Arvada boy, 11, arrested over violent stick figure drawing

An 11-year-old Arvada boy was arrested and hauled away in handcuffs for drawing stick figures in school - something his therapist told him to do.

The boy’s parents say they understand what he did was inappropriate, but are outraged by the way Arvada Police handled the case.

The parents do not want their real names used. “Tim” is being treated for Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder and his therapist told him to draw pictures when got upset, rather than disrupt the class. So that’s what he did.

Last October, he drew stick figures of himself with a gun, pointed at four other stick figures with the words “teacher must die.” He felt calmer and was throwing the picture away when the teacher saw it and sent him to the principal’s office.

The school was aware that the boy was in treatment, determined the drawing was not an actual threat, notified his parents and sent him back to class.

His mother, “Jane,” however, was shocked when Arvada Police showed up at their home later that night. She says she told her son to cooperate and tell the truth, but was horrified when they told her they were arresting him and then handcuffed him and hauled him away in a patrol car.

Tim’s mother says she begged police to let her drive her son to the police department and to let her stay with him through the booking process but they refused. Instead, they put him in a cell, took his mug shot and fingerprinted him.

He thought he was going to jail and would never be able to go home again.

According to the police report, “Tim” explained he made the drawing to release anger and would never hurt teachers or anyone. At first, the school did not want to press charges, but changed their mind when police called them later that night.

A juvenile assessment report shows Tim has never been in legal trouble before and is at low risk to reoffend. Regardless, he is charged with a third degree misdemeanor, interfering with staff and students at an educational facility.

The system says it’s doing what’s in the best interest of the child. But Tim’s therapist says handcuffing an 11-year-old and putting him in a cell over something like this is “quite an overreaction” and does much more harm than good.

Tim is on probation and, if he completes that successfully, the criminal charges will be dropped. But his parents say its cost them thousands of dollars so far. And if they had known that their son’s cooperation would be used as evidence against him, they would have hired a lawyer at the beginning and exercised their right to remain silent. ...

via Arvada boy, 11, arrested over violent stick figure drawing - KDVR.

SSDs prove difficult to securely erase

At this week's Usenix FAST 11 conference on File and Storage Technologies in San Jose, California researchers published a paper examining the effectiveness of different secure erasure methodologies on Solid State Disks (SSDs).

The researchers, Michael Wei, Laura M. Grupp, Frederick E. Spada and Steven Swanson of the University of California at San Diego, came to several interesting conclusions:

* ATA and SCSI command set features for securely destroying data on SSDs ("ERASE UNIT") were available on only 8 of the 12 drives tested and were only successful on 4 of the drives.

* Repeatedly overwriting the entire disk with multiple repetitions can successfully destroy data, but because of the Firmware Translation Layer (FTL), this is considerably more complicated and time-consuming than on traditional hard disk drives. Based on their results, it is an unattractive option for most organizations.

* Degaussing SSDs does not erase any of the data stored on them. While SSDs do not use magnetic storage, there was some hope that the electromagnetism might destroy the electronics in the flash chips.

* Single file sanitization, the ability to securely destroy one file on an unencrypted disk, is nearly impossible on SSDs. The paper claims that even the most effective file destruction methods may leave behind more than 4 percent of the original data.

* Drives that are encrypted provide the most practical form of protection. Disks can be safely decommissioned by deleting the encryption keys from the Key Storage Area (KSA) and then running a full DoD compliant erasure to ensure the keys are non-recoverable.

via SSDs prove difficult to securely erase | Naked Security.

Xeno's Daily Strange News Awards Blog

Welcome. There are about 10,000 posts here and  7,600 comments. Note: Content in a dotted line box is a quoted excerpt. Click the link to view the entire original article. Click « Previous Entries or browse the calendar.

Can two dreamers communicate over the Internet?

Daniel Oldis, whose seminal work in the science of lucid dreams is widely quoted in academic circles writes an introduction to his acclaimed Lucid Dream Manifesto in which he suggests that a lucid dreamer can signal another dreamer using dream masks and the internet.

Check out”Sleep Stream Online” a sleep lab that is studying sleep patterns with the goal of identifying when lucid dreaming is in progress. “Brian” an engineering student at Cornell, is using “Zeo” an easily worn device that records sleep patterns and sends the data to the sleepstream program. The goal is to synchronize lucid dreamers and explore ways to communicate dreamer to dreamer. This study is inspired by Oldis’ writings. Here’s the link: http://www.sleepstreamonline.com/

via Virtually Perfect ends in Babylon Dreams.

I've been excited by lucid dreaming research for many years and have read many different experiments conducted by Stephen LaBerge and others, but I hadn't heard of the Zeo or the above work by Daniel Oldis. Thanks to  marjoriekayesbabylondreams.wordpress.com for pointing out this exciting experiment.

Lucid dreamers can signal the outside world that they are dreaming using eye signals. Eye movements can be measured using electrodes. If you look a direction in your dream, you are really looking in that same direction behind your eyelids. This is used in experiments to have lucid dreamers signal that they have completed certain tasks. Getting information into the dream to the dreamers, however, last time I checked, is hit and miss. I've worn a device called a Nova Dreamer that flashes lights in your eyes. Sometimes the lights are incorporated into your dream, but sometimes you don't see any lights.

I'd like to try a Zeo.

Find out your ZQ — a score of the quantity and quality of your sleep each night. Every morning, Zeo will tell you your ZQ — a number that summarizes your sleep’s quantity and quality — and lots of other information about your sleep. ...

Find out what’s stealing your sleep.

Zeo Personal Sleep Coach will help you understand and minimize the factors that negatively affect sleep, so you can take control of your nights. You can use the visual analytical tools in your personal myZeo.com account to see trends and cause & effect patterns.

- link

Stephen Colberg is Anonymous. ;-)

All the conspiracy folk out there should love this one: a few nights ago, Stephen Colbert had Glenn Greenwald on to discuss the showdown between security firm HBGary and the Wikileaks-supporting internet 'vigilante' hacking group Anonymous which has been making news of late. Towards the end of the interview, keen-eyed viewers may have picked up a little 'video glitch' - and if they were interested enough, they may have investigated further and found this 'subliminal' one-frame overlay on top of Colbert's face...

Yes that's right - Colbert has a Guy Fawkes mask graphic over his face, a symbol intimately associated with 'Anonymous', derived from the Alan Moore comic series 'V for Vendetta'. Here's some video from the interview so you can see the subliminal insert (at around 4:22 into the video):

...



via Daily Grail Frontpage | TDG - Science, Magick, Myth and History.

This video cracked me up.

Ten Things Americans Waste the Most Money On - 24/7 Wall St.

24/7 Wall St. reviewed how Americans spend money. One of the conclusions of this analysis is that consumer spending is relatively alive and well, despite the recession. This may mean that Americans continue to be over-leveraged. US citizens have, in general, brought down their indebtedness. However, holiday spending rose substantially from last year, and the extent to which Americans feel poor has declined now that the recession has ended. Americans spend about 15% of their household incomes on things that they do not need to satisfy their vices or to keep themselves amused. ...

Paraphrased:

[% of Total Annual Expenses:]

1. Apparel Products and Services: 0.5%


2. Tobacco: 0.8%


3. Entertainment Equipment,  Nonessential Services: 0.8%


4. Alcohol:0.9%


5. Fees and Admissions: 1.3%


6. Lodging, Vacation Homes and Hotels: 1.4%


7. Pets, Toys, Hobbies, and Playground Equipment: 1.4%


8. Television, Radio, and Sound Equipment: 2%


9. Gifts: 2.2%


10. Food Away From Home: 5.3%

via Ten Things Americans Waste the Most Money On - 24/7 Wall St..

Aren't you glad to know the recession has ended? I recently found a good free app for my iPhone (CalcNoteLE) to do a quick budget. This made me realize I need to shuffle some things around, pay off my one remaining debt (my car loan) asap, and that my biggest expense after rent is eating out. I'm still working out how to spend the least on the healthiest and most tasty foods. I'm definitely ahead of the game since I don't have pets, don't smoke and don't drink.

There are times when some debt can't be helped, such as when you are in school or if  you lose your job, but the trick is, for most of your life, to spend less than you make, save and invest wisely. The items above are only "wasting" money, in my view, when the people spending money on them can't afford them.  If you work hard and live within your means, you should be able to spend on things that make you happy. Life is short. Enjoy it.

So do the economy a favor: pay an admission fee to get yourself non-essentially serviced, then buy some new clothes and eat away from home while giving a gift of a TV to your pet who is staying in a hotel smoking and drinking.

Man blows himself up near Moscow supermarket

A man who apparently was distraught after an argument with his wife blew himself up near a Moscow supermarket, killing himself, ITAR-Tass news agency reported.

No other injuries were reported in the incident in the city's northeast.

The wife of the man told police that her husband had quarreled with her about three hours earlier, after which he grabbed a gun and left their home, police spokesman Anatoly Lastovetsky was quoted as saying by ITAR-Tass.

Lastovetsky did not specify how the man blew himself up, but the Interfax news agency reported that witnesses said he parked his automobile near the supermarket, went to its entrance while muttering unintelligibly, pulled out a grenade and set it off.

There were no indications the act was intended as terrorism and ITAR-Tass cited the spokesman as saying the domestic quarrel was apparently the motivation.

But the explosion initially sparked fears that it could be a terror attack in a city that experienced one just over a month ago. A suicide bomber killed 37 people in a Jan. 24 blast at Moscow's Domodedovo airport, the country's busiest. A leader of Islamist insurgents in Russia's Caucasus claimed responsibility for ordering that attack. ...

via Man blows himself up near Moscow supermarket | AP Nation / World - The News Tribune.

Suicide is a permanent solution to a temporary problem. What do you suppose he was muttering?

CHART SHOCK: The REAL Unemployment Rate Is 22%

It remains above 22% with the February update. Details from John William's Shadow Gov't. Stats.

* Shadow Stats

The seasonally-adjusted SGS Alternate Unemployment Rate reflects current unemployment reporting methodology adjusted for SGS-estimated long-term discouraged workers, who were defined out of official existence in 1994. That estimate is added to the BLS estimate of U-6 unemployment, which includes short-term discouraged workers.

The U-3 unemployment rate is the monthly headline number. The U-6 unemployment rate is the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ (BLS) broadest unemployment measure, including short-term discouraged and other marginally-attached workers as well as those forced to work part-time because they cannot find full-time employment. ...

via CHART SHOCK: The REAL Unemployment Rate Is 22% - Home - The Daily Bail.

Get rid of the blood sucking leeches and there will be money to hire people again and the economy will recover. Look at where the money is going (2009):

Total Outlays (Federal Funds): $2,650 billion
MILITARY: 54% and $1,449 billion
NON-MILITARY: 46% and $1,210 billion

Gaddafi: Follow me or I will burn all of Libya

Libyan leader Colonel Muammar Gaddafi has warned to "burn all of Libya" if the citizens do not cease protests against him.

In a surprise televised appearance, Gaddafi warned he was ready to unleash further bloodshed and urged his followers: "Prepare to defend Libya," Sky News reports.

"We will defeat any outside attempt to overturn our country,” he told loyalists gathered in Tripoli's Green Square, and adding that "Libyan people love me."

In his fourth bizarre public tirade this week, Col Gaddafi told supporters to "keep dancing, keep chanting", adding: "Libyan people love me."

Later, his son Saif al-Islam Gaddafi claimed security forces were holding back in battles with rebels - who referred to as "terrorists" - in western Libya and that he hoped there would be a ceasefire in place by Saturday.

The warnings have come days after the massive anti-government protests in Tripoli, which have left hundreds of people dead. ...

via Gaddafi: Follow me or I will burn all of Libya.

Baghdad wants U.S. to pay $1 billion for damage to city

Iraq's capital wants the United States to apologize and pay $1 billion for the damage done to the city not by bombs but by blast walls and Humvees since the U.S.-led invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein.

The city's government issued its demands in a statement on Wednesday that said Baghdad's infrastructure and aesthetics have been seriously damaged by the American military.

"The U.S. forces changed this beautiful city to a camp in an ugly and destructive way, which reflected deliberate ignorance and carelessness about the simplest forms of public taste," the statement said.

"Due to the huge damage, leading to a loss the Baghdad municipality cannot afford...we demand the American side apologize to Baghdad's people and pay back these expenses."

The statement made no mention of damage caused by bombing. ...

via Baghdad wants U.S. to pay $1 billion for damage to city | Reuters.

Let's not bicker and argue about who made who's city into a lump of mud. Back in 2007 we were spending $720 million a day on the Iraq war (wash post), so we can certainly spare 2 days of war money to rebuild the city, once we are done knocking it around.

White House pushes Congress to avert shutdown

The White House on Friday warned that a looming US government shutdown "would be bad for the economy" as it urged feuding lawmakers to reach a budget compromise by a March 4 deadline.

"All of us agree that a government shutdown would be bad for the economy," said spokesman Jay Carney, who told reporters "we believe that a compromise can be reached" in hard-fought congressional negotiations.

His comments came as US President Barack Obama's Republican foes, who control the House of Representatives, unveiled a two-week stopgap spending measure that would cut $4 billion dollars by reducing or scrapping programs.

Senate Democrats were reportedly working on their own version, a seven-month extension that would accelerate some $33 billion in spending cuts and program terminations included in Obama's proposed budget for next year. ...

via Activist Post: White House pushes Congress to avert shutdown.

Market Crash 2011: It will hit by Christmas Paul B. Farrell

Paul B. Farrell - Politicians lie. Bankers lie. Yes, they’re liars. But they’re not bad, it’s in their genes, inherited. Their brains are wired that way, warn scientists. Like addicts, they can’t help themselves. They want to sell stuff, get rich.

We want to believe they’re telling us the truth. Silly, huh? Both trapped in this eternal “dance of death” controlled by programs hidden deep in our brains, telling us what to do, telling us to ignore facts to the contrary — till it’s too late, till a new crisis crushes all of us.

Psychology offers us a powerful lesson: Our collective brain is destined to trigger a crash before Christmas 2011. Why? We’re gullible, keep searching for a truth-teller in a world of liars. And they’re so clever, we let them manipulate us into acting against our best interests.

In fact, behavioral science tells us that bankers and politicians are lying to us 93% of the time. It’s 13 times more likely Wall Street is telling you a lie than the truth. That’s why they win. Why we lose. Because our brains are preprogrammed to cooperate in their con game. Yes, we believe most of their lies. ...

if you really want to know how Wall Street’s con game works on you, Barry Ritholtz, the financial genius behind “Bailout Nation,” recently summarized it in the Washington Post: “Humans make all the same mistakes, over and over again. It’s how we are wired, the net result of evolution. That flight-or-fight response might have helped your ancestors deal with hungry saber-toothed tigers and territorial Cro Magnons, but it drives investors to make costly emotional decisions.”

Humans have something “akin to brain damage,” says Ritholtz. “To neurophysiologists, who research cognitive functions, the emotionally driven appear to suffer from cognitive deficits that mimic certain types of brain injuries. … Anyone with an intense emotional interest in a subject loses the ability to observe it objectively: You selectively perceive events. You ignore data and facts that disagree with your main philosophy. Even your memory works to fool you, as you selectively retain what you believe in, and subtly mask any memories that might conflict.”

Worse, there’s no cure. ...

Translation: Get the heck out of Wall Street’s stock market casino soon, maybe as early as July 4th, and definitely get out by Christmas, because soon all the lies, lying and liars will stop working.

via Market Crash 2011: It will hit by Christmas Paul B. Farrell - MarketWatch.

Who can say, but remember when I told you to buy Palladium? That still seems like a good idea to me.  If the market crashes, metals go up.

Google Adds Filtering of 'low-quality' Sites

Google has tweaked the formulas steering its Internet search engine to take the rubbish out of its results. The overhaul is designed to lower the rankings of what Google deems "low-quality" sites.

That could be a veiled reference to such sites as Demand Media's eHow.com, which critics call online "content farms" -- that is, sites producing cheap, abundant, mostly useless content that ranks high in search results. Sites that produce original content or information that Google considers valuable are supposed to rank higher under the new system.

via National briefs: 2/26/11.

Coolness. This blog is #2 in the search for "Xenophilius" now.  I hope it stays that way through the last Harry Potter movie, July 15th in the USA.

Tip: If you want to see the last HP movie a few days early on July 13th, you could fly to France or Sweden according to IMDB.

US Gov. Creates Software for ’Fake People’ Pushing Propoganda on Social Networks

Sean Kerrigan-The US government is offering private intelligence companies contracts to create software to manage "fake people" on social media sites.  Private security firms employeed by the government have used the accounts to create the illusion of consensus on controversial issues.

The contract calls for the development of "Persona Management Software" which would help the user create and manage a variety of distinct fake profiles online. The job listing was discussed in recently leaked emails from the private security firm HBGary after an attack by internet activist last week.

According to the contract, the software would "protect the identity of government agencies" by employing a number of false signals to convince users that the poster is in fact a real person. A single user could manage unique background information and status updates for up to 10 fake people from a single computer.

The software enables the government to shield its identity through a number of different methods including the ability to assign unique IP addresses to each persona and the ability to make it appear as though the user is posting from other locations around the world.

Included in HBGary's leaked emails was a government proposal for the government contract. The document describes how they would 'friend' real people on Facebook as a way to convey government messages. The document reads:

• "Those names can be cross-referenced across Facebook, twitter, MySpace, and other social media services to collect information on each individual. Once enough information is collected this information can be used to gain access to these individuals social circles.


• Even the most restrictive and security conscious of persons can be exploited. Through the targeting and information reconnaissance phase, a person’s hometown and high school will be revealed. An adversary can create a classmates.com account at the same high school and year and find out people you went to high school with that do not have Facebook accounts, then create the account and send a friend request. Under the mutual friend decision, which is where most people can be exploited, an adversary can look at a targets friend list if it is exposed and find a targets most socially promiscuous friends, the ones that have over 300-500 friends, friend them to develop mutual friends before sending a friend request to the target. To that end friend’s accounts can be compromised and used to post malicious material to a targets wall. When choosing to participate in social media an individual is only as protected as his/her weakest friend."

Other documents in the leaked emails include quotes from HBGary CEO Aaron Barr saying, "There are a variety of social media tricks we can use to add a level of realness to all fictitious personas... Using hashtags and gaming some location based check-in services we can make it appear as if a persona was actually at a conference and introduce himself/herself to key individuals as part of the exercise, as one example."

Additional emails between HBGary employees, usually originating from Barr, discuss the vulnerability social networking causes.

One employee wrote, "and now social networks are closing the gap between attacker and victim, to the point I just found (via linked-in) 112 females, wives of service men, all stationed at Hurlbert Field FL - in case you don't know this is where the CIA flies all their "private" airlines out of. What a damn joke - the U.S. is no longer the super power in cyber, and probably won't be in other areas soon."

Barr also predicted a steady rise in clandestine or secret government operations to stem the flow of sensitive information. "I would say there is going to be a resurgence of black ops in the coming year as decision makers settle with our inadequacies... Critical infrastructure, finance, defense industrial base, and government have rivers of unauthorized communications flowing from them and there are no real efforts to stop it."

The creation of internet propoganda software is only one of HBGary's controversial activities. According to Wikileaks competetor and occasional collaborator Cryptome.org, several other progressive organizations were intended to be targeted including anti-war activist, anti-torture organizations and groups opposed to the US Chamber of Commerce.

The emails also include a number of other embarrasing entries including the purchase of the book "The Multi-Orgasmic Man: Sexual Secrets Every Man Should Know" from Amazon for $6.76.

via FAKEBOOK: US Gov. Creates Software for ’Fake People’ Pushing Propoganda on Social Networks.

According to a spokesperson for US Central Command, Persona Management Software is not being used by the US government inside the United States and that the program is limited to “foreign, non-English speaking” websites.

Lt. Cmdr. Bill H. Speaks, spokesperson for US Central Command, said the program “supports classified activities outside the [United States]” on “non-English speaking websites.”

When asked if the program could be used by private security firms for domestic operations, Speaks declined to comment, saying only that the program did not exclusively belong to the US government.

According to Speaks, the contract was awarded in August of 2010 to software and contracting companies, not HBGary as previously insinuated by other outlets. HBGary Federal was one of the parties interested in applying for the contract in July of last year. The private security firm HBGary Federal was attacked by internet hacker group Anonymous earlier this month in which over 70,000 emails were copied and posted to the internet. The posted emails seemed to indicate that the company was planning to use “fake people” on social media sites to infiltrate and discredit their perceived political enemies.

- CentCom: Government Not Using Persona Management Software in Un

Not sure why the multi-O for men book is embarrassing, unless they are spending company money for personal uses. I read the book years ago and it works.

More importantly, be on the look out for the fake people on social web sites. US Central Command may be right about the government not creating fake people on US sites pushing a pro war agenda. Has anyone found one?  I'm not sure that Obama is spending a lot on war propaganda to convince us of anything. I'm not hearing it anyway. Countries can get around laws about messing with their citizens by messing with each others citizens and sharing the data. This has been going on for years with spying.

Many of us know that industry pays billions to marketing firms to get us to believe certain things to influence buying habits, but we just don't know how much of what we hear is the result of lies for hire. For example, $4.2 billion was spent by the fast food industry in 2009 to get Americans to buy unhealthy foods according to grist.org. What did that money buy? Just commercials on TV and radio? Or do they slip a huge amount of money to Rush Limbaugh to talk about ribs and to connect good healthy foods with worthless things like cardboard and tree bark. To me, that's a psyop, it is vile propaganda, a paid lie disguised an attack on absurdity by a disgruntled everyman:

"I'm sure you're aware that nutritionist-at-large Michelle Obama is urging, demanding, advocating, requiring what everybody can and can't eat. She is demanding that everybody basically eat cardboard and tofu. No calories, no fat, no nothing -- gotta stop obesity. "

All you have to do, Rush, is say "roots and berries and tree bark" and "tofu and cardboard", and you get paid. Because marketers paid by the junk food industry already did a million dollars worth of research to figure out how to turn people against fresh foods, and in their focus groups, these phrases worked.

A $4.2 billion marketing budget in 2009, a year characterized by a brutal economic slump, is the sign of an extremely profitable industry. Corporate fast food is what is known as a "countercyclical" industry -- it tends to thrive when the economy goes to hell. When money is tight, McDonald's dollar menu looks like a bargain -- and stuff like Domino's now-infamous eight-cheese Wisconsin Pizza seems like a reasonable indulgence.

How well are these companies doing? The stock market gives us a clue. Over the past two years, shares of Yum! Brands (owner of owner of KFC, Pizza Hut, Taco Bell, and Long John Silver's) and McDonald's have both more than doubled. Meanwhile, the overall stock market, as measured by the S&P 500 index of the nation's largest publicly traded companies, has flat-lined. In other words, investors are quite bullish on junk food corporations.

Follow the money... and at least start to get a clue that ... oh no, I'm getting a fast food craving. Weird. I will fight it and eat cardboard and tree bark tonight... because those are the only alternatives to McDonalds.

 

Indonesian mud volcano flow 'to last 26 years'

The world's largest mud volcano, which left 13,000 families homeless, is likely to continue erupting for another 26 years, researchers have estimated.

It first erupted back in May 2006, and - at its peak - was spewing 180,000 cubic metres of mud a day, equivalent to 50 Olympic-sized swimming pools.

The volcano, in East Java, Indonesia, has buried homes, schools and farmlands over seven square kilometres.

The findings have been published in the Journal of the Geological Society.

This is the first reliable estimate on how long Lusi (derived from the Indonesian word for mud, lumpur, and the place where the eruption occurred, Sidoarjo) would continue erupting.

Co-author Richard Davies, a geologist from Durham University's Department of Earth Sciences, said there were a number of factors that meant it was not possible to produce an estimate until now.

"We did a provisional estimate in 2008, but we have significantly improved the methodology," he told BBC News. "Also, for two or three years there was a lot of debate about what caused it. ...

Professor Davies added that the team now had confidence to publish an estimate because they also had four year's worth of data on how much material was coming out of Lusi, allowing them to calibrate the computational model developed by co-author and fellow Durham University researcher Simon Mathias.

He explained that the volcano was driven by carbonated water in an aquifer, estimated to be about 2.5-3.5km beneath the surface, that travelled up through the drilled borehole and passed through a layer of muddy material (known as the Upper Kalibeng) before erupting on the surface via a 50-metre central vent.

The inputs for the model of what was happening underground came from two wells; one located on the site of the central vent, and another located about 6km away, where there was a natural, smaller mud volcano.

"This gave us the pressure in the actual aquifer," explained Professor Davies.

"Then we considered factors such as the permeability and porosity of the rock to estimate how long would it take for fluid pressure to decline until no more fluid would come out of the vent.

"It is a fairly standard methodology, but it has never really been applied to mud volcanoes before."

He added that the team used a lot of different probabilities and combined them, creating a huge number of outputs (called realisations).

"Out of the 10,000 realisations, we actually rejected a large number because we wanted to fit the actual rate which the mud had come out of the volcano to fit those data points," he said.

They ended up with 381 realisations, which allowed them to reach the estimate of 26 years.

But Professor Davies added: "Within the modelling, there is a 10% chance that it will last for more than 100 years, and there is a 90% chance that it will last longer than 10 years." ...

via BBC News - Indonesian mud volcano flow 'to last 26 years'.

Another Runaway General: Army Deploys Psy-Ops on U.S. Senators

The U.S. Army illegally ordered a team of soldiers specializing in "psychological operations" to manipulate visiting American senators into providing more troops and funding for the war, Rolling Stone has learned – and when an officer tried to stop the operation, he was railroaded by military investigators.

The orders came from the command of Lt. Gen. William Caldwell, a three-star general in charge of training Afghan troops – the linchpin of U.S. strategy in the war. Over a four-month period last year, a military cell devoted to what is known as "information operations" at Camp Eggers in Kabul was repeatedly pressured to target visiting senators and other VIPs who met with Caldwell. When the unit resisted the order, arguing that it violated U.S. laws prohibiting the use of propaganda against American citizens, it was subjected to a campaign of retaliation.

"My job in psy-ops is to play with people’s heads, to get the enemy to behave the way we want them to behave," says Lt. Colonel Michael Holmes, the leader of the IO unit, who received an official reprimand after bucking orders. "I’m prohibited from doing that to our own people. When you ask me to try to use these skills on senators and congressman, you’re crossing a line."

The list of targeted visitors was long, according to interviews with members of the IO team and internal documents obtained by Rolling Stone. Those singled out in the campaign included senators John McCain, Joe Lieberman, Jack Reed, Al Franken and Carl Levin; Rep. Steve Israel of the House Appropriations Committee; Adm. Mike Mullen of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; the Czech ambassador to Afghanistan; the German interior minister, and a host of influential think-tank analysts.

The incident offers an indication of just how desperate the U.S. command in Afghanistan is to spin American civilian leaders into supporting an increasingly unpopular war. According to the Defense Department’s own definition, psy-ops – the use of propaganda and psychological tactics to influence emotions and behaviors – are supposed to be used exclusively on "hostile foreign groups." Federal law forbids the military from practicing psy-ops on Americans, and each defense authorization bill comes with a "propaganda rider" that also prohibits such manipulation. "Everyone in the psy-ops, intel, and IO community knows you’re not supposed to target Americans," says a veteran member of another psy-ops team who has run operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. "It’s what you learn on day one." ...

via Another Runaway General: Army Deploys Psy-Ops on U.S. Senators | Rolling Stone Politics.

Toyota Robots Play Trumpet and Violin In Tokyo (video)

There are many things that make humans unique, but apparently a love of music isn’t one of them. Toyota had its violin and trumpet playing robots on display recently during several public performances at their AMLUX building in Tokyo. Visitors got to see the humanoid bots play their instruments alongside real human violinists and pianists in an interesting blend of man and machine musicianship. It’s a little recursively surreal to watch humans try to match their playing to machines that are (ostensibly) designed to mimic human playing themselves. Check it out in the videos below. These ‘Partner Robots‘ may be putting on a good show, but Toyota’s final goal is anything but music. Part of their longterm vision, the automotive company hopes these bots will play major roles in its ventures in healthcare, housework, and manufacturing.

First, a quick rendition of Pomp and Circumstance. It’s a piece the robot violinist has performed many times in the past, including at its debut. It sounds better here with a few humans to back it up.

via Toyota Robots Play Trumpet and Violin In Tokyo (video) | Singularity Hub.

Scientists unveil the world's smallest computer that is just a 1 MILLIMETRE square

Scientists have created the world's smallest computer system to help treat glaucoma patients.

At just one square millimetre in size, the tiny device is a pressure monitor that is implanted in a person's eye.

It may be small but it packs a hefty punch, containing an ultra low-power microprocessor, a pressure sensor, memory, a thin film battery, a solar cell and a wireless radio with an antenna that can transmit data to an external reader device.

Developed by researchers at the University of Michigan, the unnamed unit - which is expected to be commercially available in several years - is already being touted as the future of the computing industry.

Its creators - Professors Dennis Sylvester, David Blaauw and David Wentzloff - claim that as the device's radio needs no tuning to find the right frequency it could link to a wireless network of computers.

A network of such units could one day track pollution, monitor structural integrity, perform surveillance, or make virtually any object smart and trackable, according to the scientists. ...

The processor in the eye pressure monitor is the third generation of the researchers' Phoenix chip, which uses a unique design and an extreme sleep mode to achieve ultra-low power consumption.

The newest system wakes every 15 minutes to take measurements and consumes an average of 5.3 nanowatts.

To keep the battery charged, it requires exposure to ten hours of indoor light each day or 1.5 hours of sunlight. It can store up to a week's worth of information.

While this system is miniscule and complete, its radio doesn't equip it to talk to other similar devices, which is an important feature for any system targetted towards wireless sensor networks.

The researchers are confident their miniature device will take off.

They cite the concept of Bell's Law - that a new breed of smaller, cheaper computers arises each decade.

This theory is upheld by the personal computers of the 1980s turning into the laptops of the 1990s, and those into the smartphones of the new millemium.

Professor Sylvester said: 'This is the first true millimeter-scale complete computing system. ...

via Scientists unveil the world's smallest computer that is just a 1 MILLIMETRE square | Mail Online.

How nature's patterns form

... Newell's talk, "The Universal Nature of Fibonacci Patterns," is part of the symposium, "The Growth of Form in Mathematics, Physics and Biology," to be held in Room 147A of the Washington Convention Center.

The symposium honors the 150th anniversary of the birth of mathematical biologist D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson.

In 1917, Thompson published an extremely influential book, "On Growth and Form," in which he argued that biological forms are controlled more by the laws of physics than by evolution.

Newell agrees that many of the biological -- and non-biological -- forms in nature are the products of physical forces, rather than evolutionary ones.

In his talk, he discussed how the arrangement of flowers, bracts, florets and stickers near the growth shoots of plants -- known as phyllotaxis -- is a consequence of biochemically and mechanically induced pattern-forming instabilities.

"All the lovely patterns on plants have their origins in mechanical forces and biochemical processes," he said.

Newell and his students approach the problem of patterns in plants from a mechanistic point of view, he said.

"We look at the phenomenon we're interested in, and we learn about it, we read about it, we find out what other people say about it, and we look at the experimental evidence," he said. "Then we try to capture what we see using mathematical models."

Patterns arise when the symmetry of a system is broken, Newell said. The similarity in patterns from system to system occur when the systems have similar symmetry, rather than because the systems are made from the same materials.

"The mathematics elegantly captures the fact that pattern structure depends more on shared geometrical symmetries than material properties, because the simplified equations for all these very different situations turn out to be the same," he said.

Newell said, "Mathematics is like a good poem, which separates the superfluous from the essentials and fuses the essentials into a kernel of truth."

via How nature's patterns form.

Why many historians no longer see alchemy as an occult practice

No, wizards have not learned how to transmute lead into gold and they haven't found any rejuvenating elixir of life. But the scholars who write the history of science and technology no longer lump alchemy in with witchcraft as a pseudo-science.

Instead they see alchemy as the proper precursor to modern chemistry.

The modern word "alchemy" comes from the Arabic word "al kemia," which incorporated a spectrum of knowledge of chemical properties and practices from ancient times.

Chemist and historian Lawrence Principe of Johns Hopkins University in Maryland believes that the hardworking alchemists of the late Middle Ages and the Renaissance, a period stretching across the 14th to the 17th centuries, were defamed by being lumped in with charlatans of the 19th century, quacks that were often depicted wearing eccentric costumes and casting spells.

"We're in an alchemical revolution," said Principe during a meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in February. Principe said that just in the past 30 years articles about alchemy were being accepted into Isis, one of the leading journals devoted to the history of science. Before that a prohibition on alchemical subjects had been in place.

The reason for this change is that historians are now recognizing the huge role alchemists had in producing valuable things, even if the alchemists never succeeded in turning lead into gold. By the way, making new gold was of great concern to kings since it would have interfered with the valuation of coins. This is why transmutation was considered a crime and why alchemists often had to do their research in secret.

Alchemists ... were instrumental in the development of many technologies during pre-modern times in Europe. For example, alchemists could be considered as an early form of industrial researcher. William Newman of the University of Indiana points out that alchemists ...  were active in assaying metals, refining salts, making dyes and pigments, making glass and ceramics, artificial fertilizers, perfumes, and cosmetics. An alchemists' shop was often the place in a town where you would go for medicine. Even today in many parts of Europe you go to "the chemist," for medicine, rather than to a "drug store."

Principe said that alchemists perfected the process of distillation, in which a mixed substance is boiled in such a way as to separate out one component by letting a vapor collect in a portion of the apparatus where it can be drawn off. Distillation is of course well known as the means of making spirits like whiskey. But it was also used by alchemists to make powerful acids, which in turn were important for a variety of industrial purposes, such as for separating metals from their ores. ...

via Why many historians no longer see alchemy as an occult practice.