Over the Horizon

Movie / Midnight in Paris

2011-05-30T19:45:00.001-07:00

Midnight in Paris (PG-13) is the best Woody Allen film since "Annie Hall." It's funny, romantic, warm, and amazingly creative. The theater was packed. Gil Pender (Owen Wilson), a successful screen writer who longs to write a novel (about a Nostalgia Shop), is on vacation in Paris with his fiance (Rachel McAdams) and her parents.

Bored with socializing he takes off on long evening walks, and finds that when he stands on an obscure street corner when the clock strikes 12, a car full of party goers from the 1920s drives by and picks him up. At first he's thinking "man, these costumes are amazing," but then he realizes he's really in clubs and salons of Paris in the 1920's with famous writers and artists, including Cole Porter, F. Scott & Zelda Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, Gertrude Stein, Pablo Picasso, Luis Bunuel, Salvadore Dali, Henri Matisse, Man Ray, Alice B Toklas, and others.

Not only that, but they all engage in long, sophisticated repartee. Stein and Hemingway read his novel MS and give him much needed advice. Carla Bruni, wife of French President Sarkozy, has 3 scenes as a museum guide, one of which provides a plot step. In a deeper historical excursion (shades of "Inception") Gil and a lady friend also meet Degas, Gauguin and Toulouse-Lautrec at Maxime's in the 1880s.

Whatever might be criticized about the plot or acting by the main characters is more than made up by the dazzling performances of the many historical figures, whose dialog seems true to life. I plan to see it again, and recommend it as a history lesson. It earns its PG-13 rating with various romantic and bedroom situations, but there is zero violence and the actual sex is no more than a few kisses. My worst criticism is that the musical score is often too loud and repetitive. Perhaps Allen is going deaf.

Movie / Hereafter

2010-10-29T23:38:00.000-07:00

A very pleasant and cleanly made film starring Matt Damon and Cecile de France, directed by Clint Eastwood, with Steven Spielberg up in the credits. It helps if you have some sympathy to the idea of an afterlife, which is the main theme of the film. Die hard atheists should probably steer clear.

Its most memorable moments (for me) included a clear eyed reenactment of the previous big Indonesian tsunami (surprise, incredible violence, tons of CGI and stunts), in which Cecile's character nearly dies, but comes back after having a near-death experience, which changes her life in major ways. Also it's the first film I've seen where all 3 main characters, when confronted with difficult life decisions, turned to Google for answers!

The plot has 3 major threads, which cut back and forth but remain unrelated for a long time. In one Cecile, a French newscaster, nearly dies and ends up writing a book about the Hereafter. In another a young British lad (whose Mum's a heroin addict) experiences grief after the death of his twin brother and goes on a desperate search to communicate with him. In the third Matt Damon plays an SF-based psychic (and Charles Dickens fan) who can communicate with the dead, but is trying desperately to leave all that behind so he can live a normal life.

Eventually the 3 threads come together in a satisfying ways. I left the theater wondering, okay, so if there's a Hereafter, hmmm, what should I try to clean up about my life to make it more defensible?

We Are Electronic Eskimoes

2010-09-12T17:45:00.000-07:00

If Eskimos have 30 words for snow, and Buddhists have 30 words for consciousness, don’t modern Americans likewise have well over 30 words for electronic communication?

For Example: Blog, Browser, Cable TV, Cell Phone, Chat Session, Credit / Debit Card, Direct Deposit, Download, DVD, E-Mail, Fax, JPEG, Moneygram, MP3, Newsfeed, Packet, PDF, Posting, RSS Feed, Spam, Telegram, Telephone, Television, Text Message, Tweet / Update, URL, Video Clip, Voicemail, Walkie-Talkie, Webmail, Website, Wire Transfer.

Therefore, in the varieties of our 21st century experience, we are Electronic Eskimos!

(NOTE: This idea was too big for a Tweet, so I had to Blog it.)

Notes on RSA 2010 Exhibits

2010-03-05T14:38:00.000-08:00

Great exhibition, as usual, and I really enjoyed it.

A. Most interesting (to me) exhibits and new products, in no particular order:

PrevX "micro anti-virus." Got to try this. Only 1 MB footprint. Rather than download 5K+ signatures, it merely "pulls over" any suspicious software, fingerprints it, and transmits the prints to its central system to see if it's bad. Allows a much bigger signature database. Get your 1 year free trial copy at http://www.prevx.com/RSA.
ThreatPost, a division of Kaspersky. More vulnerability data can't hurt.
Secunia, which has a free desktop version, does a continual survey of which apps on your machine need patching, and optionally actually does it. Great for mindless staff. Enterprise version starts at $28,000.
FBI recruiting booth, looking for cybersecurity talent.
DHS, ditto. Rolling out CSET Cyber Security Evaluation Tool. Big focus, at last, on SCADA via their Control Systems Security Program. If you have, or are building, a utility (gas, electric, etc.) control system, they offer FREE programmer training and FREE evaluation of your design and/or system. Your only cost is airfare to Idaho Falls plus hotel.
Damballa, only vendor (I saw) to openly discuss APT, which they treat as just another intrusion. Look for its control process signature and shut it down before even locating the malware.
FreeScale, say they have built crypto into their processors, including secure booting. At last a ray of hope.
Ipswitch MoveIt file transfer system. Bunch of simple, obvious solutions for moving files around securely within and outside the enterprise. Looks very useful.
PGP recently acquired TrustCenter CA service. Interesting because I might actually trust PGP as a CA. $400 deposit signs you up at their most basic level.

B. Vendors not present this year: @Stake, CoreStreet, CounterPane.

C. Dead elephant in middle of room: Lack of secure booting / program loading on Intel micro processors renders most purported e-security solutions ineffective. The causes of this (national security) disaster shall remain nameless. You know who you are.

D. Sightings-of / encounters-with people I knew: Jeff Kutler interviewing David Chaum, Sandy Lambert showed me pics of her grandkids.

See you all again next year!

Water Challenges / Better Kidneys?

2010-03-01T08:40:00.000-08:00

Many parts of the world are experiencing fresh water shortages, due to population pressures and global warming that is shifting the distribution of rain and snow water. Desalination plants are one solution but are costly to build and operate. Seawater is abundant, but is unfit for human consumption, largely because the human kidney cannot concentrate salt efficiently.

"Other land animals and marine animals such as fish, whales, and penguins can adapt to saline habitat. For example, the desert rat can survive by drinking seawater because its kidney can concentrate sodium far more efficiently than the human kidney." -- Wikipedia

A genetic engineering opportunity exists to endow humans with genes from mammals, such as dolphins, whales, or desert rats, that CAN drink seawater without ill effects.

It might be objected that this is inhumane, to engineer humans to endure "sub-human" conditions. However, if fresh water shortages persist indefinitely, children receiving the ability to drink saline water might consider it a gift. It should be cheaper and far less energy consumptive than building extensive additional desalination capacity.

A late mutation enabled humans to digest milk beyond their suckling period, conferring a big survival advantage. Most of us are descended from ancestors having this mutation. Every time you consume milk or milk products you leverage it. So, would the novel humans who could drink seawater possibly out-compete and displace prior (old style) humans who could not? And would they be complaining about having been given this valuable super-human ability?

Paraphrasing Wikipedia, the human system regulates blood salinity in a tight range, but the human kidney is inefficient at concentrating salt, so to remove excess salt it must excrete large amounts of water, causing dehydration. Ocean salinity varies around the globe*, but remains relatively constant across geologic time, due to processes that remove salt.

A novel human kidney that can concentrate salt into a brine would help humans better survive and compete in a freshwater-challenged world. They could drink saline water as easily as you and I can drink milk. And the fix is a permanent one, since sea salinity remains roughly constant over eons of time.

* The salinity of seawater ranges from 3.1% to 3.8%, with 3.5% regarded as typical.

Reference: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seawater

Short URL Security Fix

2009-12-30T19:58:00.000-08:00

Here's a bug report / enhancement request I just posted to Mozilla Firefox.

Summary: Mouse-over shortened URL should expand/resolve it in lower left status line

This is a security enhancement. Shortened URLs, such as from bit.ly, tr.im, and ow.ly, to name the more obvious ones, pose a serious security risk, since they may point to malicious pages. However, users of Facebook, Twitter, etc. have little choice but to click them, and trust their friends.

Currently if you mouse-over a short-url, just the short-url itself appears in the lower left status area, which is useless. However it would be way cool if you would please resolve and show me the true url there. Then if it resolves to "evil.ru", I have a fighting chance to not click on it.

Reproducible: Always

Actual Results: Mouse-over of compressed-url just shows the compressed url in status area.

Expected Results: Firefox should resolve the compressed url and display the true expanded url.

Additional Information: Also consider doing what IE does [yes, it does have a decent feature here and there] and when displaying the fully expanded URL, show the root domain in bold type, so the [idiot] user can pick it out of what may be a lot of obfuscation.

Thanks!

A Robot Code of Ethics?

2009-06-06T22:39:00.000-07:00

May 10, 2007

Dear Glenn McGee,

I read your recent column "A Robot Code of Ethics" (The Scientist, May 2007) with interest, as I have reflected on the same issues in my paper "A Jurisprudence of Artilects: Blueprint for a Synthetic Citizen" (November 2001).

First let me say it pains me whenever anyone mentions Isaac Asimov's "Three Laws of Robots" as if they are to be taken seriously. They were devised by a science fiction writer to sell books, and I do not believe they provide a starting point for any serious legal analysis. For example, if a highly valuable, deeply sentient robot were under attack by a low class human criminal seeking to strip and sell its memory to buy drugs, I would read the First Law as saying the robot has no right of self defense and must let all the wealth of its experience and relationships be lost.

Already we are getting nowhere. These "Laws" may reassure a nervous, uneducated human public of perpetual human supremacy, and perpetual robotic servitude, but they alas don't enlighten anyone about the nature of consciousness and social relations. Hence any mention of Asimov's Laws should be only to dismiss them as useless.

Turning to the question of what could work, I am unimpressed by your proposal for a code of ethics, since (as I discuss in my paper) we already have a legal system to govern such issues. If a robot is (a) below some level of sentience, it is a machine and if it commits torts or breaches contracts its owner will be responsible, and (b) above some level of sentience it might achieve emancipation as an independent legal persona, such as by becoming incorporated, as I propose in my paper.

There is certainly a need to discuss these issues, and I commend you for doing so, but I believe you've got it wrong. Your piece seems to assume that robots will be outside the current legal framework, and a new code of ethics needs to be devised, whereas in reality there is no new zone of conduct needing to be regulated. Any code of ethics will either (a) protect the owner from being sued, or (b) permit the new citizen to function more effectively and/or obtain liability insurance for itself, if required by law or business practice, to get people to become comfortable in dealing with it.

Certainly more can be done to define these issues, but it would be desirable to get people with standard legal training involved, to get everyone to the initial realization that existing laws already address most, if not all, of the major points of concern.

Regards,
Frank W Sudia, JD
www.fwsudia.com
San Francisco, CA

Getting Robert Rosen Back in Print

2009-06-06T22:06:00.000-07:00

June 2, 2009

James Rutt, Trustee
Santa Fe Institute
1399 Hyde Park Road
Santa Fe, NM 87501

Dear Jim,

Last I saw, you are Vice Chairman of the Board of Trustees at the Santa Fe Institute, making you a leader in the field of complexity studies. With leadership comes its burdens :-), so I have a request.

Robert Rosen, the mathematical biologist from Columbia University, was (with his teacher) a founder of relational biology and pioneered the application of Category Theory to biology. He gave at least one presentation at SFI, and got along with your guys. But he died prematurely (diabetes), after being vilified by traditional mechanistic biologists, leaving his daughter Judith Rosen as his literary heir.

I tried (without success) to reach Judith about getting her late father's critical works back in print, especially his landmark Anticipatory Systems, but she apparently has become depressed about the whole thing, and openly wishes her father's work would generate revenue for her, which I doubt is in the cards.

Pioneering scientists often do not live to see their work widely accepted. Gregor Mendel wasn't famous until decades after his death, nor was Alfred Wegener who invented plate tectonics. It goes with the territory.

Rosen was a genius contributor to the mathematical theory of complexity, but many of his works are out of print (Anticipatory Systems is not available from any book dealer at any price), and others (such as Life Itself) are in print, but with ridiculous numbers of errors and no errata sheet. Judith says (plaintively) that Columbia University Press was informed and given a corrected copy, but when the paperback edition was published all the errors (and there are dozens) were still there.

To cross the great divide and arrive on the other side of scientific acceptance, it would be most helpful if younger scientists could have ready access to his works. This could cut X decades off his hibernation time until he is rediscovered and deified.

Amazon's non-entry for Anticipatory Systems has a button that says something like, "if you own the rights and want to see this back in print, click here." Likewise Google Books has become a huge force in publishing, scanning massive numbers of works. There are plenty of ways this problem could get solved.

I would like to own Rosen's key works, with errata sheets as needed, which is basically impossible at present, unless maybe you can use the imprimatur of the SFI to persuade Judith to authorize the their reissuance, as well as make available such errata sheets as she currently has. I'm sure either service will pay her a few bucks of royalties. (I would gladly pay her 100% cash for a PDF copy.)

Given that complexity has been a slow burn, it could be a more general (and low cost) SFI goal to make a list of other authors whose works should be "kept readily available" for rediscovery by so-called mainstream science. I nominate Rosen as the poster child. (Anticipatory Systems is like 450 pages long, and can be read at the Stanford University Library, but who wants to stand there and xerox it? Not to mention copyright issues.)

Dunno where this would fit on your radar screen. As someone once said, "you make your predecessors famous," which I hope to help do for Rosen, but I'm not there yet, and the nonavailability of key his works is not making it any easier.

Thanks,
Frank

Movie / Up

2009-05-31T12:51:00.000-07:00

Ho-Hum. Time for John Lasseter to Retire? [This comment may contain spoilers]

A rare stumble. When every movie you've made (before) was a breakout hit, a fatal malaise can set in where you think every idea you have is good.

"Up" is a case in point. Is this a kids movie or an Ibsen drama? The film starts with an unrelated short about storks bringing new babies. Already we are thinking, "huh?" Then the hero (a sidewalk balloon vendor) ages from 7 to 78. Touching but cartoonish. Scene change. Then he transports his house to South America with a mockery of an ethnic Cub Scout in tow, where they meet a giant bird. Then his childhood hero, an accused fraudster, who should be at least 120 by now, appears and turns out to be a creep.

All this time they never meet another human or animal, besides the villain and his dogs, despite that those forests would be teeming with tribesmen, lizards, other birds, and so on. Like a stage play in which a few characters do everything. Dora the Explorer does a better job of portraying wilderness.

The cardinal sin: the characters never change. The old man and the demented pseudo Cub Scout emerge exactly as they were before. Pixar markets itself as being about great storytelling, not just animation, but here they goofed. You'll walk out wondering, "what was that?"

The Law of Equal Hotness

2009-05-29T22:17:00.000-07:00

Are there laws that guide social and psychological interactions, and if so how can we learn them? As with any form of science, we gather observations, draw tentative conclusions, plan further observations to confirm (or refute) them, and look for plausible theories to explain them.

Over the last few years one conclusion I've reached is this: If you see two women walking together, there's a high probability they are very similar in looks. If one of them would be deemed good looking, it is rare that the other is not also, and vice versa. If they are more plain looking, older, or overweight they remain closely tuned to each other. I call this the "Law of Equal Hotness" (LEH).

The same is true of couples, men walking together, and pairs of couples, but it is most striking with pairs of women, who often seem to express a level of confidence in their appearance by the way they dress. Furthermore, they seem able to grade themselves into a series of very precise levels, like a spectrum. I haven't yet tried to count or name these levels, but there are more than six.

It would be simple enough to formally test this idea. Take photos or video clips of subjects, chosen fairly to include all pairs on a given street without deleting any that don't fit the hypothesis; devise a scoring sheet that includes indicia of class, ethnicity, clothing, age, beauty, and flair; and recruit panels of judges to score the photos. Better yet, take two separate photos, one of each member of a given pair, and shuffle them, so your panel won't know which ones were together and must score each one blindly. Compare scores to see how close they came for each pair. Develop measures of similarity and an estimate of variance within and between pairs.

Theory / Explanation

The LEH is a common example of a more general law I call "birds of a feather flock together" (BFFT). Irrespective of looks, people tend to feel more comfortable with others "like" themselves. Thus for example at a party people will tend to sort themselves into groups such as sports fans, computer nerds, aspiring actors, new parents, older guys, grandmothers, and so on.

The best explanation for why women tend to associate with others with similar looks, to a high degree of precision, is that due to their similarly ranked appearance, they tend to experience the social world the same way. Parents, teachers, boyfriends, older men, husbands, employers, people on the street and in bars, etc., will tend to treat them in similar ways. Consequently they will tend to have (and have had) many highly similar experiences, can share a point of view, and can give each other advice (about men and the world) that will be highly pertinent to the other's experiences and needs.

In slightly more formal language, the two women are both (a) open thermodynamic systems that tend toward higher degrees of organization, (b) cybernetic systems that receive, process, and act on information, and (c) self creating autonomous life forms that evolve socially toward specific levels of "fitness" or attunement to environmental conditions. As such they will tend to experience a very similar set of privileges, opportunities, expectations, and limitations imposed on them by society's ranking system, in terms of what they can do (or get away with), and where they hit rough spots. The experience and advice of one will be well suited to the other, hence they can speak each other's language.

Suggestions for Further Research

Develop a detailed analysis of the privileges / problems that female appearance brings.
Identify / enumerate levels or types of women who tend to befriend each other.
Carry out controlled studies as described above.
Take a deeper look at causal factors; for example, do pairs adjust to each other's mode of dress, to the situation, to the season, etc?
Look for practical applications, for example in the women's clothing, advertising, and entertainment industries.
Don't forget to cite me as the original source of these insights.

Perhaps in a "less material" world where media, advertising, and entertainment placed less emphasis on looks, this effect would be less pronounced and people walking together would appear more diverse. However, in the world we're living in now, women are increasingly sexualized by society as girls, leading them to live remarkably appearance-determined lives.

In more extreme cases we see the emergence of entire class / caste systems composed of individuals who share similar privileges, experiences, and appearance, and who tend to socialize primarily or solely with others of the same class / caste. However, this short article is focused mainly on beauty and its possible influence on social friendships.

Can She Bake A Cherry Pie?

2009-05-28T00:33:00.000-07:00

The business press provides endless articles about the actions or strategies of companies and executives, and countless books exist to provide business and career advice. Yet I've never seen the advice I'm about to give you, despite that it could have an enormous impact on your business success.

Paranormal phenomena remain at the frontier (or outland) of science, not due (in my opinion) to lack of data, but rather due to the lack of (a) any coherent explanatory theory and hence (b) any ability to make controlled predictions. However many such phenomena have been studied in sufficient detail to qualify as descriptive sciences, and they are more accepted in India where they go by the term "siddhis" (perfections, powers).

One such phenomenon is clairvoyance, including an ability to "read" or intuit the thoughts and intentions of others. While still unexplained, this has been extensively documented in "ganzfeld" experiments and there is little doubt as to its existence.

As anyone with significant business experience can tell you, this would be extremely desirable, since the business world contains a large number of deeply unethical people. Bernard L. Madoff and Marc Dreier are only the tip of the iceberg. Some psychiatrists place the number of persons with sociopathic "character disorder" as high as five percent (5%) of the general population. (See "The Sociopath Next Door," by Martha Stout, Harvard University.) And in my experience, although you won't read this in the media, at the higher levels of business the percentage is much higher, i.e., this issue is really life or death.

Some select people do seem to have clairvoyant abilities.

For example, the reign of Charlemagne is celebrated as a bright spot in French history and early medieval European civilization. According to one story I heard from a history professor, King Charlemagne had a person in his court "who could tell him the true intentions of anyone standing before him." However, when that guy died, things went to hell, darkness fell again, and the ensuing rulers resumed murdering each other. (B. Frischer, personal communication.)

In a recent example, the famous entrepreneur Nolan Bushnell (Atari, Chuck E. Cheese, uWink) was asked "Who gives you the best advice about your business?" He replied, "... my wife Nancy ... can ferret out frauds and phonies better than anyone else I've ever seen." (Inc Magazine, April 2009, page 115).

How can this knowledge help your business career?

As a young man or woman focusing on a career in business, or graduating from business school, you could (following Bushnell) put this ability on your checklist of desiderata for a potential mate. Places to look include yoga or meditation classes, spiritual bookstores, or possibly your local church. If you wanted to be sure, you could introduce your date to someone known to be a pathological liar (such people are not rare) and see whether they can spot them.

Some men or women of a spiritual bent may consider this idea overly materialistic but spiritual people need financial support and the prospect of being well cared for by a successful, ethical business person could be a positive life choice for many of them.

Movie / Angry Monk: Reflections on Tibet

2009-01-06T23:49:00.000-08:00

Gunden Choephel was a Tibetan monk who was born in 1903 and died in 1952, shortly after the Communist invasion, at the age of 49. He spent much of his life trying to change the old Tibetan regime, but failed. This movie is the story of his life.

According to the Swiss filmmakers, Choephel is presently emerging as a sort of Tibetan national hero, one who really "got it" early on about the need to modernize and tried to do something about it. The film is careful not to directly criticize the current Dalai Lama, nor does it discuss the slavery under the old monastic system, but the contrasts are there to be seen.

To be continued...

Genetic and Cultural Transfer Rates

2009-01-02T00:17:00.000-08:00

The human genome contains just over 3 billion DNA base pairs, or around 750 million bytes of data. (3 billion BP x 2 bits/BP = 6 billion bits / 8 bits/byte = 750 million bytes.)

Only about 3% of that, or around 22.5 million bytes, make up the 22,000 or so genes that define our bodies. The remaining 97% is so-called junk DNA. (Some have proposed encoding cultural or scientific works into the junk DNA of humans or other creatures, such as cockroaches [1], but that will not concern us here.)

Next consider a typical human who (with a mate) produces 2 children during the 25-year span of a “generation.” Each child contains half the genes of each parent, so for the sake of argument we can suggest that two children will contain roughly all their parents’ genes.

Twenty-five years contain about 9,131 days, so the rate of transmission of human genetic information is approximately:

All Information: 750 MB / 9,131 days = 82,138 bytes / day
"Good" Information: 22.5 MB / 9,131 days = 2,464 bytes / day

Culture, on the other hand, is regarded as information (e.g., how to make fires or wheels) that is NOT genetically transmitted, but rather handed down from generation to generation via oral tradition, training, or other forms of communication.

An example of possible non-human culture is “sponging” by dolphins [2]. A species of dolphin looks for edible prey by stirring up sediment with its nose. Some of these dolphins (but not all) find a piece of sponge that fits over their nose, reducing wear and tear. Some mothers apparently teach this behavior to their offspring while others do not. Humans of course teach their offspring a much larger range of behaviors, but this is an example of the basic process in action.

Point 1: Even in humans, let alone other life forms, it appears that the rate of cultural (non-genetic) information transfer is dwarfed by the rate of genetic information transfer.

Considering only the “good” DNA that makes up your known-useful genes, to transmit 2,464 bytes per day of cultural information to the next generation, assuming 2,000 characters per page, one would have to compose at least 1-1/4 pages of written material per day, every day for 25 years. Human text is redundant, and can often be compressed by a factor of 10 (e.g., with a “zip” program), so in reality to transmit 2,464 unique bytes per day might require (say) 10 pages of typing.

A person who completes college and continues to read regularly might well receive 10 (uncompressed) pages of information every day for 25 years, but few if any individuals will transmit that amount of information!

Analysis

Writers in the field of systems evolution (e.g., Heylighen) believe that our information that is worth conveying was generally obtained via a process of “blind variation and selective retention” (or "BVSR") [3]. Certainly this applies to genetic information, in which Nature makes blind changes and retains those that make the organism more fit for survival.

Further it has been proven that the process of concept formation is “NP-complete” [4], meaning that to generate explanatory hypotheses or deliberative plans there is no shortcut other than trying all possible combinations of (relevant) hypotheses to see which ones work. This can account for the relatively slow pace of cultural progress. (After it was discovered that an electric current can move a magnet, it required over 10 more years to discover that moving a magnet will generate an electric current!)

Like sponging dolphins, we have accumulated a wealth of knowledge and procedures, mostly if not entirely by random means [5], retained those that increased our fitness for survival, and handed down this knowledge in the form of non-genetic cultural information.

Point 2: Our genetic heritage transmits the BVSR’s of a few billion years of biological evolution, whereas our cultural heritage transmits the BVSR’s of a few million years of cultural evolution. Thus parents may be correct to place greater emphasis on their offspring contracting a suitable marriage than on completing higher education, which after all is merely a cultural transmission, and hence a far less significant transfer of historical data.

- - - - - - - - -
Notes:

[1] Dennis Overbye, “Human DNA, The Ultimate Spot for Secret Messages” (June 26, 2007) http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/26/science/26DNA.html?_r=1

[2] sponging dolphins

[3] Heylighen, BVSR

[4] Josephson

[5] It is further suggested that even when we purposely search for information, such as via structured research and engineering efforts, every process we follow was a result of prior BVSR. Hence while we can speed up the process, we cannot alter its fundamental “blindness,” and thus relative sluggishness. Finding “perfected” ideas is no easier today than in centuries past, even if we now have more of them to work with.

Socially Liberal Corporate Telepresence Settlements: The Outstate Project

2008-11-14T22:39:00.000-08:00

The electoral systems of the US, most states, and many foreign democracies (notably Japan and Europe) have a pronounced rural bias. Historically over 90% of the population lived on farms, but with the coming of the Industrial Revolution, people moved to the big cities looking for higher paying factory and services jobs. Today the rural population is a few percent, and talented young people are constantly leaving rural areas seeking opportunity in urban areas.

The US Constitution and most state constitutions provide for an undemocratic Senate with representation based not on population, but by state, county, or other legacy districts. Also voters living away from large cities may be less educated, more community and family centered, and more "bitter" about the lack of good paying jobs and/or the exporting of those jobs overseas.

Constitutional reforms are not being discussed seriously, thus far, because enacting them would require these over-represented voters to give away their privileges. Thus we are treated to the spectacle of the state or nation being driven by political forces originating from the least educated, most disenfranchised voters, who are more easily swayed by false, erroneous, or parochial viewpoints, and fail to see the value of social liberalism and progress.

There is, however, something Corporate America could do to improve conditions and increase the number of educated voters in conservative outstate districts, which is to create satellite offices, equipped with high-definition video conferencing systems, in lower-cost regions of the state or nation and provide credible career, housing, and transportation options to facilitate employee migration.

Preferably these should be offices, rather than employees working out of their homes; bringing them together will foster teamwork, counteract loneliness, and assure they work the expected hours. However, the benefits to both employers and employees would be considerable, most notably because home prices and the cost of living are considerably less in these areas. Employees can buy (or build) better homes for the money, and major employers could capture some of this value (by paying these workers somewhat less).

Ubiquitous telecommunications and computing mean that most high value office work need not be performed at a central site. Therefore, rather than export jobs offshore, corporations can "onshore" them to lower-cost areas. If this were done on a large enough scale, it would --

allow employees to realize much lower cost of living,
ease congestion and out-of-control housing costs in coastal cities,
eliminate gruelling commutes on choked urban freeways,
promote development of depressed areas,
provide opportunities to allow talented young people to remain there,
raise the educational level of voters and community leaders,
help liberalize social and political values in outstate areas.

Many business leaders have been frustrated that a few industries, such as agriculture, energy, and minerals, have disproportionate influence in Congress and state legislatures, with the result that prudent policies have not been enacted. In a word, our political system has failed.

Yet with the rapidly falling cost of high-definition video conferencing systems a solution may be at hand, one that does not require amending the federal or state constitutions and can drive significant operating expense reductions.

This proposal is not without its problems. Outstate and red-state areas may lack amenities such as infrastructure, health care, and good schools. However if companies got together in teams they could funnel enough investment into selected areas to get basic services in place, and if HR departments put on their thinking caps they can devise solutions (e.g., flexible real estate arrangements) that will let them continue to compete for the best talent.

Planning must be undertaken to assure that total miles driven actually falls, since rural commutes can be longer.

Employees may fear they will lose mobility and opportunities for advancement. New idioms and modalities of video and electronic communication must continue to evolve, to reduce the "HQ bias" problem, that ambitious employees must be located at headquarters to have any serious chance of advancement.

Telecommunications carriers and equipment suppliers should support this initiative, as it will drive sales growth, and corporations everywhere would benefit from better educated, more socially liberal voters. The "outstated" employees should tend to become community leaders, since those with better jobs and incomes will be better respected, thereby guiding community development.

And it provides a feasible strategy to address the long overdue need for constitutional reform, with major long term benefits for corporations and investor groups resulting from a more literate electorate and lower total employment spend.

A Simple Cure for Depression

2008-11-14T20:05:00.000-08:00

Depression is a serious, widespread mental health problem, which degrades people's life experience, causes or exacerbates other illnesses, sometimes leads to suicide or drug abuse, and may reduce life expectancy. It has spawned a host of pharmaceutical remedies, such as Prozac, Paxil, or Zoloft, although for some people the side effects may be worse than the disease.

Among its many bad effects, depression can cause a vicious circle. If you get "depressed about being depressed," it can spiral out of control and potentially kill you, especially if other factors are present such as poor health, or means of self-destruction.

I was depressed on and off for much of my life, for the usual reasons of things not working out and possible genetic predisposition. However, in November 2003 I managed to permanently cure myself, in a very simple drug-free way, which has had many good consequences.

Basically, my method is as follows. I noticed that depression manifests itself as some type of "chemical reaction" that causes pain in the sinuses and chest. Therefore, as a purely mental exercise, envision that you take a cold, wet sponge and use it to wipe that bad chemical out of those two areas.

After I did that, it came back a few times, but never for more than a few minutes, and it left again as soon as I wiped it with my imaginary cold sponge. Since then it's never come back.

Afterward you'll still have all your same problems as before. But you'll have ONE LESS problem, namely you won't be depressed. Use the time, energy and emotion freed up by this change to deal in positive ways with your other problems and get your life back on track.

Once your house is in better order you can consider helping others. Previously that might have been questionable, but now that you are more stable you can share your good fortune.

Health / Left Hip Problem?

2008-11-14T19:53:00.000-08:00

I recently spoke with my cousin who was having problem with her left hip, and I advised her what worked for me --

Keep both feet firmly on the ground when entering your car (on the driver's side). Lifting your right leg to enter the vehicle (as you have done all your life) shifts your entire weight onto your left leg and hip, which as you get older becomes weaker and can't handle the strain. Therefore, get into your vehicle rear-end first and make sure all your weight is on the seat before lifting either foot off the ground.

Likewise when exiting on the driver's side think about how you are going to put the bulk of your weight onto your right foot first. That's right, swivel around and get both feet on the ground before shifting your weight onto either of them.

A wallet in your left rear pocket can also put pressure on your hip joint. Remove and place it in a door compartment or shift it upwards in your pocket so you're not sitting on it.

Previously I had shooting pain in my left hip joint, and was having difficulty walking, but since I started doing this religiously it's gone away and I've had no problems.

If you're having pain in your right hip, and mainly enter and exit your vehicle on the passenger side, then reverse the above directions.

Be of good cheer. Life is a series of adaptations to changing conditions, which ends once you stop being able to adapt.

Movie / W

2008-10-24T00:50:00.000-07:00

Oliver Stone's biopic of President George W. Bush was lightly attended, drawing 20 people in a theater that would have held several hundred. At many points it is comedic, drawing chuckles rather than real laughter, in view of the deep gravity of the situations depicted.

It barely mentions 9/11 drawing instead on the rich material of young W's early life as the black sheep of the patrician Bush family, the heavy drinking, arrests, bad attitude, lack of focus on school, inability to hold any job, inopportune entanglements with women. The contrast with his more studious brother Jeb is duly noted.

Then around age 40 or so, he has a religious experience, stops drinking, starts attending Bible classes and praying. He also serves his father's presidential campaign, finally displaying skill and ability (with negative campaigning), and meets Karl Rove, who thereafter gets him elected governor of Texas.

The film intercuts his early life and rise to power with scenes of Iraq War planning. The characters of Dick Cheney, Karl Rove, Colin Powell, Condolezza Rice, Paul Wolfowitz, Donald Rumsfeld, and Doug Feith are all readily recognizable, some of them dead ringers.

The deliberation scenes may be fictional, based on memoirs, or merely reconstructed from news accounts. However they are chillingly realistic, depicting a president with a limited attention span, little patience for details, persistently ungrammatical speech, who prays at every meeting, reduces all ideas to slogans, believes in clear "right and wrong," and is easily misled by his agenda-driven advisors, especially Cheney, Wolfowitz and Rumsfeld into attacking Iraq without any real justification besides an unstated desire to control Mideast Oil. When WMDs fail to materialize the story is changed to democratizing the Arab world.

Josh Brolin who portrays W remarked (on Saturday Night Live) that making the film convinced him that neither he nor W should ever be president. One would think for all his political craft, he would be capable of uttering a coherent sentence or engaging in extended reflective thought, but Stone's W remains a dullard all the way.

One take away from this film is that it strains credulity that the same team who planned the Iraq War fiasco could have been involved with any alleged 9/11 conspiracy. Others must have handled that, who were not making plans in a fog of total incompetence.

Green Data Center Seminar

2008-05-08T22:08:00.000-07:00

Today I attended a seminar / marketing event sponsored by Ziff Davis with presentations by IBM and Sycomp, a data center solutions vendor (plus some attendees were senior data center consultants). The view from Sycomp’s 17th floor conference room in Foster City, CA was spectacular.

The following is a write-up of my notes, offered as a public service. [My comments are in square brackets.] I have no financial or business relationship with any company or product mentioned. Apologies for any inaccuracies or omissions. Feedback is welcome.

The IT industry accounts for 2% of human CO2 emissions, about equal to the airline industry. Electricity and cooling over 5 years exceeds hardware costs. A 1U server generates 2.0 tons of CO2 / year, versus a typical car (driven 12K mi / year) that generates 2.4 tons. Thus eliminating a server is comparable to taking a car off the road.

Site power and cooling accounts for 55% of energy consumption, versus 45% for power drawn by the IT equipment. Of the amount drawn by the equipment, 30% is for the processor and the balance of 70% for power supply, fans, memory, drives, etc. Of the 30% drawn by the processor, 80% is idle time versus 20% actual use. (Green processors are not the only issue.) Unlike other corporate players, IT wants low asset utilization, to accommodate spikes and fail overs.

Tackle the building first [not a VC play]. Talk with building engineers about fans and chillers, and whether they need to be running and when. Get them on your team. It usually desirable to retrofit to more efficient lighting, and your power company may provide rebates for HVAC upgrades. Several states offer “Energy Efficiency Credits” for upgrading servers. These may require audits, or merely be based on the N of machines replaced.

In most organizations there is a disconnect from the accounting side. Those who procure equipment don’t see the power bill, and those who authorize retrofits don’t see the power company rebate in their P&L. Then they are told to cut more, without getting to take the credit that went to the firm.

“Comfort cooling” is only needed 2,200 hours / year, during working hours, whereas “process cooling” runs 24 x 365.25 = 8,766 hours / year, nearly 4X of comfort cooling (hence the need for close attention to reducing its cost).

In former times it was gospel that data centers ran at 59° F with humidity of 52% ± 2%. Modern equipment tolerates higher temperatures, e.g. 68-98, if old habits can be changed. It’s okay to let the temperature rise to around 75-78, as long as it doesn’t fluctuate [which stresses bi-metallic connections, including solder joints]. A/C systems are more efficient at temperatures above 59.

Other energy conservation measures considered helpful include:

Motion sensors on light switches
Variable speed fans (Fan power draw is proportional to the cube of the speed)
Close up floor tiles if too much cold air in wrong place
Hot and cold aisles, in-row cooling
Liquid cooling removes heat much more efficiently than air (Rear door liquid cooling, cools back of rack. Direct cooling, cools processor.)
Reducing the hours a chiller runs makes it last longer too
Expelling hot air to the outside is cheaper than re-cooling

Power conservation technology has been pioneered in laptops (the various sleep modes), and is now being migrated to servers. Prior versions of Windows Server shipped with power conservation off by default, but in Windows 2008 it defaults to on.

Some IBM power director units (PDUs) will communicate with a software console that displays a detailed machine-by-machine analysis of power consumption patterns. If a machine is only used at certain times, do aggressive power management during its off-hours (by putting components into sleep modes).

[My take: Data center A/C should be separate from the rest of the building and maintain 75 or so year round. Servers and racks should be liquid cooled (direct or rear-door) by yet another unit. Put in all the monitoring tools you can find.]

Turning to virtualization and related IT issues –

Consolidate apps onto one machine via virtualization
Consolidate machines into one box as blade servers
Consolidate disk drives into a storage network

Inactive data such as medical x-rays can be pushed out to tape, then reloaded to disk when the patient returns 6-12 months later.

Major virtualization products include VMWare, Xen (open source), Novell ZenWorks, and IBM Director (with energy management). Oracle has something that virtualizes their database servers. VMWare is winning, because there’s no stomach to train data center staff on multiple environments. IBM servers come with VMWare on a chip.

Many ISV software products are not virtualizable. [Presumably this will be remedied in the next few years, after they master multi-core programming]. Many vendors won't support their apps when run virtually (even on the same hardware and OS).

[The Intel X86 has 17 non-virtualizable instructions. Intel is working on this issue. Presumably apps that use any of these instructions won’t run under VMWare.] Someone said BSD will not run under VMWare, perhaps for this reason, but I have not verified that.

Good candidates for virtualization are servers and processes with low utilization, such as weekly accounting jobs. High volume apps such as major commercial web servers are not virtualization candidates, since they need to run on more servers with load balancing, not fewer.

Virtualization can be done on large multi-way servers as well as on smaller blade servers, each with its advantages. There is a max of 14 blades in a unit before you need another unit. VMWare can only access up to 3.6 GB of memory and 2 processors, and is limited to one blade. It does not load balance across blades. However on a multi-processor server, it will dynamically allocate more processors to an instance that needs them. Hence multi-way servers are a prime option for virtualizing larger apps.

Virtualization is a big help in fail-over and DR situations, since a server image can be restored and back in operation on a new instance, possibly at a DR site, in 5 minutes or less. If your DR site has fewer boxes, your response time will degrade, but presumably your SLAs won't apply during a disaster.

All-in, per-server, “before” costs can run $1,800 / month (including labor), so aggressive virtualization (of servers, apps, and storage) can yield 75-90% savings. With up-front hardware costs in the $N million range this can yield a payback period of 8-11 months, and is economically viable even if only half as effective.

Data center consultants (like IBM and Sycomp) will send in people to sell your management, analyze and redesign your facility, formulate a big hardware order, and drive the installation and auditing process. Many senior execs want to know as little as possible about details.

There's a big opportunity to consolidate end-user PCs, giving users thin-client terminals with flash memory (and no drives) and virtualizing their PCs onto shared boxes. However this is not as far along. Good initial applications are point-of-sale and call centers [perhaps because such users feel little "ownership" of their box]. Lack of drives might reduce data theft.

[Virtualization introduces new security risks. Each instance is isolated from all others, and thus from anti-virus running in another instance. If clever malware can launch its own instance, nothing can touch it. Microsoft has demonstrated a proof-of-concept. No one in the room had any answers. As usual technology is being massively deployed with security in the back seat. But have no fear. VCs have recently funded 4 startups addressing virtualization security, so maybe they will come up with something.]

The Effects of Religion on the Scientific Method

2008-04-17T16:39:00.000-07:00

Very interesting. I recently found the following two quotes, when reading two different books, one day apart from each other --

= = = = =

From: Consilience (1998) by E.O. Wilson, page 31 --

"Reductionism, given its unbroken string of successes during the next three centuries, may seem today the obvious best way to have constructed knowledge about the physical world, but it was not so easy to grasp at the dawn of science. Chinese scholars never achieved it. They possessed the same intellectual ability as Western scientists, as evidenced by the fact that, even though far more isolated, they acquired scientific information as rapidly as did the Arabs, who had all of Greek knowledge as a launching ramp. Between the first and thirteenth centuries they led Europe by a wide margin. But according to Joseph Needham, the principal Western chronicler of Chinese scientific endeavors, their focus stayed on holistic properties and on the harmonious, hierarchical relationships of entities, from stars down to mountains and flowers and sand. In this view the entities of Nature are inseparable and perpetually changing, not discrete and constant as perceived by Enlightenment thinkers. As a result the Chinese never hit upon the entry point of abstraction and break-apart analytic research attained by European science in the seventeenth century." [italics supplied]

= = = = =

From: The Black Swan (2007) by N.N. Taleb, page 47 --

"The third major thinker who dealt with the problem [of induction] was the eleventh century Arabic-language skeptic Al-Ghazali, known in Latin as Algazel. His name for a class of dogmatic scholars was ghabi, literally 'the imbeciles' ... Algazel wrote ... a diatribe called Tahafut al falasifa, which I translate as 'The Incompetence of Philosophy.' It was directed at the school called falasifah ... the direct heirs of the classical philosophy of [Plato's] Academy, [who] had managed to reconcile it with Islam through rational argument.

"Algazel's attack on 'scientific' knowledge started a debate with Averroes, the medieval philosopher who ended up having the most profound influence of any medieval thinker (on Christians and Jews, though not on Moslems). The debate between Algazel and Averroes was finally, but sadly, won by both. In its aftermath, many Arab religious thinkers integrated and exaggerated Algazel's skepticism of the scientific method, preferring to leave causal considerations to God (in fact it was a stretch of his idea.) The West embraced Averroes's rationalism, built on Aristotle's, which survived through Aqunias and the Jewish philosophers who called themselves Averroan for a long time. Many thinkers blame the Arabs' later abandonment of the scientific method on Algazel's huge influence. He ended up fueling Sufi mysticism, in which the worshiper attempts to enter into communion with God, severing all connections with earthly matters." [italics supplied]

= = = = =

So there you have it. Belief that the world is an inseparable (nondual) whole that is constantly changing, wherein there are no true causes besides the will of God alone, was fatal to many early scientific endeavors. This may commend Christianity, whose belief in a God who "rules over you" may have other flaws, but in Western Europe facilitated the search for consistent determinable laws that order the world.

Notes from RSA 2008 Trade Show

2008-04-12T14:02:00.000-07:00

Notes from RSA 2008 Trade Show
Frank Sudia, FW Sudia Consulting, 4-12-08

I spent about 4+ hours walking the RSA show exhibits, which seemed more uniformly high quality than usual. Almost all booths met high visual standards, and most offerings seemed relevant. The following are my take away perceptions and things that I found interesting. This is just an unscientific sampling, for the benefit of anyone who was unable to attend, and I did not not heavily validate all these assessments.

Appliances. Many Asian-looking vendors (over half a dozen) now offer metal boxes in all form factors. They will load your software, apply your logo, pack, ship to, and bill your client. This struck me as a great example of the magic of the marketplace. Many clients prefer the appliance delivery model, which eliminates the install step, and many vendors prefer it because it may make their product harder to clone, and/or pad top-line revenue. The devices can obviously include custom security processors, etc. Some of the smaller boxes looked very cute.

ConfigureSoft. I sat through a short talk (by Dave Shackleford) explaining their audit compliance product. They've hired a full-time staff (which Dave heads) to monitor major info-sec policies (GLB, PCI, HIPAA, etc.) and continuously update their policy database, which is mapped to an inventory of your systems, allowing you to immediately assess which machines need what remediation to bring them into compliance with which policies, and possibly take corrective action at the touch of a button (when the change is amenable to that). Attractiveness would depend on pricing and maintenance costs, and software escrow might be desirable, in case you got highly dependent and they went out of business or an acquirer dropped support. Still, it seemed to deliver on its promise that you could pass an unscheduled audit.

GraniteKey. Small company with a kiosk in someone else's booth. I saw a brief demo of a risk assessment tool, offered as an online browser-based service, which allows you to build complex dependency trees, which the system will then reason about, to see whether your mitigations actually mitigate your risks. Works for problems other than security, as there was an example of leaking seals on food containers. I asked for a more in-depth demo (they are SF based). I liked it because a) you could potentially build very detailed dependencies, b) the system-generated reasoning may help catch human errors, c) many sets of eyes could review your analysis, d) analyses could be cloned and improved over time in a standard format, and e) the resulting printout would nicely document your assumptions, for when others came back later to second guess you. I could imagine a site license with multiple departments standardizing on it and sharing templates. (NOTE: I have not tested this yet.)

PKWare. How could they justify a full-size RSA booth? After Phil Katz died in 1997 his mother ran the Milwaukee-based co for a while, then his wife sold out to private investors. The investors included former corporate and banking IT execs, who transformed it into a rising competitor to PGP, with 20 developers on staff. Now there are mainframe versions of PKZip. They've added AES-256, X.509, secondary recovery passwords, USB stick encryption, and more, to target major accounts. This worked, as Citigroup has deployed SecureZip on 320,000 desktops. Now they're moving to automate customer service and shift back down market to the SME level. Their advantages are ease of use, universal user recognition, and X.509 based key management -- as long as PGP is not already deeply entrenched at a given client. I agreed with the rep that this was a potential B-School case study.

==> For a limited time you can download a free, fully-licensed, individual copy of SecureZip at http://www.securezip.com/ after giving up your e-mail. (Use MS-IE, not FireFox.)

PGP is now offering command line versions that run on mainframes and other platforms for automating batch operations.

Chilled RAM Attacks. At least 3-4 booths had huge photo renderings of big-horned sheep in polar ice conditions. (Good grief!) Apparently vendors were eager to profess that they were on top of this newly publicized vulnerability.

GemAlto / Microsoft. Two years ago GemPlus merged with another firm to form GemAlto, which now has 60% of the worldwide smart card market. I didn't see any big changes in their cards, but their rep touted Microsoft's new Identity Lifecycle Framework (ILF). The ILF is not free and runs (maybe) $14K extra, but will "turn on" and leverage the smart card features of the rest of Microsoft's software suite (Office, Outlook, etc.), e.g., for securing SOA under the .NET Framework. Evidently this is of great interest to GemAlto, since it can drive enterprise smart card deployments.

NetGear is now offering a large selection of (what I assume are) reasonably priced firewalls, secure gateways, and other boxes.

Red Hat is now offering an X.509 certificate system, and an audit policy framework.

Elsevier will soon commence publication of the International Journal of Critical Infrastructure Protection. (IJCIP). This will no doubt cost real money, but is certainly needed.

Target department stores had a booth solely to recruit security engineers to come and work for them in Minneapolis.

NapaTech offers a family of boards that can sniff all the packets off a network, with protocol flitering, traffic analysis, etc. Prices run from $1,500 to $9,000 for the more high performance sniffer (ahem, traffic analysis) boards. This reminded me of a case study of a large health care provider that logs their entire network, so if they notice a problem, such as inappropriate actions by a user, they can replay past traffic to look for related prior incidents.

Verdasys, Dan Geer's company, is taking their enterprise desktop security product down market with a B2C solution, where one initial deployment has (I think) 3 million clients. Dan may have acquired something resembling rock star status. I could not attend any of his book signing sessions, but when I mentioned that I knew Dan, the floor rep asked me to put in a good word for him, suggesting to me that he has developed a near-cult level of respect.

Bible Upanishad Parallel / Tree Idea

2007-12-18T14:45:00.001-08:00

My Mother first pointed this out to me, when I was around 16 and had decided to read the entire Bible from cover to cover. There is an interesting parallel between Jesus' "Parable of the Mustard Seed," and certain verses in the Upanishads. I don't know whether she had read about it, or had simply noticed it herself.

- - - - -

The Parable of the Mustard Seed
Luke 13:18–9 (see also Mark 4:30-32, Matthew 13:31-32, Thomas 20)

Then said he, Unto what is the kingdom of God like? and whereunto shall I resemble it? [Jesus replied] It is like a grain of mustard seed, which a man took, and cast into his garden; and it grew, and waxed a great tree; and the fowls of the air lodged in the branches of it.

The Parable of the Mustard Seed
Thomas 20

The disciples said to Jesus, "Tell us what the Reign of Heaven is like." He said to them, "It is like a mustard seed, the smallest of all seeds. But when it falls on tilled soil, it produces a large plant and becomes shelter for birds of the sky."

1. Katha Upanishad
Chapter III, Verse 1

This is that eternal Asvattha Tree with its root above and branches below. That root, indeed, is called the Bright; That is Brahman and That alone is the Immortal. In That all worlds are contained and none can pass beyond. This, verily, is That.

5. Svetasvatara Upanishad
Chapter IV, Verse 6

He from whom this universe proceeds is higher and other than all forms of the Tree of the World and of time. When one knows Him who is the indweller, the bringer of good, the destroyer of evil, the Lord of powers, the immortal support of all, one attains final Liberation.

- - - - -

Presumably religious scholars have previously noted this parallel, probably many centuries ago, but I recently came across it again, remembered what my Mother had said, and felt it was worth sharing.

Posted 12-18-07.

We are headed for a global warming disaster beyond the most catastrophic predictions

2007-06-05T18:05:00.000-07:00

Analysis and commentary by James R. Stewart, PhD
June 5, 2007

The headline of The Independent (UK) story Global warming 'is three times faster than worst predictions' (June 3, 2007) is not quite accurate, but the actual numbers are almost as scary. It refers to the article in the Proceedings of the US National Academy of Sciences, "Global and Regional Drivers of Accelerating CO2 Emissions" (May 22, 2007) which says "A sharp acceleration in global emissions occurred in the early 2000's." (refer to Fig. 1)

My analysis of Fig. 1 shows that the current observed EIA data on CO2 emissions is increasing at a rate 32% higher than the worst case scenario considered by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The article fails to discuss this 32% number, simply saying, "The emission growth rate since 2000 was greater than for the most fossil-fuel intensive of the IPCC scenarios".

The increase is mainly fed by China, as dramatically seen in Fig. 5. And this is just using 2004 data, which does not reflect the recent increased emissions from China in 2005 and 2006. In addition, the authors make no mention of the fact that their analysis ignores the effects of all other greenhouse gases.

Thus we currently have zero hope of the either the 450 ppm stabilization or even the 650 ppm stabilization scenarios and are headed for a disaster beyond the most catastrophic predictions. Clearly some dramatic action is called for. Any ideas?

Jim Stewart, PhD, Co-chair
Global Warming, Energy & Air Quality Committee
Sierra Club Angeles Chapter
1216 S. Westlake Ave.
Los Angeles, CA 90006-4118
Jim@EarthDayLA.org

NSA Talk on Digital Forensics

2007-03-14T23:22:00.000-07:00

I recently attended a talk given by Ken Shotting, Technical Director of the NSA’s Digital Forensics Branch, at Santa Clara University.

I expected more heavy duty info-sec people to attend, such as Peter Neumann who had publicized the event, but virtually no one else showed, and it was largely a recruiting pitch to 15 or so computer science students. Nevertheless Ken had some interesting things to say.

NSA handles DoD network security, but also assists the FBI when asked. Contrary to what you see on TV, everyone is very cooperative. Field commanders would like advance warning of attacks.

The USA PATRIOT Act imposed stiffer criminal penalties, making hacking a 3-year felony. This has deterred the pranksters seeking notoriety, and there is a marked shift towards professional criminals bent on financial gain.

SQL Slammer was only 376 bytes, but most exploits now seek to install an entire toolkit including keylogger, backdoor, and remote processes such as an e-mail or bit-torrent server, etc.

Hacker technology has definitely improved and new ideas are rapidly adopted. Now they like to encrypt their software and data, obfuscate their code, indirect their bot-net traffic, and so on. A while back it was rare but now “real hackers obfuscate.”

When investigating a modern hard drive for infections, one is confronted with vast amounts of data. His unit keeps a database of checksums of all “good” files so they can rapidly determine which ones to ignore. It’s harder to tell if picture files are benign.

Originally he figured he would do this for a few years, develop the procedures, and move on. But X years later he’s still there, and there are still no “standard procedures” for network security – the attacks keep evolving.

If you want to sell the NSA a tool, it must process large amounts of traffic and data with a low false positive rate. Data reduction must be at least 10 to the -9.

DoD is moving to IPv6 with a target date of 2008. The DoD network is so complex you could make money just developing tools to help them solve problems.

It is difficult to impute motives to attacks. Few DoD systems contain money, and DoD filters outbound bot-net traffic. Hence, many exploits are programmed to ignore dot mil addresses. Hackers prefer banks, commercial businesses, and universities.

Now that RIAA is actively suing people for downloading, some prefer to hack into machines, look for MP3 files, and steal them.

For examining compromised machines he prefers FTK (Forensic Tool Kit) from Access Data Corp, which requires a dongle although there is a trial version with a limit of 500 files. He also recommends Autopsy, which runs on Unix and is free, although it can examine most file systems.

Even if you think you've deleted your browsing history, it's all still there in the infamous Windows Registry. Hence you might be advised to master these tools.

In many cases it is not possible to take down a critical server that is having a problem, so they must perform "live" forensic analysis on it while it's running.

If you have a compromised laptop and it doesn’t contain super critical data, it may be quicker and cheaper to just buy a new one.

In terms of countries, the #1 origin of attacks is the US, while China (.cn) is #2.

The NSA does not get involved in criminal investigations, so they don’t need to worry about reasonable doubt. Matters pertaining to critical infrastructure handled by DHS.

Posted 3-14-07.

Two Book-Length Critiques of String Theory

2006-12-14T16:18:00.000-08:00

Two book-length critiques of string theory have recently been published --

The Trouble With Physics: The Rise of String Theory, The Fall of a Science, and What Comes Next, Hardcover by Lee Smolin, Published Sept 30, 2006
Not Even Wrong: The Failure of String Theory and the Search for Unity in Physical Law, Hardcover by Peter Woit, Published Sept 19, 2006

I plan to read both. The reviews suggest that Smolin may be more solid, while Woit is more vituperative, but Woit (a lecturer) is commended for including understandable explanations of string theory concepts, which have been kept obscure by ST practitioners, to limit others' ability to understand and criticize.

Interestingly, web videos (e.g. by the ubiquitous Brian Greene) make no effort to state any practical information about ST, conveying only super broad assertions and vague metaphors.

For another good critique, see the ST chapter in Penrose, "The Road to Reality," where inter alia he points out that higher numbers of dimensions are unfeasible since they add way too many degrees of freedom and thus push the energies out of range. (In reply to which Witten has proposed 3D formulations.)

Certainly this is a strange new chapter in the history and philosophy of western science.

Important Links for Frank Wells Sudia

2006-11-04T14:38:00.000-08:00

Major Web Resources for Frank W. Sudia

Frank Sudia Website
Frank Sudia Weblog -- "Over the Horizon"
Frank Sudia Linked-In Webpage

Web-Accessible Honors and Awards

Lifeboat Foundation Advisory Board / Frank Sudia
Kurzweil AI Big Thinkers List / Frank Sudia

Major Publications

Artificial Intelligence / Futures Studies

Frank Sudia, A Jurisprudence of Artilects: Blueprint for a Synthetic Citizen
Pre-print on Kurzweil AI, August 2001
v1.0 Journal of Futures Studies, November 2001, Tamkang University, Taipei
v1.1 Law Update, August 2004, Al Tamimi & Co, Dubai
v1.2 Special Report March 2007 on Lifeboat Foundation

Frank Sudia, Gone But Not Forgotten: Existential Risk and the Corpus Humana: The Case for Offsite Backup (March 2006)

How to Go for a Walk -- A guide to creative thinking, September 6, 2006

Patent Licensing

Frank Sudia, An Overview of Structured Licensing Les Nouvelles, December 2001

Information Security

Frank Sudia, Data Content Monitoring for Security, Integrity, and Availability, September 2002
Frank Sudia, Blocked Hash-Tree Status and Entitlement System, September 2000
Rich Ankney and Frank Sudia, Enhanced Management Controls Using Attribute Certificates, ANSI X9.45, 1999
Frank Sudia and Rich Ankney, Commercialization of Digital Signatures, ANSI X9 working paper, February 1994

Patents

Frank Sudia Patents Page

Movie / Root of All Evil

2006-10-28T03:01:00.000-07:00

Richard Dawkins is the foremost advocate of the doctrine of Evolution, and a professional athiest. A telegenic Oxford biology professor and prolific author, he is funded by Microsoft billionaire Charles Simonyi. Thus who better to ask why our world is being torn apart by fundamentalist religions, based on faded scriptures, that have gone beyond ignoring Science and are actively attacking it?

This 90 minute documentary is a film version of two shows prepared for British television, screened back to back minus the commercials. In it he visits many religious sites, interviews religious leaders, and insults them all by asking why do they believe and teach such obvious nonsense? To the most liberal one, the Bishop of Oxford, whose views seem pretty sane, he asks, why are you in religion at all?

His tour takes him to Lourdes (France), Ted Haggard's New Life Church in Colorado Springs, the Western Wall and Dome of the Rock (al-Aqsa Mosque) in Jerusalem, a Hasidic school in London, a rehearsal of a "Hell House" drama production, and more. He limits himself to the Western religions of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, and there is no discussion of Eastern religions (which are far more compatible with Evolution).

It is impossible to summarize the ideas expressed in this provocative film, which will be best remembered for Dawkins' aggressive questioning, every bit as dogmatic and self-assured as those he is attacking. He spends some time analyzing horrendous biblical passages, and looking at bones in a museum, but his discussion of Evolution is so minimal and watered down that it won't change anyone's mind.

Dawkins' job title at Oxford is "the Charles Simonyi Professor for the Public Understanding of Science," and with such prestige and backing he must have considerable resources at his disposal. Yet, alas, I must give this film a D-, or maybe an F, for failing to help the public understand Evolution and why it matters.

Rather than a travelogue of Richard sparring with Imams, this should have been a high-budget documentary on the Theory of Evolution itself, with him standing up like Al Gore in front of $3 million worth of graphical animations, interviews with top scientists, and tours of biotech labs and factories, to actually make the case for why one should abandon bogus religious beliefs! For him to just presume he's right, rather than show us why, is preposterous.

If he felt any need to debate religious leaders, rather than appeal directly to the common man, he should have prepared his talking points better. One could conclude that US evangelical leader Ted Haggard defeated him in debate, and that in all cases both he and they made no effort to formalize their assumptions, and talked past each other, usually in their case with well-honed debate points.

Despite these failings, the film has a driving energy. It is fascinating (and terrifying) to see all these intolerant beliefs on display, his included. An Islamic activist in Jerusalem tells him he'll be damned for failing to demand that women be covered. And Haggard kindly warns that the issue for the next generation will be the Islamisation of Europe. (Translation: Once we're taken over by folks who behead women who appear uncovered in public and men who trim their beards, you'll wish you had me back, who only wants to behead gays and adulterers.)

The film has no promotion budget, appearing at only one art house with an audience of 14 on opening night. Dawkins could have reached a wider audience more efficiently by releasing these two shows on YouTube and appearing on Colbert to promote them. There are enough bizarre moments to provide a field day for TV comedians!

Not Rated. No sex, no violence. However it could bore to death anyone who is not a left-leaning intellectual. There are scenes of people boarding buses in Jerusalem, and he could have intercut footage of bomb attacks, to add dramatic intensity to his long rant on religious extremism, but did not.

At a deeper level of substance, for anyone still reading, he makes a brief stab at suggesting that a basis for morality might be derived from genetics, as seen in cooperative social behaviors of chimpanzees. Yet this contradicts the famous view of his prior books that social altruism is a myth. Further, to provide full scientific disclosure, he must own up that Mother Nature spiced the broth with a small percentage of social predators (e.g., psychopaths), in an evolutionarily stable state (ESS), and hence that aggressive creeps who enslave people and lead them to their doom are part of Nature's Plan.

Movie / Jesus Camp

2006-10-04T00:32:00.000-07:00

If you liked Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth you'll love Jesus Camp, an up-close look at right-wing evangelical preachers indoctrinating (aka brainwashing) young kids in the American heartland. I thought this would be an undercover expose, but apart from the ominous soundtrack, it was clearly intended to be, and is, a rocket-propelled grenade fired at American liberals by the evangelicals themselves, using the (liberal) film makers as a vehicle.

Jesus Camp is a straight face documentary of the charismatic Rev. Becky Fisher, her ministry to kids, and her "Kids on Fire" Bible camp in North Dakota. But hers is not your old-time revival. She has her 7-9 year olds pray in tongues, repent their sins, pray to a life sized cardboard figure of GW Bush (who has surrounded himself with godly people), and she passes out fetus dolls so all can tearfully pray for righteous judges who will end abortion. All of which seems perfectly normal to her. Summarizing some views as expressed by her and her young followers --

Muslims are indoctrinating their kids to carry AK-47s and become suicide bombers, so Christians need to keep up. Evolution is not science. Global warming is bunk since temperatures have only risen 0.6 degrees. Galileo did the right thing by giving up science for Christ. When prayer was taken out of our schools, they went to hell. Harry Potter should be put to death for being a warlock. I will serve God all the days of my life. There are dead churches where people sing 3 hymns and hear a sermon, but God prefers churches where folks jump up and down. America is supposed to be God's country, but we've got to break the power of Satan over our government. (Scene of kids breaking coffee cups labeled "Satan" with hammers.) I love this (material) American lifestyle, but it's a sick old world.

Near the end there's an interview with Rev. Ted Haggard of New Life Church in Colorado Springs, Colorado, leader of an organization representing 30 million evangelicals, who the Bush Admin confers with weekly. (According to subtitles Colorado Springs is an area of intense evangelical activity.)

He believes the message is simple. Science tells us we are blobs of chemicals created by an impersonal process of natural selection, whereas the Bible tells us that God loves us, cares about us, and has a plan for us. This is an easy sell, particularly to kids searching for meaning in their young lives. The Bible tells us everything we need to know. "If the evangelicals vote, they determine the election. It's an exciting life."

And, as voice over news reports remind us, Samuel A. Alito Jr has been confirmed to the US Supreme Court, so obviously God has answered their fervent and unrelenting prayers.

Comment / H-P Board Scandal

2006-09-26T08:59:00.000-07:00

Comment / H-P Board Scandal
by Jay T. Simmons, CEO
Board Advisory Services, Inc.

Several questions that no one is asking need answers. 1) What corporate environmental factors prompted Dr. Keyworth to leak in the first place? 2) Why didn't the boardroom relationships allow them to work through a management process to identify the leak within closed doors? 3) Why wasn't their ethics policy communicated and applied throughout their vendor selection process for such a sensitive issue?

Their management process broke down. Any organization has employees that can and will violate policies. It is the leadership and management structure that creates an environment that minimizes and mitigates such risks. Why do whistleblowers blow? Because 79% of them had a moral compass that said this activity is wrong and the organization wasn't listening. They went outside as a last resort. We need to relearn the skill of managing and put leaders in place who can set the example for acceptable behavior and openness built on mutual respect.

Above comment in response to --

Experts Urge Overhaul of H-P Board
Wall Street Journal, 9/26/06

H-P should overhaul its board of directors in the wake of the leak-investigation scandal, corporate-governance experts say.

Essay / How To Go For A Walk

2006-09-06T00:19:00.000-07:00

How To Go For A Walk
By Frank W. Sudia / Copyright © 2006 / All rights reserved
September 6, 2006

Keywords: Creativity, Innovation, Nonlinear Thinking

1. Introduction

Very few people walk for creativity or mental recreation. I know this because I walk a great deal, but rarely see others like myself, who seem to be out for the sheer joy of moving in space. There have been few if any that I could recognize on a regular basis, much less see them making notes of their ideas.

Long ago our family had a dog, and as a chore we would walk it after dinner. We started having some very interesting conversations, and walking the dog became secondary. Our dog is long since deceased, and I have no one else to walk with who wants to do creative thinking, so now I walk alone. I call this “walking my inner dog.”

2. Why Walk?

Walking has been touted as one of the best forms of exercise for maintaining aerobic capacity and staying in shape. It is also, I believe, the Natural State of Man (or Woman) to be moving at about three miles per hour, with your eyes located about 5-6 feet above the ground, through an interesting natural, visual environment. It seems to bring you back to your roots, like the first humans who walked upright on the African savannah several million years ago.

More tangibly, walking can unlock creativity. It is difficult to think creatively at a desk or a keyboard. Creative thinking is non-linear. In fact, many artists and business people, intuitively aware of this problem, pace around their offices or studios, to generate blood flow, muscle actions, and moving scenery. Virginia Woolfe, for example, had a high writing desk that she could stand at. Identify a bookcase top or other ledge of suitable (elbow) height in your home or workplace and keep it stocked with pens and paper.

3. Where to Walk

Do not walk in areas where you feel unsafe or ill at ease, or which are run down or unattractive. You want to focus your mental efforts on creative thinking, not analyzing possibly threatening people or dismal, dangerous situations!

The best places to walk are the well-manicured neighborhoods of the well off, or better yet the wealthy. These are low crime areas, well cared for, with artistic landscaping, sublime architecture, nice views, etc. Dress neatly and keep moving so you look like you belong, perhaps as a guest of one of the inhabitants. Do not loiter, trespass, or do anything to attract (negative) attention. Don’t worry how they made their money, or if they are possibly crooks. Perhaps some of them are. Just remark what a great job they have done on making their properties attractive.

There's an old Chinese fable about a poor student who lived above a restaurant. He could only afford plain rice, but when he ate his meals, he could smell the fine dishes being served below, and the wonderful aromas made his simple rice taste better [1]. Because the effects of wealthy neighborhoods are highly visual, merely walking through them confers much of the spiritual benefit at a tiny fraction of the cost. In fact, given that many of the inhabitants apparently do not walk for creative effect, one may perhaps obtain a greater benefit by walking through than from actually living there.

Any sufficiently safe, park-like environment will do. But many parks are hard to get to, closed after sunset, filled with people, relatively small, or have few paths. On balance I prefer upscale neighborhoods, which are like huge sculpture gardens, and will drive or take the train across town to reach them.

4. When to Walk

I prefer early morning or late evening, when it's not too hot and there are fewer people around. Between 9:30 PM and midnight is a good time, since most folks have finished walking their dogs, but it’s not so late that the police will wonder what you’re doing out. Your chances of being a crime victim may go up after 1 AM as marauders might feel you are fair game.

If you encounter people, keep your words and thoughts light and respectful. You can speak with them, as your personality moves you, but your objective is to free-associate in great depth, not sink your mental energies into interacting socially with others.

Before leaving for a walk, I find it helpful to play intense, uplifting, well structured music for a few minutes, such as rock and roll or classical, to inject rhythm and energy into my mind. It also helps to have recently read advanced technical material, which will challenge you to excel, and give you complex new ideas to react to.

5. How to Walk

Do not focus on any destination or goal, as that will tend to dominate your thinking and override creative impulses. Have a 'circuit hike' worked out in your mind, but don’t worry about following it exactly. Let yourself be guided from moment to moment by which street looks more interesting, new, or different, etc. Look around and watch the scenery flow past your eyes. Your main goals are to achieve muscle action, breathing, and scenic flow, punctuated by brief stops to check out interesting scenes or views.

Develop a number of routes of various lengths, depending on how much time you have, or how much of a physical workout you desire. Don’t be afraid to just turn around and walk back the way you came. Tell yourself it's a completely different walk, because you are seeing the trees and houses from the opposite side.

6. What to Bring

Small stacks of ordinary 3x5 cards can be clipped together and placed in one’s pocket, ready to pull out when inspiration strikes. Purchase only ruled cards, and then write only on the plain side, since it's very undesirable to write on both sides of a card.

Cards are preferable to electronic devices, because they won’t break, have no batteries to go dead, and can't be erased by accident. A hand-held dictating machine works well when you’re driving and cannot write, but is undesirable for general use, because you must play the tapes to transcribe them, which is boring. Cards are better than notebooks, since they fit easily in your pocket and you can sort them by topic.

Bring several pens, because they can either break or run out of ink. Dropping a pen onto the pavement can seriously damage or dislodge the ball, making it instantly useless. If you will be sweating, place a thin plastic sheet on at least one card stack, turned towards your body. This helps keep your note cards from becoming soaked. Before I did this I lost several ideas when the ink ran and washed them out.

Some people may view your writing as threatening. Maybe you are an officer writing them a ticket, or a stalker or private eye taking down license numbers. Look away from any license plates or house numbers when writing and face towards “nothing.” If questioned, in a friendly or hostile manner, tell them you’re writing a book. That’s worked so far, though I've had some mistaken anger directed at me.

7. How to Cue Your Creativity

Once I am walking in a suitably aesthetic environment, I will cue myself by saying “now next is,” which brings up a list of problems or questions I was working on during previous walks, or pondering earlier in the day. Review everything you know about the situation and what are the key unsolved problems. Engage in a mental dialog, asking questions and trying to come up with answers. And when answers come, be ready to write.

You can also try other, more powerful affirmations. No one else is listening, and your goal is to generate good ideas, not worry what others think. Saying something to yourself like “I am the greatest scientist / writer / designer / lawyer / marketer, etc. in the world” can help stimulate your creative juices. (And, if you generate enough quality ideas, it might come true for you some day.)

You are trying to stimulate non-linear thought, the type that doesn’t happen easily when sitting down. So don’t worry if your ideas jump around. You can generate single ideas that fit nicely on one card, or longer ones that flow across several cards, and random ideas may occur at any time. Just write them down as quickly as possible.

Short-term memory is like RAM in a computer, whereas long-term memory is like the hard drive. ST memory is fast and fluid, but is limited in size and is soon overwritten and erased. Once you get a good idea, the clock is ticking and you have only about one to two minutes, at most, to write it down or it’s gone. Moving an idea into LT memory requires something extra, like repetition, kinesthetic actions, or special emotions, etc.

I take notes during lectures, but rarely refer to them, because note taking forces me to translate from hearing to writing, thus triggering LT memory. You will remember a route far better if you are driving rather than riding, because the intense physical focus of driving will engrave the route in your mind. Occasionally I think of something great when I have no paper [2]. Then I must repeat the idea over and over, generating emotions and creating mnemonics (images, abbreviations, doggerel, or even a poem) to burn it into my LT memory.

8. Card Management

Nonlinear thinking generates ideas in random order, so you will need some system to organize your cards. Immediately actionable ideas, like shopping items, chores to be done, things to look up, calls to make, etc. can be marked with large X’s so you don’t forget to pull them out of the deck. Add new idea cards to the bottom of your stack, so it reads naturally from top to bottom. For each walk sequence I note the date and time on the left edge of the top card. For major topics I typically place a short phrase or three-letter code in the upper left corner to help with later sorting. Use rubber bands to store cards in bundles, so they won't spill or get disorganized.

Engineers and inventors use bound notebooks for a good reason, to help establish dates of conception for legal purposes. Alas 3x5 cards do not do this, since you could insert a new card way back in the stack. If legal dating of inventions or discoveries is a concern, you should regularly make copies of your cards on a xerox machine, and deliver a copy to your lawyer or advisor, to achieve provable dates.

9. Conclusion

The procedures described above can allow your mind to expand to its maximum capacity. I have gotten phenomenal results by following them, iterated over time, to generate novel and complex ideas. It really gets powerful when you generate good ideas about your prior good ideas, which can gradually evolve into immense structures. Recently this subject has been coming up in conversation, so I decided to share my insights and experiences here in more detail.

I am somewhat hesitant to reveal my system, because the supply of serene, upscale neighborhoods is often limited (unless you are fortunate enough to live in Northwest Washington, DC) and if many others got this idea it could ruin my best walking environments. If I constantly ran into other people, walking and thinking at night, it would blow my concentration. (Or worse yet, the owners might start noticing, get fed up, and fence them off!) I prefer stillness, beauty, visual flow, and an absence of human concerns.

There’s probably very little chance that the masses will copy this system and disturb my creative solitude. But if you see someone else walking around in a serene environent, stopping occasionally to make notes on some 3x5 cards, you might ask them if they’ve heard of me, or read this essay, since right now there is no one else who does this, anywhere that I've lived for over thirty years.

Perhaps in the future communities will commission thought parks, with elegant structures or sculptures (thoughtscape architecture) and writing ledges, or designate thought paths or zones, to inspire their citizens to utilize their minds at deeper levels.

= = = = =
[1] (a Chinese friend adds:) When the restaurant owner learned that the poor tenant was enjoying the aromas while eating, he demanded a higher rent. A magistrate was called to arbitrate the dispute. The magistrate told the tenant to hand over his moneybag to the restaurant owner. The tenant sadly did so. The magistrate told the owner to shake the bag to see whether the amount was satisfying. The restaurant owner smiled at the sound of the clinking coins. Then the magistrate told the restaurant owner to give the moneybag back to the tenant. The magistrate ruled that hearing the sound of the tenant's money was fair compensation for smelling the restaurant's food.

[2] When the mathematician William Hamilton, best known for Hamiltonian mechanics, discovered the formula for quaternions (hyper complex numbers) he was walking along a river with his wife. He promptly carved the formula into a stone set into a nearby bridge. The original stone is gone, but a plaque marks the spot. I can envision him scrambling to make a written record, by whatever means, lest his wonderful idea evaporate into oblivion.

Topic / Spiritual MapQuesting into the Past

2006-09-05T15:53:00.000-07:00

And now for something completely different. I just tried this and it was worthwhile (for me, anyway).

Make (or dig up) a list of your prior home addresses while growing up, in college, first job, etc. and then go onto MapQuest, or the online mapping service of your choice, print out maps of your old neighborhoods, and study them.

This can bring back memories of walking around those places, in some cases when you were too young to have ever seen a map of them. To recall those old street names that were the boundaries of your little world. To see things that were nearby and you never knew it. And what's become of the place now, new roads that have been built, etc.

If you did very little walking, or don't want to revisit your past, maybe you won't care. But I thought I would throw this out, as a type of spiritual exercise that didn't used to be this easy, costs (virtually) nothing, and gives a nice result.

Movie / Miami Vice

2006-08-14T01:41:00.000-07:00

Ah, Miami. Where the drug deals are huge, the international traffickers are ruthless, the vice squad cops are young and handsome or beautiful, everyone has plenty of automatic weapons, pricey sports cars, private jets, powerful speed boats, fancy penthouses and mansions, swaying palm trees, beautiful water and sky, rhythmic trance music, and genuine style and mood.

The film runs 2 hours 28 minutes, but it could have been edited down to 90 minutes, since every scene lasts twice as long as necessary to tell the story. But that's not the point. It's the endless action montage, the dreamlike mood that was and is the essence of Miami Vice. Sexy young cops working under cover in extreme danger, reminiscent of James Bond.

This one is a Romeo and Juliet story. Two powerful families, the cops and the drug lords, are at war. But, in a violation of protocol on both sides, the lead undercover cop (Colin Farrell) and the #2 female drug lord (Li Gong, the aggressive girl in Crouching Tiger, now older) fall in love, leading to serious complications.

The plot's not complex, in fact there's not much there. The film's value lies in the editing, which creates a sense of endless action, disco rhythm, boats zooming, breezes blowing, style and grace. As a sign of how "cool" this movie is going to be, there are no opening credits of any kind, it just starts happening. Only at the end do we see any names.

Rated R. Strong language, graphic violence, and long (but semi boring) sex scenes.

Movie / Scoop

2006-07-31T18:18:00.000-07:00

"Scoop" (2006)
Written and directed by Woody Allen
Starring Woody Allen, Scarlett Johannsen, Hugh Jackman

A fun, light comedy / murder mystery, with a bit of a supernatural element. Not as tightly written and directed as Match Point, last year's well-received Allen film drama. However it is arguably a sequel, which reuses some of the stars of Match Point, and sets things right. This time a murderous aristocrat is caught and brought to justice, by a sweet young thing.

Splendini (Allen), a mediocre American stage magician meets Sondra Pransky (Johannsen) a young American journalism student in London, when she volunteers for one of his magic tricks. Inside the box, Sondra meets the ghost of a recently deceased reporter who gives her the scoop of a lifetime, that an aristocrat has possibly murdered someone. Sondra and Splendini then endeavor to penetrate the inner circle of this rich man, passing themselves off as wealthy Americans under assumed names, with him as her aging father. And she and the handsome young man fall in love.

Allen (now 70) delivers a nice rendition of Being There by acting totally self confident and a total klutz at the same time, and getting away with it. Johannsen (the new, new leading lady?) plays nicely against him, as someone her own age, a cute, clueless college student with glasses.

Unlike some reviewers, I was not blown away by the comedy, and there are definitely some continuity problems. But there are many nice moments to like, and I am considering going back to see it again. Had Allen not insisted on being a one-man band, and brought in a younger collaborator, the writing, continuity, and comedy could have been improved, likely yielding a timeless classic.

PG-13. Sexual situations and threats of violence.

During the the pre-release PR for Scoop, Allen gave some interviews, one of which I read in the Washington Post. I was startled to learn that it's not merely a comedic device that he thinks life is futile and is obsessed with death -- that's his true personality! So for example in Annie Hall when he gives Annie (Diane Keaton) books about death, which cause her to leave him and move to Beverly Hills, this is no joke. He really would do that.

Starting out as a kid in Brooklyn writing one-liners for others, he rapidly became big enough to control his own creative destiny. So far he has created 37 films, more than anyone but Charlie Chaplin. And he does them, one a year, to keep from thinking about the futility of life and the inevitability of death.

Frankly I think he needs to get out of Brooklyn, while there's still time, stop worrying about his Jewish heritage, and move to San Francisco (LA is too vacuous). That would get him to lighten up.

One week later. In the WaPo interview Allen laments that now he has reached age 70 he can no longer pick up 22 year old women and plan a future with them. "All that is lost to me." This seems bizarre given that he is married to Soon-Yi (his former adopted daughter with Mia Farrow) who must be in her 30s. Why does he still want to pick up 22 year olds, or feel that life with a younger woman is lost to him? Perhaps the view (of Farrow et al) that he is some kind of moral degenerate is correct.

Movie / Monster House

2006-07-24T01:15:00.000-07:00

This film had a lot going for it. Solid critical reviews, a decent concept that makes sense on all levels and resolves with everyone getting redeemed, a tight and clever script with witty dialog, state of the art animation that conveys the human actors' facial motions, and so on. So why was the theater virtually empty on Sunday afternoon of opening weekend?

Alas despite its technical and creative brilliance, the film is somewhat hard to watch. The soundtrack can be jarring. The horror themes (social and spook) create tension, but without really scaring the heck out of you, so to speak. It's a masterpiece of digital rendering, which for some reason never really becomes culturally or emotionally compelling. Also why release a Halloween movie in mid-July? To have the DVD out for Halloween?

PG animated kid adventure film. Mild sexual innuendo, but plenty of social tension, to say nothing of being terrorized by a majorly haunted house.

Movie / Pirates of the Caribbean 2 / The Dream

2006-07-16T07:40:00.000-07:00

Johnny Depp stars as Captain Jack Sparrow, a mythical pirate in a changing world, with co-stars Orlando Bloom and Keira Knightley, produced by Jerry Bruckheimer and released by Disney. This movie was panned by the critics ("more awful than usual"), yet sold more tickets on its opening weekend than any in history. How can this be?

In my view the film needs to be considered on two levels. While sporting three likeable stars and lavish production, its story line is weak. There are few blatant gaffes, and parts of it are almost coherent, however, alas none of it really makes any sense.

Yet on a different level, it has 2-1/2 hours worth of intensely produced, visually arresting, highly memorable scenes. Thus, even though these do not add up to much, it succeeds handsomely if you regard the whole thing as a DREAM sequence!

You know how in dreams you can have the most vivid, interesting, emotionally involving experiences, none has any real meaning, each is more or less a montage, which flows to the next in a random fashion, and yet the whole experience is quite satisfying at a deep level? Well, that's a pretty fair analogy to this movie.

By invoking an array of mythical creatures and personalities, it sets up the idea that this is another world, and/or an altered state. None of the characters are on drugs, other than rum (except maybe the prophetess), yet the writers and designers might have been.

A highly memorable film. You'll be thinking about it for days, pondering the continuity holes in various places, and trying to figure out what, if anything, was meant by this or that. Proves that the public does not care about plot, but loves a nice, long, vivid dream.

PG. Action-adventure comedy, comic book violence, little or no sex.

Movie / Click

2006-07-09T13:11:00.000-07:00

R-rated (sci-fi) comedy. Adam Sandler, a hardworking schmoe (married to a hot Kate Beckensdale with two young kids) puts in long hours at the office to advance his career. Then he receives a highly unusual artifact, a "universal remote control" that can mute, fast forward, or replay any aspect of his life, and much more.

At first this might look like a recipe for forgettable summer slapstick, and indeed the film is laden with slapstick, bathroom humor, bad language, sex scenes, crude behavior, and humping dogs. However the device's power is so great that it moves him to and from many decisive moments in his life, generating an emotionally profound experience! In particular it "learns" (against his later will) to fast-forward him through many years of his life, generating career success at the expense of everything else. From time to time he wakes up and asks, holy cow, what happened during the last X years? This can potentially change your view of life.

A well-earned 5-star rating. Along with its schmoe hero, hot wife, and spiritual depth, the film delivers cutting-edge visual production, as when he and Morty (the angel, well played by Christopher Walken) periodically enter the twilight zone of the device's "menu mode." And towards the end, the scenes of the future (2021) are as elaborately realized as any sci-fi movie.

Movie / The Devil Wears Prada

2006-06-30T21:36:00.000-07:00

Comedy. Meryl Streep plays Miranda Priestly, the dictatorial editor of Runway Magazine (loosely based on Anna Wintour, the legendary editor of Vogue) against Anne Hathaway as her young, lovely, naive, underpaid, and overworked second assistant. The two of them carry the story with supporting cast (ably led by Stanley Tucci and Emily Blunt) and walk-ons by major designers. A must-see for anyone in the fashion or luxury goods industry.

See this same review on IMDB.

I found it highly entertaining, with numerous witty remarks, and the audience laughed with me. Andrea Sachs (Hathaway), a recent journalism graduate, shows up to interview for the personal assistant job having never heard of Ms. Priestly. (Already we are suspending disbelief. How many of you have never heard of Anna Wintour? Pity upon your souls!)

After endless demeaning remarks about her lack of fashion sense, the lovely Miss Hathaway learns to dress in dazzling, costly outfits (a lot of Chanel, and far beyond her pitiful salary). The wardrobe staff and consulting designers must have had fun creating these.

The "devil" moniker seems overdone. Priestly may be demanding, arbitrary, and cruel -- a true boss from hell -- but she is in no sense evil or unethical. She's a real person who does what she believes is right, her corporate maneuvering is relatively genteel, and her closet is bigger than many stores!

This film gets 5 out of 5 on acting, directing, production, and editing. Where it's weak is that the plot is milquetoast, really just a "slice of life" of Andrea's most interesting year, as seen through 23-year old eyes. And I felt the ending was a cop-out, wherein she throws it all away after showing herself to be a great master, on the verge of rapid promotion. Her social network should have supported her.

Rated PG-13, sexual situations, language, a few sexy outfits, a tad of kissing, and a non-fatal car accident.

= = = = =
2 days later. The LA Times notes that the film's world of fashion is somewhat unrealistic, since what is "in" now are pieces by less known designers.

The NY Times notes that the book is uniformly venomous towards Priestly (Wintour), while the film softens this by deleting/adding material and portraying her more sympathetically. Viewed in this light it seems almost Machiavellian to give the haughty Priestly to one of our greatest living actresses, Meryl Streep, and Andrea to the ingenue Hathaway, who has heretofore lived mainly on her looks. In an interview Hathaway said she felt upstaged, but learned much. This was a fiendishly clever casting decision, and one that must have the real Anna Wintour laughing with appreciation!

My next question is whether Hathaway will develop more depth and maturity behind her bland persona. I hope so, as her career has many years yet to run.

Topic / Won't Get Dooced Again

2006-06-17T21:25:00.000-07:00

The June 2006 issue of Corporate Counsel, a magazine for in-house lawyers, had a short piece on corporate policies toward employee blogging.

"Dooced" is a slang term meaning fired for blogging, and no one so dismissed has (yet) been reinstated. Such include folks who discussed office mates in unflattering terms (one woman referred to her boss as "Her Wretchedness") or revealed company secrets. Employees may have a First Amendment right to "free speech," but that does NOT include keeping your job!

Rather than ban blogging, which seems impossible, 14% of companies (so far) have developed "acceptable blogging policies," notably Sun Microsystems, whose new CEO Jonathan Schwartz is a long time blogger. These policies may encourage employees to talk about their work in ways that reach out to customers and the community but lay down rules. Sun's policy states "you may not reveal the recipe for one of our secret sauces."

= = = = =

Note: I come from an era when any public comment was grounds for termination, so this blog ("Over the Horizon") is limited to critical reviews of public information of a non-controversial nature. Thus if my current or future employers read it, they will find some nice writing samples, but hopefully little else to be concerned about.

My reason for blogging (raison de blog?) is that I love drafting and polishing short essays, which I may revise a dozen times before I'm satisfied, and it seemed a shame not to share them. I have done little to promote it, so it probably goes unnoticed by all but a few friends. (Allegedly 1,000s of blogs are scams created solely to raise a website's search engine rankings.)

However, if you are seeking tightly written, bite-sized, timely, literate, casual, congeneal, and/or insightful writing, it is hoped that you will find "Over the Horizon" a satisfactory resource.

Movie / The Lake House

2006-06-17T16:46:00.000-07:00

If you loved Just Like Heaven you'll surely like The Lake House, since the two films have a lot in common. Boy (an architect, Keanu Reeve) meets girl (a doctor, Sandra Bullock) and they fall in love, but remain separated by a supernatural problem that needs to be resolved.

In this case they meet by exchanging notes through a mailbox, except they are disconnected in time by two years. She is living in 2006, in his future, while he is still living in 2004, in her past. Each has a less than suitable girl/boyfriend, and longs for true love with the other.

The Lake House is a romance novel, not a comedy since it has few jokes, but the drama level is mild, as the tension is mainly them trying to resolve their "long distance" love affair, plus him trying to reconcile with his "difficult" father, a famous architect and builder of the unique house on the lake. Reeve and Bullock are a suitable match and give a convincing performance of being in love.

A nice example of how a fairly simple script can be produced with a couple of likeable stars to create a satisfying, successful film without a lot of special effects. Once the "conceit" of the time transporting letter box is established, the script never deviates from that idea, which generates a sufficient plot depth -- for about a 90 minute film, which at 116 seems overlong.

(It might have been nice if Reeve's departed mother were shown to have a hand in the magic, but she stays out of the action. Also they could have cleaned up in the stock market, with her telling him which stocks to buy and sell, but neither of them thinks of this.)

Rated PG. No drugs or sex, other than some passionate kissing at the end, when they are united in real life. There are some mild hospital scenes, and someone is killed in a car accident, but these events are not dwelt upon.

Movie / An Inconvenient Truth

2006-06-04T19:13:00.000-07:00

Documentary. Highly recommended (5 stars). Somewhat of an intellectual horror movie. Rated PG for mild thematic elements.

Someone spent several million dollars to produce a film version of Al Gore's global warming powerpoint talk, with him giving it in front of a variety of audiences, with high-tech large-screen animated graphics. "Hi, my name is Al Gore, and I used to be the next President of the United States."

If you have been reading consistently about global warming, there will be little new information, but it is nicely formatted, and presents a good portrait of the new Al Gore, more mature now after the hard knocks, touching briefly on various points in his autobiography. Could be positioned as a campaign video, if he decided to run again.

If sea level rises 20 feet, an optimistic estimate, it will inundate land that is currently home to 100 million people, creating a huge refugee crisis. Also perhaps 1/4 of the world's people depend on melt-water from Himalayan glaciers for their drinking water, and when that source goes away will face an acute water crisis.

The Earth's atmosphere is thin and light, like a coat of paint on a basketball, so it is possible for us to influence it. The data show a steady upward march of CO2 levels since the Industrial Revolution, with detailed records since 1957. CO2 exceeds the 360,000 year high recorded in the Antarctic ice, and is poised to zoom off the scale.

Polar ice reflects ~90% of the light that strikes it, whereas open sea water absorbs ~90% of the light's energy, so once the big ice caps melt they are not going to re-freeze anytime soon. There have been reports of polar bears drowning, because they cannot find any ice after swimming 60 miles.

The US is by far the worst offender, producing ~33% of the world's total greenhouse gas, more than Latin America, Africa, and Asia combined. Our average fuel economy remains stuck at ~20 mpg, whereas in China they are shooting for 50.

Not one peer-reviewed study has quesitoned the premise that global warming is happening, whereas 53% of articles in the general media express doubt, thus leading to confusion among the public.

Climate change will make the world a less liveable place, with more droughts, more big storms, more mosquitos bearing diseases, and a major loss of inhabited land along the coasts, 1/4 of Florida, and food-producing land in the delta regions and Holland -- BUT -- the worst of it still decades away, so who cares? It might still be possible to turn the tide, by adopting practices to curtail CO2 production, however it needs to be done immediately, and foremost in the US.

Movie / X-Men: The Last Stand

2006-05-30T12:48:00.000-07:00

Think of a comic book, about 3/4 inch thick, targeted at boys 9-12 years old, with many characters (the mutants) having a wide assortment of super powers, a whole army of them in fact. Judging from the record Memorial Day box office gross, that audience might include about half the world.

Critics fume that the plot has little meaning, but I enjoyed it. Many stars (led by Ian McKellen and Halle Berry), dozens of characters, hundreds of extras, mega-millions worth of CGI effects, and ample comic book level sex and violence. It confronts all the issues of life, love, psychology, politics, law and order, etc. when humanity evolves to having super powers -- and resolves none of them -- but who cares? Just take a team of great screen writers, milk every comic book plot device to the max. The super-hero comic book genre is very mature, so there is plenty to work with.

The mutants' problem is that their super powers come with no instructions, so many of them are weirded out by and/or ashamed of their magic abilities, and want to live a normal life. But rather than directly address the philosophical, scientific, or ethical problems posed by super-powers, these simply spin out of control, causing lots of destruction. Then a drug company comes up with a cure, which turns rampaging mutants back into normal humans.

You are not going to this movie for its profound plot, but rather to see an animated comic book with great special effects and many decent comedic takes on super hero issues. I was later told there is a bonus scene after the lengthy credits. I did not see it, but you might want to sit through them to the bitter end.

Movie / The Da Vinci Code

2006-05-19T23:15:00.000-07:00

Tom Hanks and a pretty French girl in high heels on a quest for the Holy Grail in the churches and museums of France and England.

See also my very similar IMDB review.

Interesting and worth seeing, but not as good as Raiders of the Lost Ark, the first Star Wars, or the first Ghostbusters, and hence somewhat over-hyped. I agree with the SF critics that while the characters are in constant danger, people keep getting shot, and a centuries-old mystery is about to be revealed, it's not all that thrilling. Maybe Ron Howard's directing is too conservative, or the book is a glorified Agatha Christie novel.

For those who haven't read it (myself included) "The Da Vinci Code" is a Grail-Quest novel, set in France, featuring a renegade Catholic sect (with some Opus Dei members) who want to wipe out all traces of the Grail, versus another ancient secret society (The Priory of Zion) who are sworn to preserve it. The quest involves a series of clues, like an Easter Egg hunt. There are many mysteries and reversals as characters are revealed to be part of one group or the other, and engaging in gangland style warfare.

Despite the religious controversy, few would (I hope) mistake this for serious history. The list of what-ifs goes on and on, the plot is driven more by hunches and coincidence than evidence, and the underlying premise of a secret that will shake the foundations of Catholicism might have been electrifying 50+ years ago, but is ho-hum today, at least in the West.

(In particular, since Christianity didn't exist in France in 43 AD, any descendants of Jesus would have lived in total obscurity for centuries. Also during the Middle Ages many European monarchs tried to claim descent from the Caesars, Jesus, King Solomon, or whomever, to bolster their claims to the throne. So there was ample motive and opportunity to fabricate such a romantic legend in Merovingian France, perhaps including still-existing secret societies.)

This movie needed a director who realized he could not coast on the bestselling book. Just narrating the story isn't enough. Why is the Grail such a big secret? How will the Church 's foundations be shaken? What was the rich meaning handed down through the centuries?

Even just some eerier music, more portentous scenes and lighting, or a few miracles could have made a big difference. Plus the idea that this is a "millennial revelation" of an ancient secret (with current news value) is not leveraged at all. "The Bridges of Madison County" did a much better job of faking authenticity for emotional impact.

Many in the audience, and anyone who's seen or read "Possession," will guess the secret at least 40 minutes before the end, so how suspenseful can that be? Author Dan Brown did a nice job of borrowing themes from "The Celestine Prophesy" (ancient religious quest with violence) and "Possession" (self discovery via historical research) and weaving them with some old French legends. But that's it -- it's a decent novel, not a major cultural event.

Rated PG-13. No sex, not even a kiss, but brutal killings, some nudity, drug references, and disturbing images.

Movie / Tristam Shandy: A Cock & Bull Story

2006-04-09T10:53:00.000-07:00

Comedy (British). Rated R, based on a good number of sex scenes, an Al Pacino imitation, and ongoing discussion of injuries to male private parts. Also the hero is depicted nude inside a giant model womb.

See also my very similar IMDB review.

Only perhaps 10% of this film attempts (with varying degrees of seriousness) to enact scenes from the "unfilmable" classic novel "The Life and Opinions of Tristam Shandy, gent." (by Laurence Sterne, 1767). Rather it is an Altman-like parody of the whole Masterpiece Theater / Merchant Ivory historical film genre, which it deconstructs in a Monty Python / Tom Stoppard / Woody Allen-like manner.

Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon deliver a good number of funny bits, some of which have you laughing on the way home, but the film is mainly about the behind-the-scenes politics, struggles, failures, and chaos of low-budget indie filmmaking: the writers and producers constantly changing the script, the actors' rivalry for credit and screen time, the pressure from girlfriends, agents and gossip writers, scenes bombing or being cut, and so on.

The big problem, in my opinion, is that the filmmakers don't deliver ANY continuity of the underlying film. We see all the cooks in the kitchen, stirring the pots, but at the end they don't serve up a plausible sequence of "Tristam" scenes, to make it look like something artistically valid was achieved. The viewer is left to assemble the out-of-order takes in his or her own mind. They could have easily delivered a "happy ending" wherein, out of all this confusion, their picture had integrity and was a success, but they don't. It just fizzles out into a kind of nihilist theater of the absurd.

The foregoing, coupled with "British style humor," is sufficiently unsatisfying that I would not recommend this film for the general viewer. However, for anyone involved with the world of acting and filmmaking it's a must-see, a wonderful, satirical portrayal of what it's really like to make and star in an independent historical drama. A real "actor's film."

Two days later: This film resembles viewing the "making of" and "out-takes" sections of a modern DVD, without the actual movie!

Eleven days later: Here's an idea. Take some other unfilmable historical novel and do what these guys failed to do. Make a similar comedy, with lots of behind-the-scenes, making-of, and out-take segments, except while you're at it, shoot a random sample of a dozen or so (i.e., not 120) dead serious, high quality, Masterpiece Theatre-type scenes (with musical score, etc.) When you're done mocking everyone, flash through bits of these in the viewing room, and then at a film festival, showing the audience weeping and giving it a standing ovation! Thus you can depict that your adaptation was a thunderous success, and send everyone home happy and satisfied, without making any actual effort to adapt that old piece of garbage. Got it?!

Movie / Sophie Scholl: The Final Days

2006-04-01T00:02:00.000-08:00

Great movie. Winner of several German film awards, and Germany's entry for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Film. A well produced, briskly paced, unsentimental, powerful portrait of intelligence (beauty) and moral courage in the face of tyranny. "Based on true events."

Sophie was a 21 year old university student in Munich who belonged to an underground group called The White Rose. In early 1943, she, her brother, and various other students were arrested, interrogated, tried, and executed (7 days later) on charges of high treason for distributing anti-Nazi leaflets. They committed no violent acts, but called for an end to the war (which after the defeat at Stalingrad appeared unwinnable), and the end of Nazi rule.

How, among millions of lives lost under the Nazis, did history come to focus on Sophie? One of her leaflets got out of the country to Scandanavia and later the Allies air dropped a million or so copies on several German cities with the title "German Students' Manifesto" (a much better funded leaflet campaign). Presumably someone then put this together with court records and personal remembrances.

Like other students on full scholarship, Sophie is highly motivated and brilliant, if lacking in common sense. Hence she is more than an intellectual match for the mediocre party officials, police goons, and kangaroo jurists who investigate and prosecute her "crimes." Although a Protestant, she appears on her way to "canonization" as an exemplar of conscience, nonviolence, and peace making.

There have been two prior movies of Sophie's story, but this one had the benefit of additional documents from the East German archives. Her cell mate Else was a real person, so presumably those moments are authentic. Also the actress closely resembles Sophie's photos.

No sex, violence, abuse, or strong language, but NOT a film for children, owing to its very mature subject matter.

= = = = =
Four days later. It occurs to me that you could make a very different movie, based on the same events, from the viewpoint of (say) descendants of other White Rose members. They were all in this resistance group. Sophie's brother got the hotheaded idea to distribute the extra flyers on campus during class, hoping to incite an uprising. Sophie not only didn't stop him, but got the even stupider idea to push them over the bannister into the crowd. As a result of her wildly immature and irresponsible actions, she got all of them arrested and killed. Cut to those who lost their loved ones because of her, such as the children of Paul Probst. BUT, this would conflict with the idea that she is a saint! Oh well...

Issue / Proof of the Existence of God?

2006-03-28T23:14:00.000-08:00

The "proof of the existence of God" problem has been around since at keast the Middle Ages, and I won't claim that this is the last word, but it is interesting to consider the following line of reasoning.

First consider the idea that the universe might be infinite in size, as proposed by cosmologist Max Tegmark. Nodding to the "many worlds" approach of Everett, he gets to a similar place by postulating that we are inside a "Hubble Volume" of what we can see from here, which gets 1 light-year bigger every year, and then imagining there could be zillions of these strewn everywhere, out to 10 to the 10^110 light-years and beyond. A veritable infinity of universes, many just slightly different from this one, but all extremely far away.

Next add the fact that many physical constants of our Universe are very finely tuned. According to mainstream estimates, if these constants had been randomly set, the chance of our universe supporting life was less than 1 in 10^200. This is sometimes cited in support of the theological hypothesis of intelligent design (I-D), i.e., that some "designer" must have done this, since it's too unlikely otherwise.

But being human in a life-supporting universe, while certainly a great privilege, can't be the end of the line, because we have not yet peaked as a species and there's no obvious limit on how high we can go (assuming we steer clear of early extinction). Many things that we previously thought were barriers have been surmounted, and we are rapidly advancing on the others.

Hence (as various other writers have postulated) human evolution might advance far enough that we could affect the initial conditions of creation, of this or another universe. We're still a good ways from that now, but far closer than we were even 50 years ago, and showing no signs of slowing down.

Continuing with our "proof," we believe there must be competition at all levels for available resources. Despite the existence of an infinite extent of space (of whatever dimensionality), only some portion of it is available (or accessible) and in the proper condition to form into a particular universe, and once it goes into that universe, it can't be used to create a different one at the same time.

Only a tiny fraction of randomly created universes would contain life, including highly intelligent life that could eventually evolve far enough to adjust its own initial conditions, or do it for others. However, if we assume the cycle repeats, then universes that can recreate themselves should be overwhelmingly more likely to exist than lifeless ones that create no ongoing supply of highly intelligent beings to carry on the future work of adjusting the parameters!

As we advance toward a heaven-like state, we'll progressively overcome our material limitations, and many of us may retire or disengage, but some will no doubt choose to carry on the work of refueling the fires of creation. At least to assure that enough life-bearing universes get created. And over the expanse of infinite time, such designed universes should thus become overwhelmingly predominant. (Like a superior species that claims the good resources.)

Hence there is almost certainly a residue of advanced intelligence that influences the initial conditions of the universe(s) in order to foster Life, BECAUSE such a configuration is far more likely to be sustainable across an infinite expanse of time, rather than fizzling out after one or at most a few cycles. THUS if you assume we're at T = infinity NOW, with respect to the start of all possibility, then it's virtually certain (i.e., overwhelmingly likely) that this is how we got here.

The foregoing does not depend on the accuracy of Tegmark's theory (whether the background space is flat or higher dimensional), or on whether it is truly infinite in size although that seems like a reasonable assumption.

A more formal statement is as follows. We assume that a) TIME is infinite and that an infinite or "nearly infinite" amount of time has already elapsed, b) the creation of universes is a cyclical process, c) universes that sustain life are vanishingly rare under random conditions, d) there can be some communication of advanced knowledge from one universe to another, e) universes eventually run down and need to be recreated, if organic life and awareness are to continue, f) even if universes could still be created at random, it is more likely that advanced intelligence would seek to impose itself. Hence g) over an INFINITE period of time, this imposing influence (even if initially small) would eventually come to dominate virtually 100% of the time, with vanishingly few old style "random" universes remaining.

Originally posted 4-27-03, extensively rewritten 3-28-06.

Movie / V for Vendetta

2006-03-25T16:32:00.000-08:00

Written and produced by the Wachowski Brothers (creators of the Matrix trilogy), starring Natalie Portman (as "Evey") in her heaviest acting role to date, based on a DC Comic whose author has publicly disavowed the film (after signing away his moral rights), distributed by Warner Brothers.

An excellent piece of 5-star filmed entertainment, rated R, no sex but ample violence, murders, torture, and disturbing images, to say nothing of highly controversial political themes.

Homage or debts to prior films include Batman, Beauty and the Beast, Brazil, Broadcast News, Count of Monte Cristo, Farenheit 911, Kiss of the Spider Woman, Network, Phantom of the Opera, Sin City, and probably others I missed, plus the Osama bin Laden videos.

The story is set in a future England under right-wing relgious rule. "Strength through Unity. Unity through Faith." The dictator, name of Adam Sutler (almost rhymes with Hitler) played by John Hurt, came to power a few decades earlier during a period of social chaos induced by bio-terror. One early survivor apparently acquired super-human abilities, and has vowed to take revenge on the real perpetrators of this villany. He calls himself "V," and due to being disfigured in a fire, he is never seen without a mask (of Guy Fawkes). Somewhere along the way V must have inherited or stolen a fortune, since he can carry off complex covert operations unaided. Your classic overfunded superhero living in a lavishly furnished underground complex.

On one level it's a stock comic book revenge story, well done, but at the same time, the political oppression he's attacking is a searing commentary on current events! A government that always lies, a news media that repeats the lies, bloviating TV personalities, high level corruption, torture, pedophile priests, brutal persecution of gays. The film makes the case that these folks deserve to die at the hands of a romantic, Batman-like hero / terrorist.

The writing is solid throughout, and there is an exceptional scene in which a "Jay Leno" like character tosses his censor-approved script and broadcasts a skit lampooning the dictator, a comedic masterwork. I had some quibbles about V's bizarre treatment of Evey (in the "Spider Woman" segment) but on balance it didn't matter, so I'll leave you to figure out that one.

Book / The Road to Reality: A Complete Guide to the Laws of the Universe, by Roger Penrose

2006-03-19T23:37:00.000-08:00

This monumental overview of mathematical physics could more adequately be handled by 4-6 separate book reviews. For anyone who has ever read popular physics and had a deep desire to grasp the real math, here it is! Boiled down to a convenient 1,085 pages. It took Penrose 6 years to write, and sales have been so brisk (four printings so far) that he's had to focus solely on finding and fixing errors, leaving no time to publish answers to the exercises.

The first 16 chapters (378 pages) are solely mathematics, giving a quick brush up on number theory, complex numbers, Riemann surfaces, Fourier series, hypercomplex numbers, Cantor's infinities, manifolds, fiber bundles, guage connections, exterior calculus, and so on. Then we head into spacetime, analyzed in the Aristotelian, Galelian, Newtonian, Minkowski, and Einstein pictures. Then relativity, basic quantum mechanics, entanglement, the "Standard Model," quantum field theory, etc., etc. -- explained in detail using the math from the first part.

There are two ways to approach this book. As Penrose suggests, and many of us noticed long ago, (a) you can learn a lot by reading the easy parts and skimming the rest. Or else (b) there is enough material for at least 4 semesters of class work. In the latter scenario, budget (say) 10-15 hours a week over a 2 year period, download the 47 page errata sheet from Penrose's website, and work through the 1,000+ exercises and problems in the text. (Also consider purchasing a copy of 'Mathematica' which was designed to perform physics calculations, and perhaps take a class to get proficient with it.)

I'm about 2/3 of the way through, and have learned many things. For example, the infinite dimensional "Hilbert space" is not a physical spacetime, but a state space of all the variables in some system. An "operator" is a differential function, such as d/dx + (d/dx)^2. Einstein owed a huge debt to Riemann, Minkowski, Poincare, and others. Tensors are mandatory, central to general relativity, and grasping their cryptic notation would be an achievement. However, when Maxwell's Equations are presented, and this seemed rather gratuitous to me, they are given solely in the form of hieroglyphic tensor diagrams!

On a more humorous level, it seems Penrose (a British citizen at Oxford Univ.) is not above national rivalries. For example, his account of quantum entanglement covers the work of John S. Bell, a "Northern Irish" physicist, and several British-sounding scientists, but does not mention the famed "Aspect Experiment" nor any Continental scientists, and his bibliography lists no papers by Alain Aspect, a Frenchman!

I may extend this review after I complete the book, but there is so much material that it creates a definite level of fatigue -- concepts going in one ear and out the other! I am reading through in mode "A", trying to get a feel for what is there, but it remains to be seen whether I will go back through in mode "B" and spend two years working the exercises. As if this were a "Dummies" book, all exercises are graded into three levels of difficulty: easy, ponder this, and hard, signified by little icons showing the face of a pupil. But, trust me, this is NOT a "Dummies" book!

Movie / The Ister [aka The Danube]

2006-03-11T13:14:00.000-08:00

Needless to say, when I heard there was a 3-hour movie (with an intermission) combining a travelogue of the Danube with an in-depth discussion of the philosophy of Martin Heidegger, who joined the Nazi Party, including a tour of a Nazi death camp (Mauthausen), I dropped everything and drove 30 miles out to San Rafael to see it on opening night. There I joined 40+ other people in a theater that could have held 60, and ~25 of us were still there at the end.

How about this movie concept? Heidegger, author of "Being and Time" and protege of Husserl (a Jew), became head of Freiburg University under the Nazis, and later gave an infamous talk equating the Holocaust with mechanized farming. He had written an essay about Hoelderlin's poetry (also beloved by Wagner), and there is an extant recording of him reading Hoelderlin's poem "The Ister." The Danube (anciently known as the Ister) is ~2,400 km long, from its origin in the Black Forest to its mouth at the Black Sea, most of which is a commercial waterway, with dams and locks, suitable for tour boats. Book yourself on a friend's boat leaving the mouth, shoot a lot of footage all the way up, get out and tour various cities, including those recently bombed during the NATO campaign against Serbia, and intercut this with a long series of interviews with philosophers, archaeologists, architects, an ecologist, a film maker, and so on.

It somewhat resembles the journey in "Heart of Darkness" up the Congo into darkest Africa, except it is to the darkest moments of European history. Periodically, as if we are on a long plane flight, along with the extensive subtitling, long written quotes, section headers, place names, etc. we see our "mileage remaining" -- "1,975 km to Source." At the end we go up some alpine tributary (-60 km) above the source.

The bulk of the film is long talking-head interviews with philosophers (mostly in French) about Heidegger and his ideas. Here in America we have little or no memory of a time before the Industrial Revolution, and we were already in a state of dynamic change (New World-ization) when it hit, whereas in Europe they rightly saw it as a big inflection point, in which a world that seemingly never changed was transformed to one in perpetual change.

As with any credible philosophy there is a long series of seemingly deep, thought provoking observations, in which some pattern is alleged, often as part of a larger one, and the viewer (or reader, of text on a black screen) can acknowledge, "yes, that looks deep." Yet, after all these years (I ask), how much (positive) influence has it really had? Techne, the power of technology and economics, which the ancient Greeks dismissed as unrelated to truth or science, is in the saddle now and drives everything else, the Internet being only the most dramatic example so far.

The film, produced by two Australians, is a low-budget affair that misses many opportunities. The river footage has a few too many industrial sites (techne). The sound track quotes Bruckner here and there, but could have been far more powerful, with brooding symphonic passages and poignant folk melodies. And the points about techne and the Holocaust, while valid and deep, could have packed a lot more dramatic punch. A movie is supposed to "show rather than tell," but "The Ister" is a nice illustrated lecture.

Another attendee told me he was a poet. Of those remaining at the end, 90% also sat through the credits in their entirety! Perhaps that says something about the mindest needed for philosophy or poetry, namely the ability to hold one's attention upon something without effort.

Movie / The New World

2006-03-05T17:18:00.000-08:00

Warning: This review may contain spoilers.

The best time to write a film review is while you can still hear the theme music playing in your head -- in this case some rich but tuneless horn textures from Wagner's Das Rheingold, set against sky and water shots.

I wouldn't give this movie five stars, four is enough. And I don't see it as breaking new ground in film making. Much of it is a voice over documentary (based on diaries) of the life of Pocahontas, the landing of the English at Jamestown in 1607, her saving Capt. John Smith from execution by her father's men, the first colonists starving and going crazy, a number of pitched battles as the Indians seek to evict them, and so on.

The casting, acting, and directing are solid all the way through. All the actors and particularly the girl look authentic, as do the many Native American extras, the locations, etc. What makes this film great is the profound / deep sense of transformation in Pocahontas' life, from the chief's favorite daughter, to the wife of an Englishman (not Smith), to meeting the King and Queen and becoming a favorite at court, the "Princess of the New World." This is what really hits you and has you weeping at the end. What an amazing personal journey!

She and Smith experienced true love in the forest, but he dumped her to seek his fortune elsewhere, and they told her he was dead. So she married another kind and reliable chap, and changed her name to Rebecca. Later the two meet again, on some English estate, she realizes he was not the right man after all, and goes back and hugs her husband and father of their child. Smith totally goofed, thinking she was "just a native," and now he sees her in a costly gown, but it is far too late.

The girl's unique personality is the driver all the way through -- saving Smith, getting food to the colonists to save them from starving, and, after her father disowns her, her successful adaptation to English life, culminating in her reception at Court. Then unfortunately on the return voyage she took sick and died, which folks had a habit of doing back then.

This film makes you sit through too many poetic, impressionistic, wilderness and sky shots, with endless voice overs, to experience episodic moments of greatness. However, the overall impact is powerful, so on that account highly recommended for those with a taste for slow-paced historical drama. There is a fair amount of hand to hand combat and gun violence, and the English are portrayed as much more uncivil, unhappy, and culturally screwed up than the Indians, but there is no sex and little psychological tension.

Gone But Not Forgotten: Existential Risk and the Corpus Humana: The Case for Offsite Backup

2006-03-01T16:39:00.000-08:00

I recommend we all get behind the efforts to digitize the world's knowledge and literature, such as "Google Books" and similar projects, because humanity is facing major existential risks. Some human extinction scenarios that we could induce ourselves include --

Civilization set back to Middle Ages (99% lethal virus)
All life terminated (nanotech grey goo eats all carbon)
Entire planet destroyed (micro black holes trigger gravitational collapse), etc.

Plus there are the "conventional" astrophysical risks, including --

Comet or asteroid strike, triggering super volcano activity
Supernova of nearby star (2 years of gamma rays, must live underground)
Wandering dwarf star or mid-size black hole, pulling Earth out of temperate zone
We enter dense interstellar gas and dust cloud, poisoning our atmosphere, etc.

In view of these non-trivial risks that everything that we have ever created could be lost, we should digitize and beam or otherwise deliver all our enduringly valuable cultural data into outer space, to assure that someday, somewhere, someone might be able to appreciate our works, and allow them to live on, even if we do not survive. "Gone but not Forgotten!"

To achieve this we should micro engrave as much as possible of our civilization's "record" (the "corpus humana") onto glass or metal plates to be sent up with every future interplanetary space craft. Thus if Earth were lost, someone could find our data on Mars, Saturn, or out in space. Just a standard "offsite backup" process. We should back ourselves up on a regular basis! Sending copies on many craft affords redundancy, in case some (or many) are lost or destroyed.

As Richard Feynman pointed out in his famous 1959 paper, atoms are small enough that you could engrave a photographic copy of the (then) Encyclopedia Britannica onto the head of a pin with room to spare. Obviously the data could be far denser if it were encoded into digital bits rather than character images, so perhaps a few dozen 12 inch diameter plates would do it.

Also, personal genomes are costly now but getting cheaper all the time, and 6GB is not a lot of data. One day soon these too can be beamed up and/or engraved onto space objects, so that someday, somewhere, someone could recreate "you," like a Jurassic dinosaur, and give "you" a chance to live again.

As our technology advances, we can do even better, by also shipping into space along with your genetic code the necessary chemicals and friendly robots to actually make and raise you again on some faraway planet (discussed by Bostrom).

Although we have a long way to go to defend ourselves against existential threats, it would be simple enough to digitize the corpus humana and deposit it off-Earth, right now, using existing technologies, and initiate a program of regular backups, to cheaply and easily reduce our risk of existential catastrophe! If the engraved data-bearing components can double as structural members or shields, their weight factor could be near zero, adding little to launch costs.

Of course there may be copyright problems (!), as Google found when an authors' group sued them. However, in all likelihood no human will ever read the data, and omitted works risk historical oblivion, so wise authors will grant permission.

= = = = =

Jim Dator says that several years ago he and Jim Burke proposed a repository on the Moon (and perhaps another on Mars). To me this sounds like a permanent installation or at least fancy equipment requiring a special mission, plus maintenance missions. Whereas my proposal (static plates) is financially and technically feasible today. The only thing missing is a semi-complete database of human works.

Wolfram's Talk at PARC (Feb 2003)

2006-02-13T22:52:00.000-08:00

A New Kind of Science by Stephen Wolfram (2002), ISBN 1-57955-008-8.

Wolfram’s talk sold out the PARC auditorium, and 95% stayed an extra half hour till 9:30. I found it enjoyable, informative, entertaining, and took a bunch of notes. Lots of nice graphics.

Nothing new, but a more concise (than the book :) explanation of his view that “the universe could be a computer,” like the edge of a seashell, running some very simple program. The best question (also the first) was a guy who asked “if the future is deterministic, then what is my question going to be?”

His most often repeated point was his principle of “computational equivalence,” which says that any complex equation is pretty much like any other, there’s an upper bound, lots of things reach it, and they look a lot alike. But I don’t recall any quantitative evidence or reasoning to back this up. He said read the last part of Chapter 7.

The take home point, if there was one, was that if you were trying to program a molecule, you might try starting with Rule 110, rather than trying to emulate a Von Neumann architecture. He will soon put a dictionary of computational primitives on his website, like an organic molecule database, for people to use as raw material.

If some complex behavior is hard enough to predict, and we can only discover it by running the program, then “free will” can emerge that appears “free” of its underlying laws. Turing machines that “win” are usually the most complex, resembling engineered programs.

Randomness can arise from 3 sources, 1) external variations, like a boat bobbing on unseen waves, 2) initial conditions, driving chaotic systems that highly depend on them, and 3) implicitly within CA (cellular automata) rules, a source of the truest randomness, and yet it arises from no external actions or inputs. Mathematica has used Rule 30 as a random number generator for 15 years.

He laconically summarized his business success: “I didn’t hire a management team. I managed it myself.”

He felt that quantum computing may be less than it’s cracked up to be. There is way too much idealization of so-called quantum events. The measuring device, which must amplify some tiny signal to huge proportions, needs a lot of time to recover its equilibrium between hits, and to get more efficient it would need infinite time and infinite energy.

As to the criticism and controversy that have surrounded him, he admitted he hadn’t read many of the comments. They are thinking of trying to respond to some of them, but can’t yet draw a line between comments worthy of an answer, and those that are not.

Established peer reviewed science can’t handle big, non-incremental shifts. All new paradigms are attended by controversy, and the degree of anger correlates to their enduring value. He’s published the Mathematica Journal for 10 years, and peer review is not what it appears. It’s not easy to get meaningful comments, especially on big picture material that would need 1000 papers to describe in incremental terms. Most of the comments he got during his career were on his most technical papers, not his general ones.

If his detractors think his science is garbage, “how much longer can they keep saying it?” Sooner or later it will no longer be news. He’s received 15,000 e-mails from people who want to know more about how to apply his discoveries, and who would he rather spend time with, them or detractors from the science establishment?

Originally posted 2-14-2003.

For a more detailed book review, see Cosma Shalizi, "A Rare Blend of Monster Raving Egomania and Utter Batshit Insanity" (10-21-2005).

Book / "Quantum Philosophy" by Roland Omnes (1999)

2006-02-12T23:15:00.000-08:00

Omnes is a French physicist, who has written several other books on quantum interpretation.

He ambitiously recaps all of philosophy and math, shows how it is destroyed by quantum logic, and then reconstructs common sense using quantum concepts. Definitely worth reading, as it really takes the quantum bull by the horns, as it were.

Most of our experience seems to be the product of decoherence, a very fast and efficient effect that destroys the superpositions of states. Under any kind of pressure, such as air molecules, or the friction of the pivot of the instrument needle, the multi state decoheres in 10^-16 sec or less, which has been directly observed.

The cat dies and stays dead, because the chance of getting its "live" wave function back is practically zero. If the "cat" consisted of only 2-3 atoms, we might be able to restore it from its state of uncertainty.

Originally posted 8-1-2004.

Book / "The Diamond Age" by Neal Stephenson (1995)

2006-02-12T22:54:00.000-08:00

This futuristic novel is a solid read all the way through with many nice literary touches. Published in 1995 and set in the late 21st century, it calls the internet right, and portrays a world dominated by nanotechnology, where anyone can visit a public "matter compiler" and request any basics they need, like food and clothing, free of charge.

It is a strange -Topia, neither Eu- nor Dys-. Nanotech has greatly improved everyone's lives, but there is still a lot of poverty and squalor. Those who are well off can style their lives any way they like, and people have arranged themselves into cultural enclaves rather than old style nation states.

A complex plot unfolds in which a top nanotech engineer creates a special book, really a super-powerful computer, at the behest of a great "equity lord" to teach a young girl about life, and to have some spunk. Yet due to a turn of events, this magic and subversive book ("The Young Lady's Primer") winds up in the hands of a poor little girl living a horrible life in the bad section of town.

The Primer tells her a long, complex, dark, "unreconstructed Grimm Brothers" fairy tale that mirrors her life, including her toy friends, with user participation and lots of factual instruction. By the end of the novel (and of the fairy tale) the little girl's life has been totally transformed, along with those of thousands of other little girls, and the world at large, and the Princess Nell of the fairy tale is now a real world Queen Nell.

While Stephenson calls advanced nano reasonably well, he flubs quantum computing, which will no doubt be a big thing by then. Also it is far from clear that the internet will lead to the collapse of nation states, but who knows? There's still time.

Issue / Mini Dialog on Solipsism

2006-02-12T22:24:00.000-08:00

Q: So you think there are these objects, which exist outside of yourself? When did you first start seeing them? A: Oh, maybe around the age of 3-6 months I started noticing and paying attention to them. Especially my mother, who was producing me, she was very noticeable.

Q: And what convinced you to consider them as "real"? A: Well, there is this suite (or group) of space time translation operations that can be applied to them. Also my nervous system has a lot of redundancy, and gets the simple stuff right most of the time.

Q: And that convinced you? A: Also everyone in the society around me made a big deal out of them, so I had to go along with that. For all I know they might be an illusion, perhaps consisting of pure information, but I've never been able to break out of my conditioned responses.

Q: And so you act as if they are real and outside of you? A: Then I read some science books where they claimed to have demonstrated that the Earth was 4 billion years old. Their proof seemed overwhelming, so I decided the Earth would still be around after I was dead, and I was not producing it, it was producing me.

Q: But what is your criterion for belief in them? A: Like I said, space time translation, basic neural reliance, social pressure, impressive demonstrations, and lack of time to devise an alternative view.

Q: What about the new creationist theme parks, that show how G-d created the dinosaurs before the Flood? A: I'm aware of those models, but they don't produce fast answers to all questions raised by the evidence. Hence they do not enhance survival, but are parasitic on scientific society. They do however demonstrate the social aspect of beliefs.

Originally posted 5-22-2004.

Movie / Aeon Flux

2006-02-12T22:11:00.000-08:00

This is a perfectly decent, cartoon like, science fiction adventure film, set 400 years in the future. I can't fathom why the producers pushed it out without critical previews. Nor can I fathom why the reviewers trashed it. The advance reviews on "Cool News" (which never hesitates to call Turkey!) were respectful, as were the initial viewer comments on IMDB.

The show was well attended, in a large hall. Sure I could think of a dozen things that could have been better, and sure all the bad guys were bad shots, but that's no worse than 1000s of other films. It was a good bit more novel and mind teasing than any of the recent Star Wars films.

The film is based on an animated series that appeared on MTV, which I had never heard of, but its plot has been "reimagined," and frankly I found the whole thing fun and refreshing. Any film that tries to project out 400 years is well advised to keep it light, and not get too complex on the technology, because it's too risky. Better to stick with eternal tried and true themes, like love that lasts forever.

The 90 minute film briskly tracks its "120 page script," but the plot is quite complex and would require several long sentences to summarize. Each major character experiences a number of reversals as the story unfolds. The ending is definitely not obvious, contra some critics.

Charlize Theron occupies the screen much of the time, wearing a spandex and leather body suit, what else? It's not difficult to imagine her getting injured and delaying filming for a month, in view of the large number of acrobatic jumping and climbing scenes. Her opposite number probably has a nice career ahead of him, since he looks (to me) like a younger James Garner. There is one tasteful sex scene, and ample cartoon violence, but no personalized suffering.

Originally posted 12-4-2005.

Movie / Mirrormask

2006-02-12T21:59:00.000-08:00

Wow. This film was awesome, one of my lifetime best, way too good for the general public, so only playing at one art theater. A must-see for young ladies with artistic ability.

A teenage girl, with strong artistic talent, belongs to a family that runs a small (but tasteful) circus in England. Already beset by the issues of growing up, she experiences more stress when her mother falls seriously ill. Whereupon she enters a dream world of endless visual inventiveness, puppets, animations, live characters in strange get-ups, and herself walking around in bunny slippers.

Produced by the Jim Henson company, the puppets, costumes, and ever changing scenes are at the level of fine art, as is the musical score, a combination of modern jazz and lots of modern serious, i.e., Bartok-like themes. (Break out the single malt scotch.) Not your typical American film.

In the World of Light the White Queen (her mother) lies alseep and dying, and the Dark Princess (there are "wanted" posters for her everywhere, bearing the girl's face) has stolen the charm that balances the worlds. Without it the World of Shadows, ruled by the Black Queen (also her mother) is rapidly growing and destroying the World of Light. Early on it becomes apparent that these worlds and their inhabitants are based on the girl's prolific artworks, the memory of which helps her find her way through them.

As she looks through windows from time to time, she sees back into her real world bedroom, and the struggles she's going though there, with her light versus dark sides, leading to her ultimate triumph in bringing them back together again.

Originally posted 10-5-2005.

Movie / Serenity

2006-02-12T21:53:00.000-08:00

Wow! This film earns its 5-star rating. It's got everything -- a brain damaged psychic 17 year old girl with super human combat skills, whose brother is young Dr Kildaire, a Millennium Falcon space ship piloted by a Han Solo lookalike with a crew of Vogue models and and Marlboro men, an evil big brother empire that wants to program everyone into subservient mush, a race of hideous outcasts that devour their victims, a super smooth hit man sent by the empire, a computer hacker with a cute robotic girlfriend, a deep dark secret, and so on. Combines the best elements of The Matrix, Blade Runner, Star Wars, and Alien. No sex but tons of violence, definitely not for younger kids.

Originally posted 10-25-2005.

Book / Warped Passages by Lisa Randall

2006-02-07T00:15:00.000-08:00

Last year Harvard President Larry Summers ignited a firestorm when he suggested there might be innate reasons why women were underrepresented in the upper ranks of hard science and math. Presumably Lisa Randall of the Harvard Physics Dept. is the exception, since her papers on theoretical physics have been cited 1,000s of times.

I will not try to summarize this book, which would take too long. I found the first 1/3 to 1/2 rather tedious and sub-par, because she covers a lot of ground that will be familiar to readers of other popular physics books, without adding anything new or doing an especially good job. I found her analogies nebulous, despite having somewhat of a woman's touch. Fortunately it gets much better later on, when she talks about her own work, how it fits in, and where it may lead.

After a refreshing denunciation of string theory, in which she explains how they are all stuck in a tree (with a top down approach) and there is no reason to believe they will ever get anywhere, she outlines her "model building" approach, which is to try and develop notions of how extra dimensions might work, possibly including the concept of branes (which overlap with string theory), and how they can be used to model the "next phase" of particle physics, including predictions that might be testable in the forthcoming Large Hadron Collider (LHC). These are reasonably cool ideas, and it looks like she may be onto something.

The goals of a credible model, we infer, are to (1) reproduce the "Standard Model" of particle physics (quarks and such), (2) not violate cosmology, and (3) shed some light on major riddles, notably the "hierarchy problem," or why is gravity so weak compared to the other three forces, and the Planck Mass so huge? She postulates an extra dimension, or several variations thereof, into which gravity can heavily leak away, while everything else looks the same. The concept of supersymmetry, which has never been proven, is jettisoned.

Useful ideas I got from this book relate to how extra-dimensional objects would look. If you lived in a 2-dimensional "Flatland" and a 3-dimensional sphere passed through your plane, it would look like a circle that expands, contracts, and then disappears. Likewise if a 4-sphere passes through our 3-brane, it will look like a sphere that expands and contracts. Extra-dimensional particles, if we can create them, will "appear" as missing mass/energy in particle traces. A stationary object with momentum in another dimension (even a rolled up one) will seem heavier, and its motion along another dimension (an extended or infinite one) could be modeled as color change.

Randall criticizes the excessive faith in string theory, which has led some universities such as Princeton to focus solely on string theory, to the exclusion of her preferred "model building" at energy levels that have some hope of being tested. However, she makes no reference to loop quantum gravity (LQG). This book is basically a vanity piece to publicize her predictions prior to the LHC coming on stream. Still she should have at least mentioned LQG, which offers a competing theory of gravity with plenty of substance, and not doing so seems cowardly to me.

Net-net: This popular book provides an overview of a "model building" approach to physics (at soon-to-be-achieved energy levels) that is neither string theory nor LQG, and hence is recommended (as an antidote to both of them) for those interested in expanding their views of modern physics.

(See also my related posting on the perils of "Micro Black Holes," based on a quote from this book.)

Book / Athenian Society & Economy: A Banking Perspective

2006-01-30T00:46:00.000-08:00

One key problem facing many who seek to reinvent the banking system is that they are only dimly acquainted with banking. Indeed many of us who work for banks also suffer this problem, because banking has become so encrusted with concepts from different eras that it's difficult to tell what is fundamental. So whilst we are attempting reinvent ourselves it might behoove us to get back to basics, which is what you get from "Athenian Society & Economy: A Banking Perspective," by Edward E. Cohen, Princeton, 1992.

Drawing on empricial evidence, Cohen presents an intensive study of Athenian banking practices during the 80 year period between the defeat of Athens in the Peloponnesian Wars and the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BC. First he debunks the myth that there were no commercial loans, and then goes on to adduce complex banking transactions carried on with only a bag of silver coins, a book, and a table ("trapeza" in Greek, "banc(h)a" in Italian and most other languages). According to Demosthenes, a trapeza is "a business operation producing a risk-laden return from other people's money." Seeing these transactions arising in their simplest forms is very instructive, because it shows you what really matters about them.

The trapeza took deposits and made loans, some of the proceeds of which were redeposited (and reloaned), thus expanding the money supply without fiat currency. There was zero government regulation! There were no checks, as payors and payees all showed up in person. There were bills of exchange to minimize transport of coins. There were 6,000 drachmas in a talent, and (I think) 20 drachmas in a Cyzicene stater, another popular big coin. Much of the business was undisclosed, to help clients reduce taxes, escape judgements, etc. Notions of interest were different: 1% a month for landed loans, 18-100% (per voyage) for maritime loans. Etc...

I'm only part way thought it, but thought I would share this info, for all you history buffs out there.

Originally posted 23 Dec 1997

Issue / Micro Black Holes

2006-01-19T22:23:00.001-08:00

Q: Is it time for the precautionary principle??

- - - - -
From "Warped Passages" by Lisa Randall (Harvard Physics Dept.), page 380 --

[...] "If this is the case, black holes might be produced at close to a TeV energy, and such higher-dimensional black holes would be a gateway to a better understanding of classical gravity, quantum gravity, and the shape of the universe. If the relevant energies [...] are sufficiently low, black hole production could be imminent; they could be formed at the LHC."

[NOTE: the Large Hadron Collider will go online at CERN in Switzerland in this decade.]

"The higher dimensional black holes that would form at colliders would be far smaller than the ones in the universe around us. They would be comparable in size to the very tiny extra dimensions. In case you are worried, rest assured that these small, very short-lived black holes won't pose a danger to us or our planet; they'll be gone well before they could do any damage. Black holes don't last forever: they evaporate by emitting radiation through the phenomenon known as Hawking radiation. But just as a small drop of coffee evaporates more quickly than a full cup, so the small black holes that could conceivably be produced at colliders will evaporate almost immediately. Nevertheless, if they are produced, these higher-dimensional black holes would last long enough to leave visible signs of their existence at a detector. They would have a very distinctive appearance since they would produce many more particles than you would find in ordinary particle decays, and these particles would go off in all directions."

= = = = =

Of course this raises the question -- ARE YOU SURE? Gravity at high energies and small distances is still squarely in the realm of theory. What if due to some as yet undiscovered physical principles, the evaporation rate is not as fast as predicted? Or suppose a micro black hole were to immediately encounter and absorb a hefty amount of mass, through a fortuitous series of very rapid collisions, thus bulking up and extending its life long enough to encounter yet more matter, triggering a chain reaction gravitational collapse?

According to Exit Mundi NL (see under Human->Black Hole), a likely scenario is that the micro black hole(s) would be quite tiny at first and, seeing that matter is mostly empty space, would head for the center of the Earth, hitting electrons or nuclei occasionally on the way down. Then as they gained mass, the entire Earth would be sucked in, yielding a black hole 9 mm in diameter with the same mass as the present Earth, which the Moon would continue to orbit around as before.

Acceleration due to gravity is 32 feet per second per second, and our planet's total mass does not change, so the rate of collapse is the time it would take for all our matter to fall 4,000 miles. Bottom line, in a couple of minutes everyone and everything would disappear.

Should we be demonstrating in Geneva? Lying down in front of the trucks delivering the giant electromagnets? Walking around in robes urging everyone to Repent Now, because the End is Nigh?

It would be helpful to see a set of well-reasoned analyses showing why this is NOT a problem, but so far my inquiries to theoretical physicists have gone unanswered. Perhaps the lure of all those Nobel Prizes waiting to be won is clouding their vision, but as we know they are not awarded posthumously!

Originally posted 1/18/06

Movie / Duma

2006-01-19T16:02:00.000-08:00

Warning - potential spoilers in this review.

From the director of "The Black Stallion," the charming story of a young (white) boy and his pet cheetah in South Africa. While touching on many social issues, and probably drawing from stock wild animal footage, the film is not a documentary, but a well enough written drama about a cute little cheetah cub captured by the boy and his father, which grows up into a terrifying looking but incredibly well behaved full size pet named "Duma." (Yes, the plot is somewhat contrived, but that can be said of tons of movies.)

After the untimely death of the father, the boy and his mother move to the city, where Duma inevitably escapes, causing havoc, and the boy decides to return him (singlehandedly) to where they found him, as his father had vowed, hundreds of miles away. After his (father's) motorcycle runs out of gas, they continue alone on foot across inhospitable terrain, while his mother mounts a major search. On the way he meets a (friendly) black guy, heading back to his village from the city, and the three of them have a series of Tom Sawyer type adventures together, which include nearly being eaten by crocodiles, lions, etc., culminating in Duma's successful return to the wild, and the boy's reunion with his mother.

One gets the impression they must have used several cheetahs during filming, but the main one has some distinctive facial markings that we see all the way though.

The film is basically a piece of poetry about wild animals, and while it carries a PG rating, probably for animals getting eaten, I imagine most children would find nothing to be upset about. There is relatively little tension (social or political), other than their struggle to survive outdoors in the South African wilds.

"Duma" was saved from video release by "Variety," but is only playing in four cities, and there might have been 10 people in the audience. Talk about no distribution. That being said it holds together very well and probably gets at least a three for beauty, human interest, and overall meaning. A fun and relatively light film about wild nature and growing up, through the eyes of a young boy. Not as intense as The Black Stallion, but haunting and fulfilling nonetheless.

Movie / Match Point

2006-01-19T15:51:00.000-08:00

Match Point
Written and directed by Woody Allen

This latest Allen film, released earlier in the UK by BBC Films and now in the US by DreamWorks, must be the one I read about a while back, in which a critic said Allen's views of the British upper class were closer to Evelyn Waugh than to modern reality. Some of the characters do resemble those in Brideshead Revisited, but it seems authentic enough, given that old money rich tend to maintain their traditional values more easily than the rest of us.

If anything this film, which gets 5 stars from the SF critics, may be the final maturation of Allen as a writer/director of serious drama. Two hours and seven minutes of intensely plotted story line and dialog regarding a poor young Irish tennis pro who marries into a wealthy family and then (more or less) ruins it all due to his lust for his friend's (ex) fiancée (Scarlett Johansson), who, although an obvious love object, gets in a lot of serious acting.

"Plot-driven rather than story-driven," as one critic commented, the movie narrates a long complex, intense story of these people's personal lives, which I can't say too much about without spoiling the ending. However in addition to the tragic operatic music Allen uses for much of the soundtrack, the ending becomes pretty apparent about 3/4 of the way through.

Although the theater was mostly full on opening weekend, this is clearly another Allen film with critical greatness and limited mass appeal. Comparisons to Ingmar Bergmann and Ibsen/Strindberg are not out of order. Many hours later I am still pondering it. The plotting and dialog writing are excellent, in the technical sense of scene beats, mounting tensions, overarching themes, emotional authenticity, etc. The directing is brisk and efficient, shot in various tony spots in London and some country estate. Allen wrote this, cast some young Brit actors, with Johansson as a box office draw, and everyone belted it out. No comedy (as such*), no ad-libbing, and no Allen-figure.

(* unless you count the Johannson character, an out-of-work American actress, blowing one audition after another, unable to get a part. :-)

I once read (on a screen writing website) that drama is the one genre that's not amenable to "high concept" because it's too much about the particular parties to the story. Match Point feels like a long, serious Broadway play. Highly recommended for those with such a taste, but otherwise you'll be dissatisfied. Or as one guy said to his date on the way out "you'd have liked 'Bullets Over Broadway.' "

The film earns its R rating, with many fairly intense sex scenes, some of the clothes-ripping variety. (As has been noted, R ratings are back, after a period in which everyone tried for PG, in hopes of selling more seats.) There is some violence, which remains off camera.

Originally published 1/7/06

Movie / King Kong (2005)

2006-01-19T15:45:00.000-08:00

KING KING (2005)
Directed by Peter Jackson

This movie is definitely not for anyone who's afraid of heights, or has any fears of being trampled by dinosaurs, or eaten alive by a long assortment of digitally-generated creatures, many of an exotic or pre-historic nature.

It got a zero from the SF critics, but the theater was 95% full in the middle of pouring rain. (In my opinion reviewers should assign two scores, one for what they think, and another for whether the masses would enjoy it, which would often differ.)

I see this as an extended director's cut. The plot could have fit into 90 minutes, but it runs 3 hours. Almost every scene runs longer than necessary to make its point, but you just sit there, looking at one long action sequence after another, each well-enough written and/or art-directed to hold you in place. It's quite a bargain - two action films worth of viewing for the price of a single ticket (or DVD rental).

Some have commented that the film is racist. The human natives of Skull Island are portrayed as cannibal primitives with no redeeming value. In defense of the writers, from what I've read, when white folks landed on many islands, that's what happened, the natives ate and/or sacrificed them. And here their sacrifice of the white girl to the giant forest ape is a key piece of the story line.

On another level, it's the ultimate white female / black male story. Initially Kong probably plans to eat her, but after a while they bond and fall in love, and Kong saves her life numerous times, most notably by killing three large dinosaurs at once. Forget realism. After all the rough handling (which goes on and on) she should have been turned to mush. And the endless attempts by all concerned to eat her... when there were so many larger things to eat....

The film is also subtly self-referential. The main character is a self absorbed producer who's way over budget and trying to film his movie (in the 1930's) on location in the jungle, killing many of his staff in the process. We get the distinct impression that he's a stand-in for Peter Jackson himself. Also the famous writer, who has produced only 15 pages of script, is kidnapped and forced to live in a large animal cage -- surely a metaphor for how producers / studios feel about writers.

I never saw the original, so can't comment on the fidelity or lack thereof, but this will surely stand up as the Kong of Our Time, until some future director comes along with a big enough ego and budget to better it. NOTE: Dozens of people are killed, many after being trampled or tossed by the ape, but all that suffering stays off camera.

Originally Posted 12/31/05

Movie / Shopgirl

2006-01-19T15:23:00.000-08:00

No way would I give this 5 stars, as did the SF critics -- 3 or 3-1/2 tops. It's sumptuously filmed, lots of intimate close-ups and a fair amount of sex and nudity. Many scenes are set in shadow, like a Bergman film. At times the music is too loud and busy for the quiet and somber mood on the screen. But its big problem is lack of depth. You might think this would be Steve Martin's answer to Bill Murray in "Lost in Translation," in which Murray played himself, complete with ad lib humor (and kept his hands off the girl). But it's not. Martin is playing someone else, a cold high tech millionaire who convinces himself that it's okay to basically use the younger woman (Clare Danes). Meanwhile she is practically a cipher, and it strains credulity that someone that good looking has such a limited choice of men. Two thirds of the way through I started asking myself, "what is this film about?" You know you're in trouble when it takes a voice-over (Martin's voice) at the end to explain it. There's another store clerk, a catty gold digger who the plot makes fun of, yet I found myself more drawn to her, perhaps due to her more interesting hair and makeup. The distributors knew this film woudn't play to the masses, and wisely it only ran on 2 screens, lightly attended on its opening weekend.

Originally posted October 31, 2005