A coal mine in Pennsylvania has been on fire since 1962 with no end in site. In the ’80s the government bought the town and shut it down because the fire will burn for possibly another hundred years before it gets through all the coal in the mine.
Recently in Science/Technology/Medicine Category
Sony Music caught a lot of flak this week when a programmer discovered that some of its CDs were responsible for installing a program called a rootkit on his computer. Basically, a rootkit is a form of spyware designed specifically to be invisible to antivirus and anti-spyware detection programs. The software was designed to prevent the unauthorized copying of the disc or ripping the music off the CD onto the computer’s hard drive. It is a form of anti-copying protection.
This was a big story in the tech world and the music world for a lot of reasons:
- the rootkit software was installed without the knowledge of the consumer (which is against the law in California and possibly several other states)
- removing the rootkit causes damage to your computer and may be against the law (violation of the the DMCA, which says that “circumventing” copy protection schemes is illegal)
- it treats consumers like criminals who are assumed to be violating the terms of fair use, even when they are not doing so by doing many of the things the software prevents, i.e. copying the songs their computer or to a digital music player like the iPod
I duly wrote a letter to Sony
> I would like you to know that I am strongly opposed to Sony’s use of anti-copying technology on it’s music releases. Especially offensive is Sony’s use of rootkits to hide the copy protection software.
> Consumers own the discs after purchase, not Sony. There are fair use rights that accompany that purchase and Sony has exhibited a complete disregard for those rights and by extension a disregard for it’s customers. Sony treats the people who support it as if they should be forever beholden to a corporation just to listen to some music.
> Sony Music is not in danger of going out of business or even losing any large numbers of sales from people using their CDs in a legitimate way. Those who are pirating music on a large scale will always find a way around protection schemes. You only end up making it harder, and in this case dangerous, for consumers to enjoy the products they have purchased.
> How can you expect consumers to continue to purchase from you when you treat them like criminals? It is disgraceful.
> Until you end this ridiculous practice of copy protecting CDs you will receive no business from me and I will encourage my friends and family and anyone else who will listen to boycott your products as well.
So I do encourage everyone not to purchase music from Sony or it’s labels until they end this insane, controlling business practice.
After Will & Grace premiered on NBC I remember a lot of talk about the power of portraying gay people on television to improve the “public’s” perception and tolerance of homosexuals. In the period since there have been complaints about the number of minorities on television — asians, hispanics, blacks, etc. It is right to ask that studios not avoid portraying minorities, but I never thought that seeing gays of blacks on television would actually change people’s perceptions. People, though sometimes simple, aren’t that simple; the mindsets and the beliefs surrounding intolerance are more complicated than that. To some degree it sounds like I was wrong.
In his book, Blink, Malcolm Gladwell describes a test that Harvard developed to test people’s unconscious feelings about and associations with minorities. In short the test reveals that people more easily associate “good” words with caucasian people and “bad” words with black people. It doesn’t matter the subject’s conscious inclinations toward black people, almost everyone tests with some degree of negative associations over 50%.
According to Gladwell, however, subjects who spent time reading about positive black institutions and figures tested much more positively toward blacks. Meaning that the only way to truly ensure that your mind isn’t unconsciously distancing itself from minorities is to expose yourself to more positive examples of minorities.
I was surprised to find that the simple act of watching positive examples of blacks, gays, or minorities could so powerfully influence our subconscious mind. I guess it should have.
Check out this awesome map of the NYC subway system overlayed on a Google Map.
The House of Representatives displayed a rare bit of backbone today by passing a bill that would make it easier for federal money to go to stem cell research. President Bush keeps telling anyone who will listen that he will veto any bill that makes it possible to use federal dollars to “destroy life to save life.” The problem with this arugument is that is doesn’t mesh with reality, as much of Bush’s domestic policy does not. The truth is that the embryos from which research would get stem cells are those left over from fertility clinics. These embryos are unused and will be destroyed. The only difference between using the embroys for stem cell research and just throwing them away is the level of good that can be derived — none in the latter, much in the former. The other catch is that Bush has made no effort to seek the elimination of fertility clinics that are the producers of this large body of embroys. If this industry produces so much destroyed life, why not stop the destruction by stopping invetrofertilization. The answer of course is that religious conservatives don’t have a problem with invitro right now, so there is no need to pander to them by stopping it.
No doubt this demonstration by House Republicans is empty of any really conviction because there isn’t much chance of getting the 290 votes needed to override the president’s veto of the bill. It’s just an easy way to vote for something that has wide popular support without the fear of having interest groups breathing down you neck about passage of a bill they don’t like. It’s the best of both worlds for a politician in a tight spot.
[via NY Times]
After 50 years, the venerable pill bottle gets a revamp, and guess who did it? Target! Check out this piece in New York magazine.
I have gotten no small amount of funny looks on the subway for reading Wired. People seem to think that it’s a computer geek magazine — and they are right, but it’s also a got some of the best big-think style science and political writing around. This month’s issue carries an article about a world-wide trend of improving IQs — a phenomenon known as the Flynn Effect. Across the board people’s IQ, g in geek-speak, is improving dramatically. The question is why?
Since the 40’s IQ has improved an average of 17 points. What is really strange is that IQ is supposedly an inherited trait so a big question is why are kids doing better on the tests designed to measure IQ? As the piece says, “we certainly aren’t evolving that fast.” Now a study by the discoverer of the Flynn Effect might have the answer:
Four years ago, Flynn and William Dickens, a Brookings Institution economist, proposed another explanation, one made apparent to them by the Flynn effect. Imagine “somebody who starts out with a tiny little physiological advantage: He’s just a bit taller than his friends,” Dickens says. “That person is going to be just a bit better at basketball.” Thanks to this minor height advantage, he tends to enjoy pickup basketball games. He goes on to play in high school, where he gets excellent coaching and accumulates more experience and skill. “And that sets up a cycle that could, say, take him all the way to the NBA,” Dickens says.
Now imagine this person has an identical twin raised separately. He, too, will share the height advantage, and so be more likely to find his way into the same cycle. […] “If you did a genetic analysis, you’d say: Well, this guy had a gene that made him a better basketball player,” Dickens says. “But the fact is, that gene is making him 1 percent better, and the other 99 percent is that because he’s slightly taller, he got all this environmental support.” And what goes for basketball goes for intelligence: Small genetic differences get picked up and magnified in the environment, resulting in dramatically enhanced skills. “The heritability studies weren’t wrong,” Flynn says. “We just misinterpreted them.”
Flynn wants to know what part of our environment accounts for these environmental effects. He thinks he may have found an answer: video games. Well, that’s not officially his conclusion, but it’s the conclusion some draw from his research. Games and other activities that tax our cognitive abilities are increasing. Video games, more leisure time, a plethora of digital media, etc., are forcing us to use our reasoning skills more and more. And like that say, practice makes perfect — hence our IQs are going up. It’s the “cognitively demanding leisure” hypothesis. Pretty cool, huh?
[via Wired]
From a book:
Imagine an alternate world identical to ours save one techno-historical change: videogames were invented and popularized before books. In this parallel universe, kids have been playing games for centuriesé nd then these page-bound texts come along and suddenly theyæ± e all the rage. What would the teachers, and the parents, and the cultural authorities have to say about this frenzy of reading? I suspect it would sound something like this:
Reading books chronically under-stimulates the senses. Unlike the longstanding tradition of gameplaying謡hich engages the child in a vivid, three-dimensional world filled with moving images and musical soundscapes, navigated and controlled with complex muscular movementså‚ooks are simply a barren string of words on the page. Only a small portion of the brain devoted to processing written language is activated during reading, while games engage the full range of the sensory and motor cortices.
Isn’t that an interesting idea? the author, Steven Berlin Johnson, doesn’t actually believe that books are under-stimulating or that games are necessarily that good for you. It’s just something ge says in his new to get you thinking about “realize how selective and short-sighted most of the criticism about gaming is.”
At first glance it seems absurd to think that books could be terrible isolating while video games are so engaging, but after a few seconds it almost starts to make sense. I still think books are better than video games myself, but I like gaming too, once in a while. I think I will have to read this book of his.
Johnson also has a piece about TV in this week’s NY Times Magazine.
Nope, not a dolphin, that’s, Kekaimalu, the wholphin!
Why other airports don’t emulate the design of the DFW airport, I have never understood. It makes so much sense and seems to make a good use of space. Maybe I am wrong, but I know that the symmetry is really beautiful.
Don’t laugh, I know I am a geek.
[image via Google Maps]
