurant from simply copying your card number and making later purchases, or just selling the number on the internets to those that specialize in such fraud. We are all at risk, every time.

I think back to the '70s, to the more sexually exploratory adults that surrounded me, of the exploits they regarded as common and were told I would have to look forward to. I didn't. That heated rutting and frolic faded just about the time I and my body grew ready. Why? It started with herpes, Time Magazine's "Scarlet H." Unlike most of the VD of the time, this was a virus that couldn't be wiped out with a simple shot or series of antibiotics. Close on herpes' heels came AIDS, raising the stakes for physical contact through the frickin' roof. It went from game on to game over almost overnight. I came of age during the rise of the Moral Majority, not the Summer of Love. (And yes, I am still pissed.)

I'm also not one to defend the Draconian pornography laws this country has chosen to enact. We have more child-targeted sex crime in the US of A than Holland, a country with very lax porno standards and porn freely available in Amsterdam. Possession of child pornography does not lead to child abuse. That has never been demonstrated scientifically; in fact, the opposite is likely true.

I, however, do not live in Holland.

So let's look at those examples I gave. When I get a new card, I must activate it with personal information. This is necessary simply because of the millions probably lost from stolen or otherwise intercepted and abused cards, like my friend's from decades ago. When my altered check was seen, the tale of altered checks like The Wife's gas bill -- and the money the bank had to lose -- taught tellers a lesson to be more vigilant. Likewise, now, when you pay for dinner, note that only the last four digits of your card are visible on the receipt. This prevents dumpster divers from scoring on discarded bills.

It won't, though, prevent cashiers from actually copying the info. That's still a problem.

Likewise, try as they may, software makers have yet to make a bullet-proof operating system, one immune to the kind of fraud that I outlined in the kiddie porn post. As it has been mentioned, it seems, I am alone in sympathizing with those whose lives are ruined. Most every reply seemed to suggest that the Fiora's should still be rotting in prison for opening themselves to abuse from a hacker. That surprised me.

This is a problem that won't go away. Consider also that the hackers that compromised that state-owned laptop sitting on the Fiora's table are doing what I hear time and time again should happen: They were turning computing into a "cloud" application. Why store information on a single hard drive when distributing it on many will keep it safer . . . especially when the digital info can translate into hard time in the penitentiary?

However, note that the examples I've just given of situations one hardly ever sees -- credit card activation, extra check cashing scrutiny -- were forced on institutions by the monetary losses fraud exacted. When they're not likely to pay, companies will likely not pay attention.

And now that fraud has escalated from a dose of the clap to a social death sentence, isn't it time all computer makers started to pay . . . attention?

No matter how old their products?

I'd like to introduce everyone to David Brock, author of Blinded by the Right and The Republican Noise Machine. In Blinded, he introduces himself as a progressive and idealistic young lad who had a rude awakening during his college days in Berkeley. He went to cover Jeane Kirkpatrick's speech to the college, and was deeply disturbed when protesters interrupted her until she was forced to leave the stage:

The scene shook me deeply: Was the harassment of an unpopular speaker the legacy of the Berkeley-campus Free Speech Movement, when students demanded the right to canvass for any and all political causes on the campus's Sproul Plaza? Wasn't free speech a liberal value? How, I wondered, could this thought police call itself liberal?. . . . The few outspoken conservatives on the faculty, and the Reagan regents, raised their voices in support of Kirkpatrick's free speech rights. The liberals seemed to me to be defending censorship.

(David Brock, Blinded by the Right, Three Rivers Press, 2002, p. 4.)

This and other incidents burned in his mind, Brock turned from liberal and progressive issues and became a cheerleader for the Other Side. ( He rose in prominence, changing the course of American history as he ascended. )

By now I hope everyone out there has seen this story about computer viruses that store kiddie porn on computers. From the article:

Pedophiles can exploit virus-infected PCs to remotely store and view their stash without fear they'll get caught. Pranksters or someone trying to frame you can tap viruses to make it appear that you surf illegal websites.

Whatever the motivation, you get child porn on your computer — and might not realize it until police knock at your door.

Let me briefly emphasize one salient element of that story, one probably glossed over by most, but which I feel cannot and should not be emphasized enough: the virus exploits PCs -- shorthand, as most know, for "personal computers," but almost universally acknowledged as "personal computers running a Microsoft operating system."

Don't get me wrong: I don't harbor a conspiracy-theory twitchy loathing for All Things Bill. I do, however, recognize that Microsoft's historical disregard for the security and integrity of its operating systems has finally produced consequences far too devastating to be ignored. For decades, it has built back-door access into all of its products, including the operating systems, specifically to enable features in its software that gave a Redmond a competitive edge. Of course, these back doors did not remain a secret. Once revealed, they became the means that enabled just about every virus writer to become a star in Black Hat shenanigans.

When the viruses were disseminating up to a third of all spam mailings, it was a problem. When the viruses made Command and Control slaves of PCs by the tens or hundreds of thousands, enabling one person to engage in Denial of Service attacks on anyone they felt deserved an attack -- including Live Journal -- it was a serious problem. But now that these back doors can ruin lives it is an unforgivable problem. We must all realize that Microsoft is culpable for enabling these malicious acts and should be held legally accountable.

This should be as much a turning point, as much a wake-up call, as much a call to legal action as Preston Tucker's indictment of the major automakers was when he installed seat belts and safety glass into his 1948 Tucker . . . "accessories" not found universally in other cars at the time.

If they have any energy to fight left in them, the Fiolas and others ruined by the legal entanglements they have faced should file suits against Microsoft until their settlement allows them to enjoy certain waterfront properties in Medina, Washington.

fabunobo posted with a pic of his Halloween costume the other day:


If you Love It!,
share props and adulation at his LJ.

Here's the thing: I didn't get it. At all.

Really.

And I see that as a good thing.

I'm bragging here. I have so distanced myself from commercial "news" media that not one pip of this silly story made it on my radar. Commercial "news" exists only to keep people in their seats staring at the blinky box through the commercials. ("That beverage in your hand can kill you! Stay tuned to find out how.") The thought of a 6-year-old maybe dangling from a gas bag hurtling across the sky is OJ-in-a-Bronco news. Yes, people find themselves riveted to the tube. But do they learn anything, anything at all?

I kept tripping on mention of Balloon Boy in the internets afterwards, but didn't pay much attention, apparently. Thought it was an ad campaign (which it kinda was). Not until I saw fabunudo's get-up did I finally ask The Wife and a friend what was up. Last night. I got the eye-roll on that one.

But here's the thing: All that time I wasn't following the exploits of a media-manipulative UFO crackpot family in Colorado, I was learning things that were far more likely true. Strangely -- and I say this with a tinge of pride in our American PBS system -- NPR didn't even mention this well enough for me to find it on Morning Edition. The podcasts to which I subscribe gave me my first hint before I broke down and asked The Wife: Clark Boyd at The World's Technology Podcast played the 5th Dimension's "Beautiful Balloon" as a hint of what he wouldn't be covering. And just today, the crew of The Skeptic's Guide to the Universe gave me a 5-minute recap of all the details I need to know about the woo-woo father's stunt.

What's weirder still, some of my friends constantly come to me for quirky tidbits of info. Usually I can help them. They have no idea why I prove this repository of general knowledge . . . yet they think I care one whit when they try to update me about the latest from Dancing with the Stars or America's Got Talent. I know obscure but somewhat trivial detail because I don't follow that crap. For me, it's that simple.

I remember being glued to the White Bronco as it happened. Did my paying attention get OJ apprehended any faster? Nope. Not by one second. Lesson learned.

Raw news footage is just that, raw. Like raw food, it isn't ready for consumption. Basically, news should be finished before it is plated and served.

So, that's my story. I ask you: Is your life better because mention of this (*ahem*) inflated hype took up you time? How much time would you say was lost to this and similar stories, if any? Importantly, what do you think you weren't learning about in the time it took to relate this developing breaking story as it unfolded?

And think further: How many stories of this caliber but lacking the quirkiness of the Balloon Kid did you follow to no avail? How many spoonfuls of crap got shoved down your throat before you realized you were being duped by the "news?"

I'll first make an up-front declaration of bias: I hate the anti-vaccination crowd.

For those of you unfamiliar with actress, comedianne and centerfold model Jenny McCarthy's hobbies, she has been probably the most visible and outspoken celebrity to endorse the vile lies that childhood vaccines, especially those containing mercury-based preservatives like Thimerisol, cause autism.

I call her positions on vaccine "vile lies" for good reason: At least four peer-reviewed studies have failed to show a connection. That doesn't stop folks -- including celebs like McCarthy and her boyfriend Jim Carrey, Robert Kennedy, Jr., Bill Mahr and a raft of others -- from flogging the Thimerisol horse corpse.

Ms. McCarthy, of course, has reason to be angry at autism; her son suffers from the condition. In this case, though, she has gone completely off the deep end attacking vaccines, even going so far as to suggest that the inevitable preventable deaths that follow people refusing to immunize their own children are a price worth paying to avoid an autism connection that (once again) has been debunked.

Let's really add to evidence of her dissonance. Though she has on more than one occasion likened vaccines to "poison," take a gander at what she had to say about one of the most deadly poisons known to man:

“I love Botox, I absolutely love it. I get it minimally so I can still move my face. But I really do think it’s a savior.”

Anyhoo, I'm not posting this just to rant. I was responding to alobar the other day. I think the Hygienic Hypothesis might be a more likely culprit, and said so. He asked a good question: Why now? ( Why are we facing an explosion of autism? )


Edit: Link and floppy verbiage corrected October 8, 2009.

I'm stoked. Radiolab has covered the parasite thing! They did a darn fine job, too, interviewing (among others) Carl Zimmer from The Loom, one of my fave blogs and author of the definitive introduction to parasitism, Parasite Rex. I've convinced two doctors and my own mother to read that book.

They also interviewed David Pritchard, someone I mentioned here, who cured own his allergies with a dose of worms.

There was also a guy who infected himself and thus shed his allergies, but who is going one step further; he's selling his worms to anyone who wants them. I'm sick of sneezing, sick of drugs which, if strong enough to dampen the sneezes, make it illegal for me to drive and thus work.

I'm on board with the Hygenic Hypothesis. I might wait until spring when the fun usually begins, but I'm ready. I am so ready.

Worm me.


Addendum, some minutes later: Here's Jasper Lawrence's website. He's the one who's selling the fruits of his butt. He also demonstrates the value of associating any business with a hot chick in pearls and furs.

A book I loved, Annie's Box by Randall Keynes, has been made into a movie, Creation. It tells Charles Darwin's story through his and his families personal writings, giving deep insight into what happened in a life that lead to probably the most influential scientific theory of all time.

I will not, though, be seeing it in the theater as I had hoped, at least not in the United States:

US distributors have resolutely passed on a film which will prove hugely divisive in a country where, according to a Gallup poll conducted in February, only 39 per cent of Americans believe in the theory of evolution.

The distributors have pussied out. Who cares what other people believe? Let those that want to see the movie see the fucking movie. Nope.

The end of the Telegraph article says it all:

Early reviews have raved about the film. The Hollywood Reporter said: "It would be a great shame if those with religious convictions spurned the film out of hand as they will find it even-handed and wise."

Well, we wouldn't want that, now, would we?

Jim Kunstler whipped out another gem in which he wrote:

For decades we measured the health of our economy (and therefore of our society) by the number of "housing starts" recorded month-to-month. For decades, this translated into the number of suburban tract houses being built in the asteroid belts of our towns and cities. When housing starts were up, the simple-minded declared that things were good; when down, bad. What this view failed to consider was that all these suburban houses added up to a living arrangement with no future. That's what we were so busy actually doing. Which is why I refer to this monumentally unwise investment as the greatest misallocation of resources in the history of the world.

(Emphasis from the author.)

Why is he so glum about our economic expansion? ( For lots of really good reasons. )


Addendum, August 10, 2009: Calculated Risk shares a paper describing a move from expanded building from city cores to a "new era of infill and redevelopment." Which will have to happen if "this monumentally unwise investment" called suburbia is ever to be corrected.

Here's a fun stumble-upon: Go to Google Images and type in "burqa." You know, as in the most fundamentalist garb Islamic women can wear.

The fourth image is cutesy. The first and 17th are NSFW.

This can't be emphasized enough. To quote Rachel:

Americans are showing up at these events to shout down the discussion and to chase their congressmen. And they are enraged. And they're enraged, at least in part, by over-the-top conspiracy theories about health care. And they're being orchestrated by the corporate interests that do this for a living and do it very well.

The problem? Too few people know when they're being duped. Or dupes.

Today I need to rant about what an abysmal direction I feel our society is going, specifically when it comes to how we interact with each other and our environment. The "with each other" is pretty easy to codify. Just watch the telly.

A woman wanders through her home at night. A noise from downstairs startles her. She runs up the stairs and hits the panic button, alerting the alarm company. A siren sounds, scaring the prowler in the low-budget balaclava ninja outfit. He takes flight through the window he just smashed and escapes. Though panicked, the woman is safe because of that alarm and the service the company provides. A blanket of 1s and 0s surround the house like a digital shield against intrusion.

Since 9/11, I've noticed several commercials like this one with a simple message: There are people out to get us. We need to protect ourselves against them.

While I cannot disagree that there are indeed people who break into homes and cars for personal gain, how much of a threat does this really pose to the average person? Does it justify the expense this alarm service no doubt incurs?

That's people. ( It gets much worse. Now our fears of intrusion are getting focused on smaller and smaller critters. )

After writing the three parts to this (for me of little stamina) exhausting series, I decided to give it a compendium page.

Part I -- Evidence of Something Fundamentally Different
Part II -- The Tendency to Blame the Stink
Part III -- The Tenacity of Purpose

Also, making this seemingly insignificant entry gives me the opportunity to add something I would have added earlier, had I heard it early enough. I didn't. It's a talk given by the Reverend Thomas Goodhue, author of Curious Bones: Mary Anning and the Birth of Paleontology, part of a three part Darwin Day celebration podcast from Scientific American's Science Talk with Steve Mirsky.* Let me give you a taste:

More than 12,000 clergy . . . have signed a joint declaration that says, "The timeless truths of the Bible and the discoveries of modern science may comfortably coexist." An yet, for many Americans (about half of the population according to the Gallup Polls) . . . are still opposed to the theory of evolution and oppose it being taught in the public schools. That's always been a mystery to me, since it's, my whole life, practically, been clear to me it is without doubt the most important scientific theory ever presented. . . . It's almost impossible to understand the biological sciences -- or, as we've just heard, half of the other sciences these days -- without understanding the theory of evolution. Yet people are still agin' it.

. . . I think there are many reasons for this. One has to do -- and without a doubt, this is the most important reason . . . -- shortly after Darwin presented his theory, it was bastardized into something called "Social Darwinism" that had nothing to do with Darwin's scientific theory. (It) was, if anything, more of a theological or religious belief, (stating) that if you survived you were the fittest. It led to a whole series of incredibly racist theories being developed. The whole eugenics . . . movement in America that said people should be sterilized if they were poor to keep them from reproducing. Jim Crow laws across the land were supported by social Darwinism.

. . . . People sometimes talk today as if the battle was between Darwin and the fundamentalists. It really wasn't for generations. The battle was between progress Christians and the Social Darwinists. As is so often the case, movements move away from their founders and people forget that, in this case, Charles Darwin would have been horrified by things that people were saying in the name of Social Darwinism. (His) theory was inspired more by an opposition to slavery, perhaps, than anything else.

But I think, too, there's opposition to the teaching of evolution still today because far too many secular people, far too many agnostics and atheists, assume that most Christians are going to oppose them on the teaching of evolution. For Catholicism and most main-line Protestants, this really isn't a big issue. (Far) too many people who believe in the theory of evolution dismiss the possibility that people of faith could believe in theistic evolution and still be good scientists.

There's much more, and it's good stuff. Enjoy.


*By the way, of all the science-y podcasts out there, Steve does the best job of making the science interesting and entertaining without sucking the meat-and-potatoes detail out of the synopsis. Only the folks at The Skeptic's Guide to the Universe do it better; but, in all fairness, they're format is a tad different.

I started writing the Deist Miasma series with high hopes, but little else. I was missing something, a crucial piece of evidence (as opposed to suspicion) that may have finally surfaced. It's a preliminary study that requires some expansion, but it reinforced the niggling thoughts that started this series enough to motivate me to finish it. ( Onward, interested parties! )

A tip from James Howard Kunstler on his KunstlerCast (Episode #47, Credit Crisis) led me to Chris Martenson's economic primer, The Crash Course. This presentation, one he's spent years developing, introduces people to the highly complex financial and economic catastrophe befalling us today and likely to worsen in the coming years.

I'm only up to Chapter 13, but I highly recommend taking a few hours to view these YouTube installments. The entire thing is very well researched and presented.

And frightening. Did I mention frightening?

Addendum, an hour later: If you'd like to understand the current housing crisis, start at Chapter 15. Part II of this chapter has a doozy of a data point near the beginning. Stunning.

Addendum, February 8: Here's a great quote from Chapter 19 too good not to share. It deals with financial panics that pop economic bubbles:

Panics do not destroy capital; they merely reveal the extent to which it has been previously destroyed by its betrayal into hopelessly unproductive works.

-- John Stuart Mill

Six months ago, I posted links to a couple of podcasts that helped me understand the current economic situation. Before I heard ellenbrown explain the situation in kmo's C-Realm, I had no idea how currency was created in the United States, let alone how in ten years the global pool of money doubled in size. Since then, I've been following just about all I can hear from the folks at Planet Money and The Economist. I'm struck not by the extent of their coverage -- it's for the most part excellent -- but by how little even the reporters tasked with explaining the situation dive straight to the heart of the matter, reporting instead on the peripheral effects these sudden changes have wrought.

I am here going to attempt to explain what I understand to be the at the root of the economy's woes not to spread the Rant of Peristaltor, but to articulate in writing what I feel to be important and thus to see whether or not, after this articulation, these thoughts stand on their own. No, I am not an economist by training or profession, so take my words with that in mind. No, I do not claim to be more of an expert than trained economists, only to be someone who sees an important link constantly missed and therefore misunderstood. I will fully and humbly accept any criticism on this post that can be backed by an understandable explanation and sound cited references.

( So here we go down the Peristaltic Rabbit Hole. )


Addendum, January 11, 2009: Ellen Brown today simplified my long-winded analogizing by simply explaining how banks create the money.

I started writing this in November, but faltered, and started again, and faltered again. I find the entire topic just too important to treat lightly, but too emotionally fraught to resort to the bludgeon of didactic accusation. Telling people "You're evil!" just gets you dismissed.

I'm not trying to make that accusation. Ah, but just making the argument that the words used to vilify those that wish us dead could be better applied to many of our leaders. . . . I hope you can see the difficulty. The trouble: Those should know of our country's history with fascism have been blindsided by sloppy use of the word. Over the decades, few remember what the word actually meant ( to those that coined it. )

tacit has branched out once again from the LJ to a little side project, a lightning blog. This particular little factoid struck my fancy:

And speaking of lightning rods, most people know that the lightning rod was invented by Benjamin Franklin, but what’s less well-known is that it quickly became a matter of political dispute between King George III and the Republic during the Revolutionary War.



Franklin’s original lightning rod design, an example of which is shown here, called for a sharpened iron rod, mounted to the top of a building and connected by a copper cable to the ground. . . .

King George III favored designs with rounded balls on the top. . . . In 1776, a powder magazine in London was struck by lightning and burned; the Franklin lightning rod protecting it was quickly blamed, and lightning rods with rounded ends were soon mandated by law in England.

As it turns out, ol’ King George was actually right, and modern lightning rods in the US have a rounded top. Lightning doesn’t work the way most people think it does.

I just love the fact that the more efficacious design was mandated not because of rigorous testing, trial and error, all the scientific tests one can apply to new technology. Nope. The real reason rounded balls topped most of the British lightning rods can be found in the sentence I deleted in the second ellipsis: "King George III favored designs with rounded balls on the top, in part because Franklin was one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence."

Boys, boys, boys.

The Second President of the United States,
The Dick In Question

Hey, don't take my word for it. Here's what other Founding Fathers had to say:

He is vain, irritable, and a bad calculator of the force and probable effects of the motives which govern men.

-- Thomas Jefferson


If I was in Congress, and this gentleman and the marble Mercury in the garden of Versailles were in nomination for an embassy, I would not hesitate to give my vote for the statue, upon the principle that it would do no harm.

-- Benjamin Franklin

Again, why aren't we taught this stuff?

(In 1605), Captain George Weymouth kidnapped five Indians from an island near what it now Port Clyde, Maine, and brought them back to England. They were treated well and when eventually repatriated, they had nothing but good to say of the English. One of the, Tasquantum, or Squanto, taught some English to a friend of his, Samoset, who happened to be in the neighborhood of present-day Plymouth, Massachusetts, when the Mayflower dropped anchor in December 1620. When its pilgrim passengers went ashore, they were met by Samoset who flabbergasted them by saying "Welcome" and asking if they had any beer.

(Peter Nichols, Evolution's Captain, Harper collins, 2003, p. 66 (Emphasis mine).

Grade school history would have been so much more interesting had more factual gems like that been included.

I don't know why, but I've been encountering a growing number of folks who outright deny global climate change, or at least relagate the phenomenon to the Less Than Worth Anyone's Attention category, or who feel the costs in the next five minutes greatly outweigh the chance of savings in the next five years.

If you count yourself in any or all of the above, do yourself a favor. I've re-written up a little primer that should outline evidence in support of a coming Shitstorm of Negative Consequence. I did this not because I am a self-important blowhard who values my own opinions over those belonging to lesser, not-me beings -- well, not just because -- but because I recognized gaps in my own lifetime of information acquisition that made it until very recently difficult for me to understand what the global kerfuffle really meant. I've organized it into an FAQ list of points I've most commonly encountered, either on my own or from my very close friends and perfect strangers with whom I happened at the time to be speaking. ( Iffin yer interested, dig in. )


Edited March 25; February 10; August 1, 2006; August 27, 2006; April 1, 2007.