The Year in Ideas
A run through of the NY Times Magazine peice The Year in Ideas. The whole collection is freaking amazing and is fully deserving of your time.
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Think your PGP-encrypted SSL-tunneled firewall-ed email is safe? Think again. The lead off article (by alphabetical order) is about accoustic eavesdropping on computer keyboards by associating the sound a specific key makes with a specific sound. Apparently they're recognizably different, and this is huge: no matter how much security you stack into the wires, if your broadcasting your communique in a single-sound for single-letter tappa-tap, you might as well say what you're typing out loud. Of course the challenge now is to develop secure keyboards that randomize their sounds.
Kudos to the researcher for 'thinking outside the box.' The scary part is that this is almost certainly something the NSA/CIA has already thought of, and I'm sure they've had these sort of bugs for years. Let's hear it for closed government research. woo.
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This is fucking brilliant and the best (only?) use for a camera-phone I've seen to date by a million miles: Using Camera-phones to scan bar codes of food or other retail products. Scan the code, find out where your food is coming from. Is the farm organic? Has it burned tons of fossil fuels travelling half way around the world? What's the processing history? It's information overload, but it's also a huge weapon in consumer awareness. Huge.
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What's the best way to skip a rock? This is a really fun piece that I'm looking forward to reading in Nature. A group of Frenchies have taken a theoretical and experimental look at the mechanics of rock skipping. This reminds me of Feynman's flying plate-emblem problem. Feynman's numbercrunching ended up making it's way into his QED work, if I recall, and I don't think this rock skipping mechanics work is as useless as the researcher claims--I could definitely see this research leading to new ways of landing planes (or spaceships) in the ocean with minimized violence.
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There's a piece full of interesting ideas on fogey gadgetry. The looming baby-boomer retirement makes this gadgetry the most marketable of all.
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Debunking Photoshop Fakery: Debunked. While the Dartmouth prof who's developing the algorithm is doing some neat work, there's a glaring lack of insight into the meat of problem on his part. Once developed and released, frauders will have open access to his software, and can test their products for believability. This is nothing more than a tiny step in a classic arms-race . Within a month "believability" software would start showing up.
An extended problem with this writeup is that it is delaying people suspicions: a photograph is not proof. The soon people understand that the better.
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Tangentially, I also learned the origin of the word robot: "When [Karel] Capek's brother, Josef, coined the word for the automatons in the play 'R.U.R.,' he derived it from the Czech word robota, meaning 'slave labor.' "
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The Employable Liberal Arts Major raises some questions that I've been pondering lately as I drown in engineering professionalism (and wonder why I took such 'flakey' courses at Deep Springs.) Anthony Marx, president of Amherst College, reminds me:
"To dilute the power of the liberal arts with premature professionalism will deprive our society of the thoughtful leadership it needs." If they have the luxury of time, he said, students should "go deeper into the liberal arts, because that is the seed corn of an intellectual life and informed citizenship." After all, college is breathlessly short, and the American working life increasingly long. How many professionals think back fondly to those industry-specific lingo-training courses of their undergraduate days?Yeah, I'm totally going to be in school for at least another decade. Screw the real world, I'm working on me leadership needs. hehe.
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The FanWing is undoubtedly one of the biggest things to hit aviation since the helicopter. Basically it uses a Mississippi-style paddle-wheel to push air over the wing and create lift without high speeds, enabling it to fly at car-like speeds and take off on shorter stretches. It uses less gas too, if the article is be believed. Really cool.
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A Danish company has bioengineered Land-Mine-Detecting Plants that turn red in the presence of nitrogen dioxide. If it works (not much room for error here), it would be a suitable gesture to revive some of our rusting warplanes to carpet-
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Welcome to the world of sonocytology: amplifying the natural vibrations of cells to 'listen' to them. Changes is this vibration can be correlated to cell-death, growth, multiplication, and thereby presumably cancer. Pretty freekin' cool.
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The divide between Professionals and Amateurs is fading fast.
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The Singable National Anthem: "It's no small detail that the song's highest note -- the one most people can't reach -- is the word 'free,' as in, 'land of the freeeeeeeeee.'" Mmmm...symbolism.
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Modern warfare is apparently more similar to the finessed strategy of soccer than all-American gridiron football. You mean you can't just form a blocking wall and run through Afghanistan and win the game? Go figure.
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Even though they're now owned by Unilever, Ben and Jerry's haven't forgotten their tree-huger roots. They've apparently developed a Thermoaccoustic Freezer which uses sounds waves to compress (or rather, expand) the air in a room filled with inert gas to cool it without using harmful chemical refrigerants. Really neat-o. Ben and Jerry's is actually sold at 7-11 here in Lund, which is crazy and awesome at the same time. It's one of two pilot locations in the whole country from what I've heard. But I've noticed that pints are NOT made from the bleach-free paper that I've seen in American pints, which is both odd and a shame. Unilver-ization has begun.
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Virtual Autopsies using MRI and CT technology. Seeing as the persons dead, I guess you can use all the radioactive tracers you want. Woo-hoo! Oh wait...to get around the body I guess you'd need a working heart...hmmm. I wonder if you can do a tracer injection and then manually drive the heart through a few cycles. Martin?
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Virtual Sketch Artist uses Darwinian permutations to help witnesses have a go with subtle variations of their description. They talk about the effects of memory, but I still fear that the suggested permutations would guide a user unwillingly. Perhaps multiple runs could sort that out? Interesting none the less.
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And last but not least, it appears that moisture is no longer the essence of wetness. An impressive year.
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They also ran an interview with Stephen Hawking, which is full of brilliant bits through understandable brevity. His commentary on America, Mars, et al is right on, in my opinion. But the best part:
Q: "What is your I.Q.?"
A: "I have no idea. People who boast about their I.Q. are losers."
7 musings:
Hi, I'm a complete stranger that found your livejournal, and since then have been reading this blog. It's good to read because A) you're interesting and write articulately about interesting things and B)you seem to have a unique point of view. Right, so there's that.
I am commenting because I too read that piece (I read the magazine in bed while knitting) and although some of the things were truly amazing, some of them were awful. Like the anti-concept concept store, the emoting car, eyeball jewellry, the TV blaster.
I thought their musings on the child population boom in red states was interesting. The Sabermetrics for Football thing regarding averages and probability and the New England Patriots winning all the time. And people say american football is dumb...
Sorry to be slightly stalkerish...
Nora
(my livejournal name is norae)
Nora,
Don't worry, I stalked you back. When I went to your livejournal profile "deep springs college" popped out in bold letters (literally), and I guess I can deduce how you arrived at my livejournal.
Your comments are flattering, thank you, I'm glad. Yes, perhaps I endorsed the article a bit too eagerly, but in general I thought it was a really cool collection. You're right about the eyeball jewellry, emoting car, TV blaster....it wasn't perfect.
So what's your interest in Deep Springs? Do you fit the 'would have applied in a heartbeat if only I had the proper appendage hanging between my legs' profile, or do you know someone who went there/is there? How'd you hear about it? For what it's worth I'm pro-coed, but I'm even more emphatically for the idea of openning more schools like Deep Springs. It's a shame that it has to be such a unique educational model.
/johan
I'm glad you stalked me back! Yay removal of guilt! I recently made nearly my whole journal private, which is a shame in situations like this because it might have explained a few things better, but I'll try to sum them up here.
I think I read an article about Deep Springs College in a magazine (Vanity Fair?) and I was quite taken with the idea of higher learning coupled with hard labor. I went to a similarly zany school, St. John's College in Annapolis, MD for a year. ( http://www.sjca.edu ). St. John's has 400 students, all of whom follow the same curriculum for 4 years. It's modeled on a classical education, and the degree is technically something like "history of science/math and philosophy with a concentration in linguistics." Basically, you read a lot of philosophy, learn greek and german, read some more books, learn euclid and kepler, read some more books and talk about what you've read. No grades, very few papers, much fun. I left after a year because I ultimately didn't want to get a degree in philosophy and also because I hated Annapolis. And everyone there is nuts. Deep Springs seemed like a comparable place, and the idea that it is in the desert, and self-sufficient seems quite, quite appealing. I'm from Boston, where there are no mountains and everything feels slightly compacted. The mythic west and purple mountains majesty are a big draw. I think I'm too old (23) and too close to a bachelor's degree to try to apply now (and also lack that pesky appendage) but if I'd heard about it when I was 17, I would have applied in a heartbeat. And raised hell to get in.
I ended up transferring to Boston University and majoring in documentary journalism when I decided that what I actually wanted to do was medicine. So I became an EMT and am majoring in human physiology. I have a few revolutionary ideas about healthcare in rural areas that don't make use of medical insurance. But that's a whole other subject. I blame this goal on having had too many copies of national geographic and the new england journal of medicine lying around the house as a kid.
How in the world did you hear about deep springs? Why did you go? I can't imagine the culture shock upon coming home after having been there.
Anyway, I'll quit with the life stories, etc, and just say again that I really like reading your blog. You must be around 20 years old, but your writing belies your age. It's quite entertaining and thought-provoking. My personal journal is a little more of the "I ate cheerios for breakfast today and then did experiments on frog cardiac muscle, yawn" variety, but feel free to read it. I'll add you to my friends list so you can read the friends-only entries.
Nora
johan
it's grace
email me
please
find me
Re: radioactive tracer apostrophe.
CT stands for computed tomography. CT is technically a generic term for either emission or transmission CT.
Emission would be in the sense of x-ray emission from an intravenously injected radioactive tracer as used in nuclear medicine scans using SPECT, single photon emission computed tomography, or PET, positron emission (computed) tomography.
However, for all intents and purposes CT refers to transmission CT, which is when X-rays are transmitted through the body and detected by a detector on the opposite side. This construction of opposing x-ray source and detector then rotate around the subject in the innards of what is commonly referred to as a CT scanner.
So, for CT scanning, there is no radioactive tracer. In MRI, there is no radioactive tracer either - MRI derives its signal from the intrinsic so called relaxation properties of the protons in the hydrogen atom. No x-rays, no tracer.
Hence, virtual autopsies are performed using CT and MRI and, to my knowledge, neither uses intravenous injection of anything, not even a contrast agent.
I would guess that virtual autopsies do not utilize intravenous injection of either contrast agents for CT or MRI - OR - radioactive tracers for subsequent nuclear scanning (SPECT or PET) due to issues with coagulation of the blood which occurs in the dead body. I would guess that this makes it difficult/impossible to acheive circulation of the intravenously injected material. Furthermore, in the case of nuclear scanning, the radioactive tracers used clinically are chosen for their biological/metabolic characteristics in living tissue. These qualities are completely deranged in dead tissue.
But, yes, the issue of radioactive exposure from CT is non-existant when it comes to deceased subjects. I heard that at Linköping University Hospital in Sweden they routinely perform CT virtual autopsies. They actually run the body through the scanner while still in the body bag. This is of course convenient from a sanitary perspective. Oh yeah, they don't have any issue with movement artefacts either, which is a bonus.
/Martin, Johan's brother, MD working with medical imaging
Johan,
When are you going to write your 'about'. Fans like Nora need to know!
/Martin
working on the about content....
I heard about Deep Springs through an enrolled student from my high school one year my senior. I went to Deep Springs in search of the considered life, etc., and gladly found it to be that and so much more. Long story. Two years long.
From what I've heard about St. Johns it sounds really interesting, though I can imagine how it could be less than ideal. Thanks for the friend add and I hope you kepp enjoying my (sporatic) posts.
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