'Enough is Enough': Theologian Joseph Hough On Why the Time for a Non-Destructive, Civil Disobedience May Be Near... (Bill Moyers). 'Enough is Enough': Theologian Joseph Hough On Why the Time for a Non-Destructive, Civil Disobedience May Be Near... (Bill Moyers) [Common Dreams]

I am so relieved when I get a chance to read truly religious people of faith, instead of the garbage the media always play up. Read this interview, as someone who tries to remind all of us that the 3 branches of Abraham can make common cause but will have to wrest control of their beliefs from the leaders who betray the principles of each religion. In the best pastoral tradition, the first act is to help the poor and the needy.  10:59:48 PM    

Colin Powell: He Let the Nation Down... (Minneapolis Star Tribune). Colin Powell: He Let the Nation Down... (Minneapolis Star Tribune) [Common Dreams]

I have been horribly disappointed in Colin Powell. I believe he is at sea when it comes to the political battle field that is Washington today and has shown himself as a follower instead of as a leader. Thsi Adminstration is full of so many failures but his is the one I hate to see the most.  10:50:59 PM    

Daily Outrage: [OE]Help Is on The Way![base ']. Hundreds of sick soldiers wait for doctors while paying for toilet paper. [The Nation Weblogs]

This may be on the way to being fixed but how did it ever happen to begin with. Spending $700 million for an Iraqi hospital yet housing our own wounded in substandard housing with no air conditioning. Priorities. And the fact that few want to re-enlist is not too surprising. It took years for the Armed forces to recover from Vietnam. It will have to happen again.  10:00:12 PM    

Two things:In the paper Co-evolution of....

Two things:

1. In the paper Co-evolution of neocortex size, group size and language in humans, Robin Dunbar predicts that the maximum group size that humans can maintain as a cohesive social unit, based on the ratio of neocortex volume to brain volume, is 147.8 (100.2-231.1 at 95% confidence). Consulting the literature, he finds that there's a trimodal distribution of group sizes: bands at 30-50 people, tribes at 1000-2000, and an intermediate one. The mean size of the intermediate level group societies is 148.4.
2. The AOL Instant Messenger servers impose a hard limit on the number of people you're allowed to put in your buddylist: 150.

(For more, and a better summary of Dunbar's paper, read The Magic of 150. Malcolm Gladwell also refers to the number 150 in his book The Tipping Point.)

[Interconnected]

I've been looking for a good link to this paper from 1993. Although there is a wide variation around the magic number 150 it is a really interesting conjectyre.  9:46:44 PM    

A case of tech ignorance and security.

A computer administrator discovered a security flaw in his company's software. The man warned his managers. They ignored his pleas. So he quit and fired off thousands of e-mails alerting customers to the problem.

The vulnerability got fixed. But the administrator was charged and convicted of causing damage under the federal Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.

"It can be very difficult for people who barely understand e-mail to grasp the difference between ethically sound network vulnerability research and the public disclosure of vulnerabilities", the employer stated.

The employee maintained he was 'merely a whistleblower doing the right thing'. Prosecutors now agree, the story tells. The conviction 'hinged on the message, not just the method'.

Mercury news story in Silicon Valley

[Smart Mobs]

You know it is a messed up law when the prosecuters are asking the conviction to be overturned. But the 16 months he had already served can never be returned. Bad laws and ignorance are a terrible combination. And we have ahd a ton of them passed in the last decade. Frighteningly, this Adminstration is pushing for even more. Poorly written and vaque. What fun!!  9:32:34 PM    

"the White House is using technical means to prevent spidering and archival of key documents" [Daypop Top 40]

Isn't it lovely? The only reason that makes any sense is that the White House does not want search engines to archive certain parts of its own web site. Only if it deals with Iraq. Very interesting. I am sure that people will just ignore the robots.txt. Not a very sophisticated approach.  9:22:19 PM    

No pause in Patriot Act pounding

Bush and Ashcroft: Patriot Act Wishlist. St. Petersberg Times columnist Robyn Blumner writes today about new powers Ashcroft and Bush are seeking as supplements to the... [TalkLeft: The Politics of Crime]

Just in case the debacle in Baghdad was not depressing enough, we now get further discussion of the civil rights this adminstration wants to take away from American citizens.(1) Interrogations without any judicial review, simply because someone in the FBI says so. Why even have a judicial branch since the executive branch knows what to do? (2) Lock people up without bail. As the column says, arrst first, then investigate. They already did this with 750 immigtants post 9-11 looking for terrorism links. None were charged. See they say they can do that to foreigners now. they want the ability to do it to citizens next. (3) Provide the Death Penalty for giving money to an organization that the government decides to label as terrorist ex post facto. I guess anyone who gave money to Greenpeace would be in trouble.

The adminstration's response is to say trust us. We would never abuse this. But history has shown us that every government that had the ability to do these very things DID abuse them. Human nature is too flawed to give that much power to a centralized government. Our forefathers fought to prevent too much power residing in a single entity. Yet we seem to be negating all of their sacrifice, creating an Executive branch with little checks on its powers to intimidate its own citizens.  8:35:06 AM    

Baghdad Kills 19

Bring'em On. Chaos. [Eschaton]

This does not bode well since it took place on the first day of Ramadan and it was the Red Cross headquarters. These terrorists are trying to show outsiders and Iraqis that the US can not protect them. And they are succeeding. I have a hard time seeing that this will be fixed anytime soon.  8:22:48 AM    

Sweets Again. Dana Milbank reports on breakfastgate, reported here earlier:

President Bush is a man of steely discipline, but it appears the commander in chief has not gained complete mastery over his sweet tooth.

In a new book by author Stephen Mansfield, "The Faith of George W. Bush," the following passage appears on page 173: "Aides found him face down on the floor in prayer in the Oval Office. It became known that he refused to eat sweets while American troops were in Iraq, a partial fast seldom reported of an American president."

Seldom reported -- and apparently little observed. When the White House sent out the shared "pool report" of Bush's roundtable interview with reporters aboard Air Force One en route to Australia, it became apparent that the president had fallen off the candy wagon.

"And he was relaxed. Very relaxed," was the description. "As a reporter began to ask about the Middle East . . . Mr. Bush popped a butterscotch Lifesaver in his mouth. He smacked the candy as he said: 'Middle East, that's right.' "

[Eschaton]

This would be silly if it were not so tragic. Sounds like someone got the talking points memo incorrect.  8:17:11 AM    

Newsday on Damadian. An article this week in Newsday addresses the issue of Damadian vs the Nobel committee. It's a great article and worth reading for all the details it gets into including an attempt to dissect the relevant scientific contributions that the Nobel Laureates and Damadian made.

I have been speaking with a number of other journalists who are working on reasonably large or in-depth stories on this issue and I'll let you know when I see them in print.

For the discussion so far on Damadian, see my previous posts.
[David Harris' Science & Literature]

The Newsday article is very enlghtening. The man came up with an idea that turned out to be wrong. Others modified this idea, creating entirely new technologies that made MRI what it is. Who should get the award? A wrong idea that does not produce reproducible results and is cumbersome. Or the people who took that wrong idea, figured out how to make it work using totally new approaches? As a scientist, I know how easy it is to have great ideas without results but the important people are those who have the great ideas and actually produce results.

Besides, I have a hard time taking seriously anyone who calls themself a scientist yet believes the Earth is 6000 years old. Dogmatic attention to beliefs in the presence of hard evidence to the contrary is the hallmark of an ideologue and not a scientist. Ideologues seldom move our understanding of the natural world forward, and more often, in fact, try to hamper that understanding. From what I have learned, I think the Nobel committee made the right choice.  8:14:26 AM    

Analyst Rob Enderle asks if Mac OS X Panther is 'the one?'. "A lot of things have changed since Jaguar, mostly on the Windows side. The Windows platform appears to be under nearly constant threat of disruptive attack, Microsoft's licensing changes have created concerns, and Apple has continued to lose market share. This last factor has compelled Apple to make a solution more acceptable to the market; at least on paper, Panther looks much more acceptable to that market," Rob Enderle writes for eWeek.

Enderle writes, "Panther is... [MacDailyNews]

Rob Enderle is on every reporter's Rolodex, ready to give them a quick quote on almost anything. Watch for his name. he is the consultant quoted for a huge percentage of high tech stories.For me, his credibility is so stretched that I automatically discount any point his expert opinion focuses on,  7:56:12 AM