Listening to the voices in your head

Mark trying to read his brain waves
(actually, a photo swiped from i eat food)

Several months ago I wrote a post, Projecting the mind's eye, that discussed a group of researchers at Berkley who were working on a means of measuring a person's brain activity, and then using those measurements to recreate an image of what they were seeing in their mind's eye.

Today the BBC, in their article Science decodes 'internal voices', reports on a different group of Berkley researchers led by Dr. Brian Pasley, who have applied the same technique to try to decode a person's internal voices and create an audible 'thought translation' of them.

Quite remarkable stuff. If you follow the link to the BBC article they have an embedded audio clip where you can hear the results of these though translations. Most can be barely understood even if you know what word is being said, but they're certainly close to being decipherable.

Of course, along with being remarkable, the idea that one day the words and images of your thoughts could be read is also terrifying. Think of the mess it will make of future traffic stops, job interviews and blind dates. I can picture it already....

Interior of restaurant. A couple sips drinks while wearing brain wave reading devices on their noggins.

Woman: "So, what do you do for a living?"
Synthesized woman's voice (SWV): "I'll bet he lives in his parent's basement"
Man: "I'm an independent computer consultant"
SMV: "I play video games. Lots and lots of video games."
Woman: "Hey, is that a mental image of you undressing me?"
SWV: "Ewwww... "
Man: "Uh... no... er... it is from a TSA scanner. They're one of my clients"
SMV: "Rats... I guess the ol' horizontal hula is out of the question tonight."
 

Uncooperative computer signs

I was in a park in Hong Kong once, when a young Chinese guy in a suit rushed up to me and asked me to proof read what he had written. It was the English instructions for assembling some gizmo. I thought he was pretty clever to double-check his work in that manner, but then again, half drunk sailors lolling about in parks might explain why some Chinese instructions verge on being gibberish.

At any rate, for the billboard above a Chinese (or Japanese) fellow obviously ran his translation through a computer. Sadly for him the translation server had crashed and the message wasn't translated as faithfully as he hoped.

The picture above, and the few that follow are from Carrie & Danielle's post 12 Digital Billboard Fails. I swiped four of them, you can see the rest along with their comments at the link.

By the way, in what was a first for me, this post was suggested by a reader, Andrea Smart. So Andrea, you get my first real hat tip and thanks for the suggestion (you can also email me at ambisinistral at gmail dot com if you don't want to use the 'contact me' form on the blog in the future).

Local station New 15 probably thought streaming a Twitter feed would bring them into the social media age and impress the youngsters. It did, and with what were completely hilarious results. If anybody sees those three, call you local sheriff.

Sony developed its own OS for their phones, so -- even though it was an error -- seeming to sell them by displaying a glitched looking Windows 2000 screen may not have been the brightest marketing moves of all times. You've got to have fail over protection on public displays like this.

Above is another thing that can go wrong -- hooligan h4x0rs. I wonder if the sign folks changed their password or left the default one in place? 
  

Stratfor and Brünnhilde

The current Stratfor article by George Friedman discusses the entanglement of Germany and Greece in the current EU financial crisis.

He points out that Greece's debt problem is partly Germany's fault. The German economy rests on exports to the Euro Zone, so German's have had a loose credit policy which has abetted in creating the problem.

Greece has two options, sacrificing its sovereignty as a price for financial aide or defaulting on their debt. Neither choice is a good one, but Greek politics might make default the more palatable option.

The German position is likewise complex, with the reality of their domestic politics as well as the rest of Europe's understandable concern, particularly in light of Germany's performance in the 20th Century, about Germany exerting so much influence in another country's affairs as being worrisome. As a result Germany has a thicket of problems to try to work its way through as well.

It is an interesting article. Below is an excerpt of the start of it, but I recommend you follow the link after the excerpt and read the entire article.

As for the article's Hot Stratfor Babe, of course Brünnhilde was the obvious choice. Not only because she is Teutonic, although that certainly helped her case, but primarily because she is so often associated with the American saying, "it ain't over 'til the fat lady sings."

Although the origin of the saying is unclear, the most common explanation for it is that the fat lady singing refers to the 10 minute aria sung by Brünnhilde that ends the Götterdämmerung cycle of operas by Richard Wagner. There are other explanations, the most convincing being it is an old Southern expression, "Church ain’t out till the fat lady sings." They are chronicled in this Phrase Finder post if you're interested in pursuing the matter further.

Whatever its origin, regarding the EU financial crisis it looks like it is getting closer and closer to the time that the fat lady finally sings. I do not look forward to the radiating shock wave from that aria.


Germany's Role in Europe and the European Debt CrisisBy George Friedman, January 31, 2012

The German government proposed last week that a European commissioner be appointed to supplant the Greek government. While phrasing the German proposal this way might seem extreme, it is not unreasonable. Under the German proposal, this commissioner would hold power over the Greek national budget and taxation. Since the European Central Bank already controls the Greek currency, the euro, this would effectively transfer control of the Greek government to the European Union, since whoever controls a country's government expenditures, tax rates and monetary policy effectively controls that country. The German proposal therefore would suspend Greek sovereignty and the democratic process as the price of financial aid to Greece.

Though the European Commission rejected the proposal, the concept is far from dead, as it flows directly from the logic of the situation. The Greeks are in the midst of a financial crisis that has made Greece unable to repay money Athens borrowed. Their options are to default on the debt or to negotiate a settlement with their creditors. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) and European Union are managing these negotiations.

Any settlement will have three parts. The first is an agreement by creditors to forego repayment on part of the debt. The second is financial help from the IMF and the European Union to help pay back the remaining debt. The third is an agreement by the Greek government to curtail government spending and increase taxes so that it can avoid future sovereign debt crises and repay at least part of the debt.

Bankruptcy and the Nation State

The Germans don't trust the Greeks to keep any bargain, which is not unreasonable given that the Greeks haven't been willing to enforce past agreements. Given this lack of trust, Germany proposed suspending Greek sovereignty by transferring it to a European receiver. This would be a fairly normal process if Greece were a corporation or an individual. In such cases, someone is appointed after bankruptcy or debt restructuring to ensure that a corporation or individual will behave prudently in the future.

A nation state is different. It rests on two assumptions. The first is that the nation represents a uniquely legitimate community whose members share a range of interests and values. The second is that the state arises in some way from the popular will and that only that popular will has the right to determine the state's actions. There is no question that for Europe, the principle of national self-determination is a fundamental moral value. There is no question that Greece is a nation and that its government, according to this principle, is representative of and responsible to the Greek people.

The Germans thus are proposing that Greece, a sovereign country, transfer its right to national self-determination to an overseer. The Germans argue that given the failure of the Greek state, and by extension the Greek public, creditors have the power and moral right to suspend the principle of national self-determination. Given that this argument is being made in Europe, this is a profoundly radical concept. It is important to understand how we got here.

Germany's Part in the Debt Crisis

There were two causes. The first was that Greek democracy, like many democracies, demands benefits for the people from the state, and politicians wishing to be elected must grant these benefits. There is accordingly an inherent pressure on the system to spend excessively. The second cause relates to Germany's status as the world's second-largest exporter. About 40 percent of German gross domestic product comes from exports, much of them to the European Union. For all their discussion of fiscal prudence and care, the Germans have an interest in facilitating consumption and demand for their exports across Europe. Without these exports, Germany would plunge into depression.

Therefore, the Germans have used the institutions and practices of the European Union to maintain demand for their products. Through the currency union, Germany has enabled other eurozone states to access credit at rates their economies didn't merit in their own right. In this sense, Germany encouraged demand for its exports by facilitating irresponsible lending practices across Europe. The degree to which German actions encouraged such imprudent practices -- since German industrial production vastly outstrips its domestic market, making sustained consumption in markets outside Germany critical to German economic prosperity -- is not fully realized.

Read the rest of Germany's Role in Europe and the European Debt Crisis
  

Pool hall in Pyongyang

The notes for the video say it was filmed in the Yangakkdo Hotel in Pyongyang, North Korea. The Yangakkdo Hotel is the largest functioning hotel in North Korea. To keep the guests from wandering around the city it is located on an island and connected to Pyongyang via a causeway. Supposedly all of the rooms are bugged and monitored with cameras. So, if a cute little North Korean hostess knocks on your door late at night, you can expect to be blackmailed.

"Noooo comrade, please don't post that video to YouTube! I swear I'll change my review of Nothing to Envy and call it an absurd pack of running dog lies and I'll also stop calling Kim Jong-un by the slanderous name of Kim Jong-Fatso. Anything, anything, just don't post that video!!!"

As for the video. I was amused when, at the 3:06 mark, after the girl had gone to answer her cellphone, the guy cheated by moving the ball off the rail. However, there is justice in the world, it didn't do him any good -- he still blew the shot.
 

We’ve wasted too many years arguing over how to retrieve the irretrievable

Writing about the onset of the Great Depression, John Kenneth Galbraith famously said that the end had come but was not yet in sight. The past was crumbling under their feet, but people could not imagine how the future would play out. Their social imagination had hit a wall.

The same thing is happening today: The core institutions, ideas and expectations that shaped American life for the sixty years after the New Deal don’t work anymore. The gaps between the social system we inhabit and the one we now need are becoming so wide that we can no longer paper over them. But even as the failures of the old system become more inescapable and more damaging, our national discourse remains stuck in a bygone age. The end is here, but we can’t quite take it in.

Above is the start of a thought-provoking article, The Once and Future Liberalism, by Walter Russell Mead. It is long, but well worth the time to read. The meat of Mead's argument is that both Progressives/Liberals and Conservatives are arguing the wrong thing, with each group harkening back to a different model of small 'L' liberalism from a bygone era. 

Mead asserts that Anglo-Saxon liberalism has gone through four distinct models. The first was the limited Constitutional Monarchy formed after the Glorious Revolution of 1688 in Britain. Eventually it broke down as King George III reasserted authority over Parliament and this lead to the American Revolution and its transition from Constitutional Monarchy to a Republic led by the landed gentry. This was followed by what Mead calls Manchester liberalism with the expansion towards universal suffrage, the abolition of slavery and the loosening of markets.

With the onset of the industrial revolution yet another change occurred, this version of liberalism using government as a counter balance to the unaccountable "Robber Baron" style monopolies. What evolved was the "Iron Triangle" model, where stability and a degree of freedom was preserved by "strong unions in stable, government-brokered arrangements with large corporations." Evemyually this was extended by FDR and the later Great Society.

Mead argues that as government power increased, by the 1970s we had entered the current Blue State model which is coming apart at the seems because it can no longer provide the security, economic dynamism and most important of all, the personal freedom in a stable society we expect. 

An end of an era is upon us, but Mead argues that the both the Left and the Right are spinning their wheels harkening back to older models of liberalism. He makes that case in the excerpt below, but you really should read the entirety of Mead's The Once and Future Liberalism. My brief synopsis of the article does not begin to do it justice.

What does this argument look like when translated into historical terms? Many believe that the real ideological contest in America today is between “red” liberalism 3.0 (the more individualistic, laissez-faire, often evangelical kind of liberalism of the 19th century) and the more state-oriented, collectively minded post-World War II 4.1 blue liberalism. Red liberals denounce blue liberals as betrayers of the liberal legacy, as ideology thieves who have taken a philosophy grounded in individual freedom and limited government and turned it into a charter for “big” government. Blue liberals respond that red liberals don’t understand how the complexities of modern life make the outmoded pieties of liberalism 3.0 inadequate to today’s problems. But common to both these positions is the belief that the American debate today is between two versions of the past: the (presumed) free market utopia of the 19th century versus the (presumed) social utopia of the New Deal/Great Society of more recent times. If that were true, this would be a nation of conservatives fighting reactionaries—the status quo of 1970 fighting the status quo of 1880.

But it’s not true. Neither aged version of liberalism can adequately address what Americans most want. In particular, neither can provide a new era of rising mass prosperity for the overwhelming majority of the American people. Nobody has a real answer for the restructuring of manufacturing and the loss of jobs to automation and outsourcing. As long as we are stuck with the current structures, nobody can provide the growing levels of medical and educational services we want without bankrupting the country. Neither “liberals” nor “conservatives” can end the generation-long stagnation in the wage level of ordinary American families. Neither can stop the accelerating erosion of the fiscal strength of our governments at all levels without disastrous reductions in the benefits and services on which many Americans depend.

We cannot realistically solve our problems by trying to return to the 3.0 liberalism of the 19th century because the American economy of that era depended on conditions we cannot reproduce today. Though some may think it desirable, we cannot return to a largely agrarian economy. Nor can we replicate the industrial system of the 19th century, with its extremely high tariffs against foreign goods and a completely laissez-faire national attitude toward immigration. Trying to recreate the American economy of a century ago would lead to massive dislocations, depressions and quite likely wars around the world, not to mention thoroughly wrecking the American economy and bankrupting many of our banks and biggest corporations.

But if red liberal fundamentalism can’t work, blue fundamentalism can’t help us either. There’s no going back even half a century ago, because the great achievements of blue liberalism were also rooted in conditions we cannot replicate today. Between 1914 and the 1970s, when the blue social model took shape and rose to power and success, the world economy was in an unusual state. International financial and trade flows were much lower than before 1914 and after 1970, due to the disruptions of two world wars and the Great Depression. And the United States was so far ahead of the rest of the world in manufacturing that few American companies (or workers) had anything to fear from foreign competition. Capital was dramatically less mobile; it was much easier to tax high earners without driving savings and investment out of the country.

At the same time, Americans in the first two thirds of the last century were more willing to engage in group politics than is the case today. Industrial workers fought to build unions and generally voted the way their leaders advised them. Ethnic groups stuck together and voted as blocs. Twentieth-century liberal politics generally involved negotiated agreements among party bosses and other leaders who commanded loyal followings. Few politicians today can count on this kind of unquestioning support in an era when party structures and patronage networks are both weaker and less reliable than they used to be. Now, instead of party structures funding candidates, candidates are expected to fund party structures.

We must come to terms with the fact that the debate we have been having over these issues for past several decades has been unproductive. We’re not in a “tastes great” versus “less filling” situation; we need an entirely new brew. But this is nothing to mourn, because both liberalism 3.0 and 4.0 died of success, just as versions 1.0 and 2.0 did before them.

When I Get Drunk

Monday morning, start of the work week blues by Cary and Lurrie Bell.

 

The flight of the ornithopter

Above are two video clips of RC ornithopters in flight. An ornithopter is a flying machine that flaps its wings like a bird. 

The first video is of an older model, the Park Hawk from 1993. It gives a good view of  the mechanism to flap the wings as well as the control surfaces in the tail. Plus the views of it in flight are pretty amazing in how much it behaves like a bird. 

The second video uses a technique dear to my heart, namely strapping a mini-camera onto a couple of other ornithopter models so we can get a mechanical bird's eye view of the flight. One thing that is obvious is the body bounces up and down a considerable amount while it is in flight. My advice -- if they ever form ornithopter-based commercial airlines buy as much stock in companies that sell airline sickness bags as you can afford.

Of course, with the models already built there are now people working on human powered ornithopters. The website Ornithopter Zone has a section, Manned Ornithopter Flights, that detail the history of these efforts. The upshot is that while a lot of people have claimed human-powered ornithopter flight, none of their claims are all that convincing. The problem is that they use some means of getting up to take-off speed -- most commonly via tow ropes -- and it then becomes difficult to assess if they've perfomed any better than a glider would. 

Below is a video of one such flight, by James DeLaurier and a team from the University of Toronto Institute for Aerospace Studies, that is assisted by jets for take-off. It sort of gets off the ground, but doesn't end well.

Apocalypse Later, Surf Now

Advice to a Prophet by Richard Wilbur

When you come, as you soon must, to the streets of our city,
Mad-eyed from stating the obvious,
Not proclaiming our fall but begging us
In God's name to have self-pity,

Spare us all word of the weapons, their force and range,
The long numbers that rocket the mind;
Our slow, unreckoning hearts will be left behind,
Unable to fear what is too strange.

Nor shall you scare us with talk of the death of the race.
How should we dream of this place without us?--
The sun mere fire, the leaves untroubled about us,
A stone look on the stone's face?

Speak of the world's own change. Though we cannot conceive
Of an undreamt thing, we know to our cost
How the dreamt cloud crumbles, the vines are blackened by frost,
How the view alters.  We could believe,

If you told us so, that the white-tailed deer will slip
Into perfect shade, grown perfectly shy,
The lark avoid the reaches of our eye,
The jack-pine lose its knuckled grip

On the cold ledge, and every torrent burn
As Xanthus once, its gliding trout
Stunned in a twinkling.  What should we be without
The dolphin's arc, the dove's return,

These things in which we have seen ourselves and spoken?
Ask us, prophet, how we shall call
Our natures forth when that live tongue is all
Dispelled, that glass obscured or broken

In which we have said the rose of our love and the clean
Horse of our courage, in which beheld
The singing locust of the soul unshelled,
And all we mean or wish to mean.

Ask us, ask us whether with the worldless rose
Our hearts shall fail us; come demanding
Whether there shall be lofty or long standing
When the bronze annals of the oak-tree close.
 

Manhole covers

Click any image to enlarge.

I found this series of Japanese man hole covers at the La Boite Verte post Des plaques d’égouts japonaises. I was surprised by their variety and detail. I guess that, without ever really thinking about it, I imagined manhole covers to be a standard off-the-shelf item and that, like the ubiquitous stackable white plastic chair, everywhere you went one would look pretty much like another. 

Curious, I did a Google image search on manhole covers and discovered that I was clearly wrong about that. There is an enormous variety of patterns embossed on manhole covers world-wide. My interest was piqued. I wondered why municipalities would pay the extra money these designs surely cost?

It turns out that a lot of foundries will cast manhole covers, and that they're apparently not that expensive to buy. As for the designs, Crescent Foundry in India has this blurb on their site: 

Over 5000 patterns are readily available for production. We have state of the art in house CNC machines for pattern making wherein we can develop new patterns with 2 weeks.

So standard patterns are available, but custom patterns must still be affordable. Digging deeper, I discovered that many cities sponsor contests or commission artists to design their manholes. The website ManHole, which specializes in manhole art, history and what-not (you've gotta love the nooks and crannies of the internet) has this to say about manhole cover design:

Manhole cover design varies greatly from city to city, with each municipality balancing budget versus art. Some cities, such as Seattle, opted for a clever street map design on their covers, others went with city logos or seals. Most, though, choose a simple grid pattern, or checkered design. The reason behind a pattern or design on the covers is simple - traction - both for pedestrians, as for vehicles.

As of late, manhole cover design is no longer something to be treaded on lightly. Cities like Vancouver, Seattle, New York and Tokyo have decided to pursue commissioned designer covers, giving their cities more than just a curiousity. In competitions to find the best designs, these cities have their communities actively participating in waste awareness, while simultaneously promoting a brighter and livelier city.

At any rate, more pictures of Japanese manholes are after the jump, and you can find more at the links in the first two paragraphs of this post. Enjoy, and take time to give a second look at the manhole covers in your neighborhood, because they may be overlooked pieces of urban art.

Read more »

Cooking eggs

"Simple pleasures are always the last refuge of the complex" - Oscar Wilde

 

Stratfor and Genevieve Nnaji

On January 20th the terrorist group Boko Haram carried out a deadly series of bombing attacks in the Nigerian city of Kano, killing over 200 people. To date, although very violent, Boko  Haram has been a terrorist group that operates mainly in its local area and is unsophisticated in its attack abilities.

In light of the January 20th attacks Scott Stewart, in the latest Stratfor article, revisits the group to see if they are becoming more of a transnational terror group by extending their reach out of their traditional area of operations, as well as to analyze any advancements they've made to their bomb-making and planning skills.

For the article's Hot Stratfor Babe I once again turned to Nollywood, Nigeria's film industry, for an actress deserving the profound honor. After a long and intensive search I selected Genevieve Nnaji, who CNN apparently once called the Julia Roberts of Africa.

Ms Nnaji was raised in a middle class family in Lagos. At age 8 she had a role in a Nigerian soap opera, but didn't begin acting in earnest until the age of 19. As with most Nigerian thespians, she's been in about a bajillion movies. Nollywood must crank out movies at a dizzying pace. If you go to YouTube and watch any Nigerian films (and a lot are available in their entirety) you'll know how they can make so movies a year  -- the words words slip-shod, hurried and low-budget spring to mind.

Regardless, Genevieve won the Best Actress award in the 2005 African Academy Awards.

She's also recently taken up singing and has had a long modeling career, including being the "The Face of MUD", which strikes me as a rather unfortunate name for a line of cosmetics.

Below is the start of the Stratfor article, you can read the rest of it by following the link at the end of the excerpt.


Nigeria's Boko Haram Militants Remain a Regional Threat
By Scott Stewart, January 26,2012

The Nigerian militant group Boko Haram conducted a series of bombing attacks and armed assaults Jan. 20 in the northern city of Kano, the capital of Kano state and second-largest city in Nigeria. The attacks, which reportedly included the employment of at least two suicide vehicle-borne improvised explosive devices (VBIEDs), targeted a series of police facilities in Kano. These included the regional police headquarters, which directs police operations in Kano, Katsina and Jigawa states, as well as the State Security Service office and the Nigerian Immigration Service office. At least 211 people died in the Kano attacks, according to media reports.

The group carried out a second wave of attacks in Bauchi state on Jan. 22, bombing two unoccupied churches in the Bauchi metropolitan area and attacking a police station in the Tafawa Balewa local government area. Militants reportedly also tried to rob a bank in Tafawa Balewa the same day. Though security forces thwarted the robbery attempt, 10 people reportedly died in the clash, including two soldiers and a deputy police superintendent.

In a third attack, Boko Haram militants attacked a police sub-station in Kano on Jan. 24 with small arms and improvised hand grenades. A tally of causalities in the assault, which reportedly lasted some 25 minutes, was not available. This armed assault stands out tactically from the Jan. 20 suicide attacks against police stations in Kano. The operation could have been an attempt to liberate some of the Boko Haram militants the government arrested following the Jan. 20 and Jan. 22 attacks.

Stratfor has followed Boko Haram carefully to assess its intent -- and ability -- to become more transnational. As we noted after the U.S. State Department issued warnings in early November 2011 about Boko Haram's alleged plans to strike Western-owned hotels in Abuja, Nigeria's capital, the group made significant leaps in its operational capability during 2011. During that time, it transitioned from very simple attacks to successfully employing suicide VBIEDS. An examination of the recent attacks in Kano and Bauchi states, however, does not reveal further advances in the group's operational tradecraft and does not display any new ability or intent to project power beyond its traditional areas of operation.

Boko Haram's Tactical Evolution

Boko Haram, Hausa for "Western Education is Sinful," is an Islamist militant group established in 2002 in Maiduguri, the capital of Nigeria's Borno state. It has since spread to several other northern and central Nigerian states. It is officially known as "Jama'atu Ahlis Sunna Lidda'awati wal-Jihad," Arabic for "Group Committed to Propagating the Prophet's Teachings and Jihad."

At first, Boko Haram was involved mostly in fomenting sectarian violence. Its adherents participated in simple attacks on Christians using clubs, machetes and small arms. Boko Haram came to international attention following serious outbreaks of inter-communal violence in 2008 and 2009 that resulted in thousands of deaths.

By late 2010, Boko Haram had added Molotov cocktails and simple improvised explosive devices (IEDs) to its tactical repertoire. This tactical advancement was reflected in the series of small IEDs deployed against Christian targets in Jos, Plateau state, on Christmas Eve 2010.

Continue reading Nigeria's Boko Haram Militants Remain a Regional Threat.

Uku

Spend the weekend looking for Mr. K's Magic Hat

accompanied by the sounds of Dengue Fever.

  

 

Budget Vacations - Shangri-La

From pet_rock's Shangri-La Flikr photo set.

Sure, your summer vacation is months away, but that's no reason you can't start your planning now. During these hard economic times I've been suggesting cheap travel destinations that are educational, uplifting and just plain awe inspiring. With that criteria in mind, today I suggest you consider the miniature road side village of Shangri-La located outside of Chapel Hill, North Carolina.

In 1968, Henry L. Warren decided to build a little town on the side of the road. He began dynamiting quartz located on his property and used that, along with some bricks and a lot of concrete, to lovingly build his dream.

As Dean Pickles explains in his post A Tiny Roadside Village, Made From Quartz at Asia Obscura:

Each building has character and purpose. As a true obsessive, he even gave each a name. There’s the Dew Drop Inn, the Shangri Hi School, and the Little Brown Church in the Dell. The White Rock Motel has it’s own tiny swimming pool. There’s a jailhouse, and a hospital too. 

Dean's post is where I found out about this little town and found the photographs posted here and after the jump (except for the two photos captioned otherwise). He has more pictures, as well as a map to Shangi-La, at his post.

Read more »

Replacing a railroad bridge