Saturday, November 15, 2003
Best of this month's Crypto-Gram
It's the 15th again, and that means you know what that means, kiddies: a new Crypto-Gram. My favorite links:
- How to find hidden cameras (258K PDF). If you venture anywhere in public, or even private spaces that are owned by businesses,, you're probably in the sights of one of these cameras. The paper's got lots of fascinating details on camera design, common hiding places, and even countermeasures (most of which, alas, are beyond the budget and expertise of the casual citizen). Stuff like this makes me seriously want to buy a portable EMP device, walk into a Wal-Mart carrying it in my backpack, pulse the place, and walk out.
- ID numbers: it turns out that your driver's license number may contain a bunch of encoded information about you. They don't just assign them consecutively or randomly. Also some information on credit card numbers, social security numbers, etc.
- GrokLaw on security of Microsoft vs. Linux.
Teflon Considered Teratogenic?
Time to buy a cast-iron skillet, maybe? Caveats:
- The EPA is still reviewing the subject and has not issued any warnings about Teflon products.
- It's not clear that the reported birth defects are statistically significant.
- The 20/20 transcript is maddeningly vague on the exact levels of C-8 found in the blood of humans who use Teflon. Is it one tenth of carcinogenic levels? One millionth? Nor are they very clear on the differences in exposure between DuPont factory workers and ordinary people who cook with Teflon pans or wear Gore-Tex.
On the other hand, the "Teflon flu" is definitely real, by DuPont's own admission. Don't leave your Teflon pans on the range too long. (Once again, the 20/20 transcript is infuratingly vague on this subject: exactly how long, on a typical home range, do you have to heat a pan before it reaches the 554-degree point where particulates come off the Teflon?)
I'll be keeping my eyes open for the EPA's report. Most of my cookware is Teflon-coated.
Thursday, November 13, 2003
"Think I'm in love/Probably just hungry"
L. Helmuth reports for ScienceNOW on two fascinating presentations from the November 11 meeting of the Society for Neuroscience. ScienceNOW requires a non-free subscription but some excerpts follow.
First up: A recent study by H. Fisher (of Rutgers), A. Aron, D. Mashek, G. Strong, and L. L. Brown provides some insights into the neurochemistry of love; from Helmuth's article (emphases mine):
College students participating in the study of romance had been with their One True Love for between 2 to 17 months and they displayed all the classic, feverish, delusional symptoms: obsessive thinking about their partners, sleeplessness, euphoria when things are going well. ...
These lovebirds --- seven men and 10 women --- then went into a functional magnetic resonance imaging scanner ... Regions of the brain involved in the motivation and reward system lit up in response to the loved one, including parts of the caudate nucleus and the ventral tegmental area. ...
These results differ from those of a previous study ... which imaged the brains of people who'd been in relationships for more than 2 years, on average, and found lots of activity in emotional areas such as the insula and anterior cingulate. Fisher's team reexamined their data and found that the subjects in relatively longer-term relationships also activated these emotion centers when viewing their loved ones.
So --- watch my cynicism to swing into action --- the first flush of infatuation, with butterflies in your stomach and palpitations in your heart, has much more in common with basic physical urges like hunger or arousal than with genuine emotions. Spiritualized had it right all along. For infatuation to become an emotion, rather than merely an urge, you have to wait for at least a few months. Maybe a year or more (hard to tell from the articles and the abstract; this work has not yet been published as a complete, peer-reviewed paper).
Furthermore --- putting on my mad scientist hat --- maybe this research points to a solution to the problem of diminishing passion in long-term relationships: we just need a pill that stimulates the caudate nucleus and the ventral tegmental area. Whatever the hell those are. I suggest we call it Caudela---
Not enough spice in your marriage? Spouse doesn't send shivers down your spine anymore? Does your heart not burn with longing every moment that you are apart? Do you no longer feel that pulsating stream of joy every day that you go to bed and wake up next to each other?
Ask your doctor about Caudela™
DISCLAIMERS: Use only as directed. Caudela™ may not be suitable for all patients. Side effects may include insomnia, shortness of breath, cardiac arrhythmia, loss of balance, mood swings, stupidity, and selective blindness. Desperate singles and ovulating women should exercise extreme care when using Caudela™. Severe withdrawal symptoms have been observed from discontinued use. Some patients require psychological counseling when beginning or ending treatment. Older subjects, on the other hand, may experience sensations of relief when Caudela™ treatment ends and they can settle down to their saner, duller lives.
In other news, Helmuth reports on a study on orgasm in the fairer sex:
A brain-imaging study shows that, during orgasm, women's brains have about the same pattern of activity as men's. ... Compared to clitoral stimulation alone, orgasm caused greater activation in several parts of the brain, including the same reward region tickled by romantic love, the ventral tegmental area. The main difference between the sexes was a deep brain area called the periaqueductal gray. It's also the sine qua non of the female sexual response in cats, rats, and hamsters; if it's damaged, the animals don't assume a mating position. Other than that, the brain activity "is very much the same as during ejaculation in males," says Holstege.
Most men have, at one time or another, suspected that orgasm might somehow be better for women. Now we know that, well, it's basically the same. I don't know whether to be relieved or disappointed.
Anyway, this stuff is all cool. Sometimes I wish I'd been a neurologist. Alas, that I have but one life to give.
Alternate links for the Fisher et al. study on the neurology of infatuation:
Labels: dating, neurology, self-deception
Wednesday, November 12, 2003
Go see The Foyer!
My friends PM and JW recently opened another show at their collaborative artists' space in Brooklyn. If you're in the NYC area in the near future, check out The Foyer. The advance shots of the pieces look quite promising. Too bad I'm stuck on the left coast...
Tuesday, November 11, 2003
"Content" may go a progress through the guts of a worm...
...but otherwise it is none-too-kinglike. A couple of years ago it was fashionable in "new media" circles to proclaim that "Content is King" --- i.e., that the Internet would be dominated by big media companies that owned the music, movies, and other stuff that people wanted to download.
More recently, people like Jack Valenti are going up in front of Congress and making noise about how piracy is stifling the growth of broadband. The argument goes like this: broadband can only grow if there's demand; only Big Media (music, movies) can produce that demand; Big Media won't provide Content unless they can be sure it won't be pirated. Valenti and his cohort would therefore have us all hand control of our computers and networks over to Big Media. Or, in other words: "Kill the Internet to save broadband!"
The lynchpin of this whole argument is, again, that Content is King.
Well, let AT&T Labs researcher A. Odlyzko disabuse you of these notions. Interpersonal communication, not broadcast, has always been the primary bandwidth consumer of communication networks, even before the Internet. When given networks that are capable of point-to-point communication, people want to communicate with other people, far more than they want to passively consume content. AT&T's old ad campaign had it right: what people really want is to "reach out and touch someone."
Labels: economics, telecommunication
Monday, November 10, 2003
11 out of 15 Texans smart and brave enough to stand up to Creationists?
Assuming the Board of Ed is representative of the larger population, that is. (via Atrios)
Labels: evolution, science-education
Sunday, November 09, 2003
Catalog of Depressing Things, Item #1
Stack yourself up against major historical figures with this handy JavaScript application (via MeFi)
Al Sharpton is a Solaris man
I'd never have guessed. Well, actually, he doesn't seem to understand what "technocrat" means, so maybe it's not surprising that his staff hosts his site with a company that pays for a severely overpriced commercial Unix when cheaper, equally suitable alternatives are available.
Also notable: Gephardt's support for unions doesn't affect his choice of web server (Microsoft's well-known for using temps and contractors extensively.)
UPDATE: Just to be clear, I don't seriously think that a candidate's web server platform matters all that much. I'm just taking the piss.
