November 24, 2004
MIT team finds genetic key to high-level thinking
Where's the smart drugs...
A gene expressed only in brain areas responsible for high-level thinking and feeling may be key to the brain's ability to respond rapidly to new input, scientists at MIT's Picower Center for Learning and Memory and colleagues report in the Nov. 18 issue of Neuron. The finding may one day allow researchers to manipulate the level or speed at which people learn new information.
Elly Nedivi, the Fred and Carole Middleton Assistant Professor at MIT, Jeffrey Cottrell (MIT Ph.D. 2004), and colleagues from Yale University have identified for the first time a gene encoding a protein that may function as a modulating switch to fine-tune certain neurons' plasticity, or ability to change. In addition to shedding light on plasticity, understanding this protein may one day allow researchers to manipulate the level or speed at which people learn new information.
Neurons pass along information across a small gap called a synapse. The synapse consists of the neuron's presynaptic and postsynaptic endings and a space between them. The postsynaptic ending is dotted with neurotransmitter receptors that act like tiny receivers for chemical signals. Through a mechanism that is not well understood, these receptors appear and disappear. Maintaining these surface receptors is a critical aspect of neuronal function. More receptors allow increased cell activity, but too much activity can be toxic.
Nedivi's results suggest that candidate plasticity gene 2 (cpg2) and the protein it encodes--CPG2--are key in balancing receptor turnover.
The protein encoded by the candidate plasticity gene 2 exists only near synapses in the parts of the brain responsible for receiving and interpreting sensory information, analyzing information, reasoning, experiencing emotions and initiating movement. This gene "might be the link between levels of brain activity and the ability of the brain to respond to an increased level of activity," said Nedivi, who explores activity-regulating genes that are the driving force behind plasticity--or change--in the brain.
Endocytosis is a process through which a substance can get into a cell without passing through the cell membrane. The cell engulfs a protein and creates a little pouch, or vesicle, to hold it internally. The protein CPG2 regulates endocytosis, controlling the number of receptors at the postsynaptic site. The researchers observed the effects of knocking out the cpg2 gene. "Getting rid of CPG2 clearly perturbs the process," Nedivi said. In the absence of the protein, the number of vesicles increased, decreasing the number of receptors on the surface.
The more active the cell, the more CPG2 is used to clear the vesicles and internalize them at a faster rate, leaving fewer receptors on the surface. This could be a protective mechanism for the synapse, which would be overwhelmed with a too-high level of activity.
In addition to Nedivi and Cottrell, co-authors are Erzsebet Borok and Tamas L. Horvath of Yale University Medical School.
This work is supported by the National Eye Institute, the National Center for Research Resources and the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases.
Posted by Epiphany at 11:41 PM | Comments (85)
New Tools to Help Patients Reclaim Damaged Senses
VR and cybernetica
By SANDRA BLAKESLEE
Published: November 23, 2004
heryl Schiltz vividly recalls the morning she became a wobbler. Seven years ago, recovering from an infection after surgery with the aid of a common antibiotic, she climbed out of bed feeling pretty good.
"Then I literally fell to the floor," she said recently. "The whole world started wobbling. When I turned my head, the room tilted. My vision blurred. Even the air felt heavy."
The antibiotic, Ms. Schiltz learned, had damaged her vestibular system, the part of the brain that provides visual and gravitational stability. She was forced to quit her job and stay home, clinging to the walls to keep from toppling over.
But three years ago, Ms. Schiltz volunteered for an experimental treatment - a fat strip of tape, placed on her tongue, with an array of 144 microelectrodes about the size of a postage stamp. The strip was wired to a kind of carpenter's level, which was mounted on a hard hat that she placed on her head. The level determined her spatial coordinates and sent the information as tiny pulses to her tongue.
The apparatus, called a BrainPort, worked beautifully. By "buzzing" her tongue once a day for 20 minutes, keeping the pulses centered, she regained normal vestibular function and was able to balance.
Ms. Schiltz and other patients like her are the beneficiaries of an astonishing new technology that allows one set of sensory information to substitute for another in the brain.
Using novel electronic aids, vision can be represented on the skin, tongue or through the ears. If the sense of touch is gone from one part of the body, it can be routed to an area where touch sensations are intact. Pilots confused by foggy conditions, in which the horizon disappears, can right their aircraft by monitoring sensations on the tongue or trunk. Surgeons can feel on their tongues the tip of a probe inside a patient's body, enabling precise movements.
Sensory substitution is not new. Touch substitutes for vision when people read Braille. By tapping a cane, a blind person perceives a step, a curb or a puddle of water but is not aware of any sensation in the hand; feeling is experienced at the tip of the cane.
But the technology for swapping sensory information is largely the effort of Dr. Paul Bach-y-Rita, a neuroscientist in the University of Wisconsin Medical School's orthopedics and rehabilitation department. More than 30 years ago, Dr. Bach-y-Rita developed the first sensory substitution device, routing visual images, via a head-mounted camera, to electrodes taped to the skin on people's backs. The subjects, he found, could "see" large objects and flickering candles with their backs. The tongue, sensitive and easy to reach, turned out to be an even better place to deliver substitute senses, Dr. Bach-y-Rita said.
Until recently sensory substitution was confined to the laboratory. But electronic miniaturization and more powerful computer algorithms are making the technology less cumbersome. Next month, the first fully portable device will be tested in Dr. Bach-y-Rita's lab.
The BrainPort is nearing commercialization. Two years ago, the University of Wisconsin patented the concept and exclusively licensed it to Wicab Inc., a company formed by Dr. Bach-y-Rita to develop and market BrainPort devices. Robert Beckman, the company president, said units should be available a year from now.
Meanwhile, a handful of clinicians around the world who are using the BrainPort on an experimental basis are effusive about its promise.
"I have never seen any other device do what this one does," said Dr. F. Owen Black, an expert on vestibular disorders at the Legacy Clinical Research and Technology Center in Portland, Ore. "Our patients are begging us to continue using the device."
Dr. Maurice Ptito, a neuroscientist at University of Montreal School of Optometry, is conducting brain imaging experiments to explore how BrainPort works.
Dr. Eliana Sampaio, a neuroscientist at the National Conservatory of Arts and Métiers in Paris, is using the BrainPort to study brain plasticity. Sensory substitution is based on the idea that all sensory information entering the brain consists of patterns carried by nerve fibers.
In vision, images of the world pass through the retina and are converted into impulses that travel up the optic nerve into the brain. In hearing, sounds pass through the ear and are converted into patterns carried by the auditory nerve into the brain. In touch, nerve endings on skin translate touch sensations into patterns carried into the brain.
These patterns travel to special sensory regions where they are interpreted, with the help of memory, into seeing, hearing and touch. Patterns are also seamlessly combined so that one can see, hear and feel things simultaneously.
"We see with the brain, not with the eyes," Dr. Bach-y-Rita said. "You can lose your retina but you do not lose the ability to see as long as your brain is intact."
Most important, the brain does not seem to care if patterns come from the eye, ear or skin. Given the proper context, it will interpret and understand them. "For me, it happened automatically, within a few minutes," said Erik Weihenmayer, who has been blind since he was 13.
Mr. Weihenmayer, a 35-year-old adventurer who climbed to the summit of Mount Everest two years ago, recently tried another version of the BrainPort, a hard hat carrying a small video camera. Visual information from the camera was translated into pulses that reached his tongue.
He found doorways, caught balls rolling toward him and with his small daughter played a game of rock, paper and scissors for the first time in more than 20 years. Mr. Weihenmayer said that, with practice, the substituted sense gets better, "as if the brain were rewiring itself."
Ms. Schiltz, too, whose vestibular system was damaged by gentamicin, an inexpensive generic antibiotic used for Gram-negative infections, said that the first few times she used the BrainPort she felt tiny impulses on her tongue but still could not maintain her balance. But one day, after a full 20-minute session with the BrainPort, Ms. Schiltz opened her eyes and felt that something was different. She tilted her head back. The room did not move. "I went running out the door," she recalled. "I danced in the parking lot. I was completely normal. For a whole hour." Then, she said, the problem returned.
She tried more sessions. Soon her balance was restored for three hours, then half a day. Now working with the BrainPort team at the University of Wisconsin, Ms. Schiltz wears the tongue unit each morning. Her balance problems are gone as long as she keeps to the regimen.
How the device produces a lasting effect is being investigated. The vestibular system instructs the brain about changes in head movement with respect to the pull of gravity. Dr. Bach-y-Rita speculated that in some patients, a tiny amount of vestibular tissue might survive and be reactivated by the BrainPort.
Dr. Black said he had seen the same residual effect in his own pilot study. "It decays in hours to days," he said, "but is very encouraging."
Blind people who have used the device do not report lasting effects. But they are amazed by what they can see. Mr. Weihenmayer said the device at first felt like candy pop rocks on his tongue. But that sensation quickly gave way to perceptions of size, movement and recognition.
Mr. Weihenmayer said that on several occasions he was able to find his wife, who was standing still in an outdoor park, but he admitted that he also once confused her with a tree. Another time, he walked down a sidewalk and almost went off a bridge.
Nevertheless, he is enthusiastic about the future of the device. Mr. Weihenmayer likes to paraglide, and he sees the BrainPort as a way to deliver sonar information to his tongue about how far he is from the ground.
Dr. Ptito is scanning the brains of congenitally blind people who, wearing the BrainPort, have learned to make out the shapes, learned from Braille, of capital letters like T, B or E. The first few times they wore the device, he said, their visual areas remained dark and inactive - not surprising since they had been blind since birth. But after training, he said, their visual areas lighted up when they used the tongue device. The study has been accepted for publication in the journal Brain.
Dr. Ptito says he would like to see if he could teach his subjects how to read drifting letters like those in advertising displays. Not seeing motion is a big problem for the blind, he said.
In another approach, Dr. Peter Meijer, a Dutch scientist working independently, has developed a system for blind people to see with their ears. A small device converts signals from a video camera into sound patterns delivered by stereo headset to the ears. Changes in frequency connote up or down. Changes in pixel brightness are sensed as louder or softer sounds.
Dr. Yuri Danilov, a neuroscientist and engineer who works with Dr. Bach-y-Rita, said the research team had thought of dozens of applications for the BrainPort, which he called a "USB port to the brain."
In one experiment, a leprosy patient who had lost the ability to experience touch with his fingers was outfitted with a glove containing contact sensors. These were coupled to skin on his forehead. Soon he experienced the data coming from the glove on his forehead, as if the feelings originated in his fingertips. He said he cried when he could touch and feel his wife's face.
The federal government has also shown interest in sensory substitution technology. The Navy is exploring the use of a tongue device to help divers find their way in dark waters at night, said Dr. Anil Raj, director of the Institute for Human and Machine Cognition at the University of West Florida in Pensacola.
The sensors detect water surges, informing Navy Seals if they are following the correct course. The Army is thinking about sending infrared signals from night goggles directly to the tongue, Dr. Raj said.
In another application, student pilots have been fitted with body sensors attached to aircraft instruments. When the airplane starts to pitch or change altitude, they can feel the movements on their chests.
Sensory substitution technology may eventually help millions of people overcome their sensory disabilities. But the devices may also have more frivolous uses: in video games, for example.
Dr. Raj said the tongue unit had already been tried out in a game that involved shooting villains. "In two minutes you stop feeling the buzz on your tongue and get a visual representation of the bad guy," he said. "You feel like you have X-ray vision. Unfortunately it makes the game boring."
Posted by Epiphany at 10:22 PM | Comments (4)
FCC cracks down on cable
Cable TV bracing for FCC crackdown
Broadcasters have been putting up with the recent congressional indecency crusade, but now cable operators are beginning to sweat.
Cable operators have been lying low, letting broadcasters take all the
heat. Until recently it was assumed that cable would escape the campaign because if subscribers are paying for something to come into their homes, they're giving consent for that kind of programming.
Recently, Federal Communications Commission chief Michael Powell said he didn't think the FCC had the power to regulate cable the same way it did broadcasters. Now he's suddenly discovered it does.
"I don't believe the First Amendment should change channels when it goes from Channel 7 to 107," he told a recent convention of the National Association of Broadcasters convention.
It’s time for Cable to take some of this heat too.
Posted by Epiphany at 07:50 AM | Comments (60)
Heckling a Yankees fan landed editor in a Baltimore prison hell
Fuck Baseball... and Fuck Cops... especially Cops from Baltimore
by Joe Schaeffer
SPECIAL TO WORLD TRIBUNE.COM
Friday, September 17, 2004
What could be more American than heckling at a major league baseball game?
Not any longer. Opening your mouth at the ballgame can now be dangerous to your health.
Texas Rangers pitcher Frank Francisco made national headlines this week after being arrested on a felony charge for throwing a chair into a crowd of fans during a game at Oakland. Fan heckling was an integral part of the story.
What average fans may not realize is that their own experience at a ballgame has been forever changed because of such highly-publicized incidents. I know because last year at Camden Yards in Baltimore, some good-natured banter almost destroyed my life.
All of America seemed amused when Randall Simon, then of the Pittsburgh Pirates, was arrested in Milwaukee after playfully tapping a giant sausage mascot on the head during a Pirates-Brewers game on July 9, 2003. The absurdity of the act, combined with the seemingly hilarious overreaction of law enforcement and MLB officials, all made for a pleasant offbeat summer story.
Only it wasn’t very funny to me. You see, only eight days earlier, on July 1, 2003 at Camden Yards, I, like Simon, was led out of an MLB stadium in handcuffs. And what happened over the next 27 hours wasn’t the least bit hilarious. In fact, it was the worst experience of my life.
I should have known it wasn’t going to be my day when I was stuck in traffic on Pratt St. right in front of Oriole Park around 5 p.m. I had left work early to try and beat the traffic into Baltimore and park at my friend’s house in the Canton section of the city, not far from the ballpark, but I got there later than I’d hoped. In the shadows of the stadium, with traffic at a standstill and my windows open in the summer heat, I felt a tap on my shoulder and turned around to see a female police officer, asking, “Sir, is there a reason you’re not wearing your seat belt?” BAM! Twenty-five dollar ticket, welcome to Baltimore. The fact that I got a ticket for not wearing a seat belt is minor enough, but to be tapped on the shoulder while sitting in an unmoving car was a bit unnerving and should have been a harbinger of my future interactions with the Baltimore Police Department.
I eventually got rid of my car and made my way to the the park and was seated in Section 86 of the left-centerfield bleacher seats along with my friends Mark and Nick. We immediately noticed that we were within shouting distance of the visiting Yankees' bullpen, but for whatever reason none of us were much in the mood to heckle the New Yorkers. We’d all been to work already, we’re all over age 30 and, well, to tell the truth, we didn’t have the energy to do it. Pathetic, I know, but that really was our mindset the whole time: to just chill out, kick back and watch a ball game.
And that’s how we spent the next six innings, drinking a couple of beers each, joking around and just relaxing. Though fairly quiet ourselves, it struck me as an amazing thing that here I was at my first-ever New York Yankees game after hating them all my life, as any decent red-blooded American not born in the New York area should, and yet nobody was heckling the Yankee bullpen at all. Closer Mariano “What’s it like to lose a World Series on an infield popup?” Rivera was just standing there within easy shouting distance for most of the game and not one taunt from the O’s fans sitting in the bleachers with us. I remember thinking how calm and actually quite boring the atmosphere was for a game with the mighty, marquee Yankees in town.
But the home team was cruising, and by the time they were up 7-1 in the seventh inning the game was all but won. And we were all in a good mood because, hey, it’s always good when the Yankees lose. And about this time a Yankee fan some 10 rows below us started standing up and yelling, “Yankees! Yankees!! We’re still in first place! We’re still in first place,” etc. etc. And he wasn’t really bothering anybody, he was just cheering for his team in the face of defeat, no big deal. My friend Mark stood up and shouted back at him, something mild and not particularly offensive, and the guy didn’t seem to even notice.
Then, in the top of the eighth, the Yankee fan appeared to be heading for the exits, along with most New York fans around us. And he was still shouting out the first-place thing, and he was coming up the steps towards us, and this is when I spoke up for literally the first time all night. “Hey, Yankee fan, what’s the score? What’s the score, man, what’s the score?”
I didn’t stand up or gesture at him, flip him off or use a single swear word.
It was then as the fan exited behind me that I saw this usher leaning over the railing and staring right at me. He proceeded to point vigorously at me, and, literally red-faced, began screaming at me: “That’s it! You’re out of here! You’re gone buddy. GONE! You’re provoking, you’re causing trouble, and you are out of here! Officers! Officers! GET HIM OUT OF HERE!”
All of a sudden, just like that and to my total, total shock, I was being escorted out of the section by two armed police officers with “Camden Yards Detail” patches on their Baltimore Police Department uniforms. And this usher led us out as well, still yapping at me, his face red and contorted, acting as if he’d just discovered Osama bin Laden hiding in Section 86. And if the police officers said anything to me on the way out I honestly didn’t hear it, I was just staring in amazement at this usher having a fit because I said “Hey man what’s the score?” to a Yankee fan. At an Orioles HOME game.
So the two cops led me to the section exit, and with an “Out you go” told me to leave. I turned around on the way out, spied the usher and said, (exact quote), “Old man, you’d make a good Bolshevik.” The usher had graying hair and looked to be in his early 60s, and I was ticked at his utter and complete stupidity, so that’s where the remark came from. Still, I wasn’t livid or hostile, didn’t say it in a menacing way at all, and was still more shocked than anything. As I walked away I simply shook my head with a smile on my face, thinking “In 20 years of going to sporting events I’ve never seen someone thrown out of his seat for saying something like that.”
But the overwhelming thought in my mind was that this was no big deal, this was nothing. And I was also thinking, “this is my first Yankee game, they’re getting killed, and dammit, I wanna see the last out. I wanna see the official end: Yankees lose! Yankees lose!” Again, there was no great scheme here, no malice-aforethought, the idea just kinda popped into my head. And so I thought I’d walk a couple of sections up and duck back in and see the end of the game, still not believing that I had been thrown out of my seat in the bleachers.
I walked about two minutes, took a couple of steps to go back in and was immediately slammed against a wall and handcuffed very harshly by one of the two officers who escorted me out of Section 86. The officer spun me around to face him, and with a look of indescribable glee on his face that I will never forget, said, “So, you got any more smart comments to make about that old man?” And that’s when I knew I was in trouble.
I could not believe these officers were taking this so personally, but I cooperated completely, didn’t even try to complain even though I knew I hadn’t done anything the least bit serious, and was led away in handcuffs while 38,000 people were exiting the stadium all around me. The looks on people’s faces were hilarious, as if I had just punched a cop or something. I asked the officer as he was leading me away into the bowels of the stadium, “How did you guys get there so fast. You were right on top of me. Were you following me or something?” And his blunt and honest reply was “Yeah, you looked like the kind of guy who'd try to go back in.” And I’m thinking, “If you knew that I was gonna do that and you knew you were gonna arrest me for doing that, couldn’t you have just called out to me, ‘Sir, don’t go back in or you will be arrested?’ ” But no, these two officers just chose to walk 10 feet or so behind me for two full minutes and then jump me as I tried to go back in. Unbelievable.
But I didn’t say anything because, again, this still didn’t seem like that big a deal and I didn’t want to make it worse. I figured a ticket would be issued to me and I’d be on my way after not too long a delay, with plans to phone the Orioles with my complaints first thing in the morning. But that is not what the arresting officer had planned for me. No, that is not what he had in mind at all.
I was placed in a cell beneath the stadium, and after a half-hour or so was told a paddywagon would pick me up to take me to Baltimore Central Lockup. Total shock took hold of me once again, and I asked the officer, “Is this a big deal? How long am I gonna be there?” And he looked at me with that same gleeful smile he had when he cuffed me and said, “Oh, it’s only a misdeameanor charge, you should be out in an hour or two.” I was angry as hell at this point, but still not particularly worried. It still didn’t seem like that big of a deal to me.
I was then taken to Central Lockup, a depressing venue that somehow managed to look both dark and dirty and bright and antiseptic at the same time, where I had my mugshot and fingerprints taken. I can still see the CO in charge there asking me my height and weight, and when I replied “6’0”, 160,” I saw her write down “6’1” 185”. That’s the first time I got really, really scared. I asked again how long I would be there and without even looking up she muttered, “No more than an hour or two. It’s only a misdemeanor.”
Soon after I was led to a holding cell along with 8 or 9 other guys, and we were then immediately moved to another cell where I was to end up spending the next 17 hours. The cell, which looked like it could comfortably hold three people, eventually contained 11-15 of us at one time or another; it’s hard to remember the exact number because it kept changing over the hours, though it was more a case of people being shuttled from one holding cell to another. Nobody seemed to actually be getting out.
The cell was cool and dirty. Somebody said it is intentionally kept cold to discourage inmates from fighting. I was told by cellmates that by law we all had to be processed within 24 hours. When I told them that I was told I’d only be there an hour or two, they just laughed and said “They say that to everybody just so you don’t freak out at first. Sit back, man, ’cause you’re gonna be here a while.” And then they all laughed and it started to dawn on me just how screwed I was.
Hearing why some of the others were in there with me did nothing to make me feel better. Did you know the city of Baltimore locks people up for over 24 hours for not paying parking tickets or for having an open container of alcohol in public? Neither did I. This whole time I was thinking this cop who arrested me had it in for me because he thought I was a wiseass or something and it turns out they just treat everybody this way. Nothing personal. And no effort to get you out and on your way with any speed. For the entire 17 hours I was in that holding cell no CO would explain when we might be processed or how long we had to wait. The cynical indifference wasn’t surprising considering how tough a job they surely have but it’s still upsetting to be stuck in a cell for that long a time with no answer to your question as to how long you might be in there.
After a couple of hours most of my cellmates just sprawled out wherever they could and went to sleep, and I was glad to see that I wasn’t in any immediate danger, at least not for the night. As for me, there was no way I was going to get any sleep. I remember having to just stand there, motionless, as one inmate with his pants around his knees started masturbating in his sleep some 10 feet away from me. Disgusted, tired and angry, I tried to remain unfazed by the situation but that wasn’t really possible. Nobody else in the cell seemed the least bit taken aback by the sight.
Eventually morning came and still nothing, no word on when I would get out or anything. And after sleeping and eating and even more waiting and waiting, the cellblock started to get more agitated and lively. And that’s when the threats came. It didn’t exactly come as a shock that skinny white guys like me are going to get threatened in jail, but it did shock me that as much as 20 minutes could go by without a guard so much as walking past my cell. And so what do you do when, after having overheard hours of casual conversation about stabbings and beating people over the head with baseball bats, etc., etc., you’re told by a group of men, all of whom are bigger and stronger than you, that they are going to rape you in one hour? Maybe they were just trying to frighten me, who knows, but you know what, who cares? It’s still gonna scare the living hell out of you and it was just such a bizarre, surreal experience to be standing there powerless, knowing that I could easily — easily — have my life literally destroyed at any time. It just didn’t seem real to me, which looking back I have to say was a good thing. In between Our Fathers and Hail Marys all I could really think was “What’s the score man?” “What’s the score?” as these guys kept telling me crudely and pointedly that they were going to assault me in one hour.
After letting me sweat that out for a while, the ringleader of the group (i.e., the guy with the biggest mouth) decided to ask me what I was in for. And when I told him, he started to laugh, apparently finding the whole thing terribly amusing. After attempting to terrify me some more by telling me stuff like “People die here all the time. Who knows, you could die here today?”, he seemed to calm down, talked a little about himself to everyone for a few minutes and then looked back at me with great deliberance and said “Don’t ever come back here again.” And that’s when I knew I wasn’t going to be raped in that holding cell.
Finally, around 8 p.m., or about 21-and-a-half hours after I was first arrested, we were all moved to a larger holding cell to wait to see a commissioner, who would decide if we were going to be sent upstairs without posting bail, would be allowed to post bail or would be released on our own recognizance. About 40 of us were placed in this cell, where the sexual taunts and physical threats intensified, but my fear lessened because there were COs constantly entering the cell to escort somebody to see one of the commissioners. And so after hearing “See you upstairs, bitch” for the hundredth time, I wasn’t worried too much because, again, I was confident that there was no way I was going upstairs, surely I would be released on my own recognizance for such a minor, ridiculous charge.
Finally, I was led to see a commissioner at about 10 p.m. It had been almost 24 hours since my arrest and my nightmare seemed to be nearing an end.
I was ushered into a small phone-boothlike room and told to sit down. Without even being given an opportunity to talk, I was told that I was being charged with a crime and that I would have to post bail. I would not be allowed to post bail until the following morning, so they were going to keep me here another night. Upstairs.
And that’s the exact moment when, to quote Cool Hand Luke, “they broke me.” Twenty four hours of mind-numbing, fear-laced tedium waiting to see this guy and he’s got all the paperwork filled out before he even sees me, and he tells me I’ll be staying another night. Tears welled up in my eyes, I wouldn’t say I was sobbing, but I was whimpering for sure and I basically started begging this guy to let me go, telling him over and over how I could lose my job if I missed another day of work without my boss even knowing where I was.
The commissioner, seeing how distraught I was, then asked me if this was the first time I had been arrested, and I nodded yes. He then asked me where I worked and I said The Washington Times newspaper. Then he finally asked me what I did. All he saw was “Misdemeanor Trespass” for a charge. When I told him he began to laugh and asked me why I was thown out of the game. I told him and he said “Is that all you did? That’s nothing.” Then begrudgingly but with an air of mercifulness, he tore up the bail papers, changed them to release on own recognizance and kept telling me not to worry, that this was no big deal at all. And I was very grateful to finally hear it from someone in a position of authority, but I couldn’t help thinking, “You were going to put me upstairs where the long-term inmates are for another whole night when I’ve already been here for 24 hours and now you tell me it’s nothing?” But again I remained silent, thinking it was the best policy.
And this commissioner kept talking about The Washington Times, how Rush Limbaugh was always saying good things about it, and asking me what I did there. So I guess I have Rush Limbaugh to thank for keeping me from being locked upstairs for the night with a bunch of guys who had been threatening me for over two hours in a cell right next to these commissioners and whose idea of “roommates” was undoubtedly far different from mine.
Relieved beyond belief, I was led to another holding cell to wait to receive my wallet and keys. This would amazingly take another three hours. While there I talked with a guy who was also being released on his own recog who had been there about 19 hours after being arrested because he didn’t pay a citation for drinking alcohol in public. He showed me his incident report and told me that they don’t just put a warrant out for your arrest in Baltimore for not paying a citation, they go and get you. He told me he was arrested at his home at 2:30 in the morning by a squad of cops banging on his door. For an open container of alcohol. What the hell kind of city are they running up there?
When I told him how happy I was to finally reach this point, the last stop on the way out of this hellhole, he then gave me the last big scare of the whole disgusting experience. “Oh, before they let you out, they scan your name for outstanding warrants. If you have a ticket you didn’t pay or something, they take you all the way back to the beginning and you go through the whole process all over again.”
Feverishly I scanned my brain wondering if I’d gotten any parking tickets in the state of Maryland that I’d forgotten about, but apparently all was well and around 1:30 on the morning of July 3, some 27 hours after I was first arrested at the stadium, I was finally released. I caught a cab to my friend’s house and proceeded to take the longest five showers I have ever taken in my entire life.
Telling this story to friends and acquaintances over the following weeks I heard plenty of very believable horror stories about this happening to other people in Baltimore. Apparently it’s quite routine. The worst story by far involved a young woman who was... well, she was mugged. Some thug came along, shoved her to the ground and ran off with her purse. Shaken and understandably upset, she reported it to a police officer. The officer took down her report and then ran her name through the system. Turned out she had an unpaid ticket. This officer then took this woman, who had just been the victim of a crime, handcuffed her and took her to the same Baltimore Central Lockup rathole I was placed in, where she remained for 30 hours. For a traffic ticket. I can’t even imagine what kind of human being can do such a thing to a person in distress, but I damn sure know it’s not the kind of human being who should be walking around with a gun and a badge.
So you can see, then, why I wasn’t amused by Randall Simon’s arrest in Milwaukee. If you recall, Brewers’ executive VP of business operations Rick Schlesinger called Simon’s playful-if-ill-advised tap of the sausage mascot “one of the most outrageous things I’ve ever seen inside a ballpark or outside a ballpark”, adding that “It sickened me to see it.”
Braindead MLB Commissioner Bud Selig later chimed in with an “official statement” saying “Major League Baseball deeply regrets the incident that took place at Miller Park last night and extends its regards to the victims. We are reviewing the situation pending the disposition of the criminal charges against Randall Simon of the Pittsburgh Pirates.
“Obviously, the type of behavior exhibited by Mr. Simon is anathema to the family entertainment that we are trying to provide in our ball parks and is wholly unacceptable.”
It all sounds so ridiculously funny until you experience for yourself just how dangerous an inner-city lockup can be, and you realize that most of Cadillac Bud’s corporate playhouses are located in urban areas. In short, this kind of idiocy is downright dangerous to American sports fans, as I learned to my dismay. Take it from me, Simon’s crime against humanity isn’t humorous at all when you’ve been run through a wringer yourself for doing absolutely nothing the least bit malevolent at a ballgame.
But in retrospect didn’t this have to happen? Isn’t this the perfect example of the overreaction to a serious problem that happens when incompetent people run a high-profile business? Because some shirtless, tattooed freaks assaulted a first-base coach on the field at Chicago’s Comiskey Park in an infamous incident in 2002, we have to deal with Stalinist ushers treating all fans as potential lethal weapons. And that’s why I don’t apologize for calling that usher a Bolshevik. It was the perfect description of the bland tyranny I was faced with in the bleachers. This was a guy who, if he were walking down the street, you wouldn’t look at him the first time, but put him in an orange hat and he’s a rabid pit bull.
And yet his actions are almost understandable. Whipped into a frenzy by baseball officials’ determination to crackdown on “unruly fans”, this guy was looking for someone to take down. You could see it on his face. Sadly for me, I just happened to be in the wrong section with the wrong idiot at the wrong time. But it wasn’t just him. The ultra-aggressive security posture during that Yankee series was simply stunning.
By what now seems a remarkable coincidence, my boss happened to attend the Monday June 30 Yankee-O’s game as part of a Washington Times’ group outing. Not being a big sports fan, he doesn’t attend many baseball games but after hearing my story he told me how surprised he was himself at the aggressiveness of the ushers behind each section of the stadium that he could see. He told me how he watched for minutes on end as one female usher stared down a woman who looked like she might have had a bit too much to drink and was being a bit loud, gazing sternly with the appearance of being poised to spring into action at any moment. He also noticed these Orwellian signs on the Jumbotron, tailored in pleasant corporate-speak to mask the authoritarian message: “We hope you are enjoying your stay at Oriole Park. Please report any unpleasant experiences to the nearest usher immediately.” Neighbor reporting neighbor in the stands at the good old American ballpark. Isn’t this how Stalinism flourished for all those years?
And really now, doesn’t Bud Selig just strike you as the type of guy who, if he wasn’t so horribly miscast as commissioner of baseball, would be principal of some nondescript public school outside Milwaukee extolling his zero tolerance program to fight crime. You know, the type who expels the kid on the honor roll because he brought a plastic butter knife from the cafeteria back to his locker?
Fortunately, the rest of the legal process in Baltimore was remarkably decent, with the prosecutor agreeing to “sentence” me to five hours of community service in return for having the whole thing expunged, i.e., leaving me with no criminal record. I wanted to fight it on principle but a lawyer friend of a friend in Baltimore advised me it wouldn’t be worth the trouble and I wasn’t likely to get a better deal anyway.
So on a very pleasant Tuesday in September, 2003 I reported to a community services center in the Pigtowne section of Baltimore to complete my rehabilitation. Three other community service peons joined me, and we were assigned the task of mowing, raking and cleaning up three small vacant lots near the center. It was really all too perfect. The location turned out to be just a couple of blocks from Camden Yards, and I could see the light stantions from Oriole Park as I did the work.
And so as I was bagging grass cuttings in a urine-stenched lot while staring at the twinkling spires of one of Bud Selig’s golden palaces of greed, I could only think how this was such a fitting farewell to Major League Baseball and the incompetent fools who have driven yet another fan away forever. What’s the score, Bud? What’s the score?
Posted by Epiphany at 07:32 AM | Comments (154)
Man arrested after leaving small tip
Fuck Restaurants... Good thing this case was thrown out of court.
Newsday | September 11 2004
LAKE GEORGE, N.Y. -- A New York City man accused of leaving an inadequate tip at a restaurant was arrested, fingerprinted and photographed for a mug shot.
Humberto A. Taveras, 41, faces a misdemeanor charge of theft of services after he and his fellow diners argued with Soprano's Italian and American Grill managers over the legality of requiring an 18 percent tip for large parties.
"They chased us down like a bunch of criminals," Taveras said. "It killed our weekend."
Taveras and eight others had pizza at the restaurant in this resort village Sunday night. He told the Glens Falls Post-Star they weren't completely satisfied with the food and left a tip of under 10 percent. Taveras said they also were not told of a mandatory 18 percent gratuity for parties of six or more and did not see notice of it on their menus.
Restaurant owner Joe Soprano said all the menus have the notice, and the waitress informed the group. He said he did not choose to pursue charges because of the money, but because Taveras' group was obnoxious.
"It's unfortunate it has come to this, but this guy was rude and abrasive. They practically threw food at us," Soprano said.
Taveras plans to fight the charge. He was issued an appearance ticket and was scheduled to appear in town court Thursday.
The arrest raises the issue of whether the gratuities that restaurants automatically tack on for serving large groups are legally enforceable debts.
Warren County Sheriff Larry Cleveland said he did not believe the issue had been litigated before in New York. He said the case could turn on whether the person is notified of the tip requirement beforehand.
"It's not a black-and-white issue," Cleveland said. "It will be very interesting to see where it goes in court."
Posted by Epiphany at 07:29 AM | Comments (5916)
Don’t smile: Get ready for new type of passport
Britain and their experimental ID and face recognition technology.
The Virginian-Pilot
© August 7, 2004
Picture this: 59 million pouting people. Is this any way to fight al-Qaida?
Some think so.
According to an online news report, Britain is adopting no-nonsense measures to fight international terror. In an article headlined “Look miserable to help the war on terrorism,” the Telegraph.co.uk reported that henceforth, all Britons would be required to submit passport photos featuring “neutral” expressions.
In other words, wipe that smile off your face, mate.
This is in preparation for new “e Passports” to be issued next year using facial recognition technology, also known as biometrics.
“The facial image on the photograph will be incorporated in a chip, which will be read by border-control equipment,” the Telegraph reported.
These scanners can instantly match faces. Unless the chap in the mugshot is smiling, that is.
Part those lips even a millimeter, and the computer can’t tell Moammar Khadafi from Prince Charles.
Lovely.
So why am I telling you this? Who cares if the entire population of the United Kingdom is forced to adopt that pursed-lip look the q ueen uses when a commoner attempts to shake her hand?
We should. Because it won’t be long before Americans also are ordered to look at the camera and say “Cheesed off.”
Keen-eyed readers of The Pilot noticed a similar passport piece on Friday’s front page. American passports are changing, too. According to the report, the U.S. State Department is determined to go ahead with facial recognition technology when it begins issuing next year new passports intended to deter counterfeiting , despite mounting evidence that the technology doesn’t work very well.
Of course, some of us in Hampton Roads already suspected as much.
Just ask the Virginia Beach cops how many bad guys they’ve collared using the facial recognition cameras that were activated along Atlantic Avenue almost two years ago. You don’t have to ask. I already did.
None.
Then again, maybe the miscreants were smiling as they strolled down the strip.
According to the story on American passport changes, even Washington’s own experts question the effectiveness of facial recognition biometrics. They say the technology’s “error rate is unacceptably high – up to 50 percent if photographs are taken without proper lighting.”
“I don’t think there’s a debate,” said the supervisor of biometric testing at the National Institute of Standards and Technology. “Fingerprints are much better.” So fingerprint us already.
I hate to be a spoilsport, but if this facial technology is unreliable, what exactly is the point? Are we supposed to feel safer because there’s a computer chip with our unsmiling faces embedded in our passports?
Terrorism is no laughing matter. Most of us would be willing to sacrifice some of our privacy to help keep our borders secure. But hastily adopting imperfect technology is not the way to go.
I wrote about biometrics a couple of months ago when a local theme park introduced hand-scanning for season-pass holders. I found it curious that so many people nonchalantly provided such personal information to an amusement park database.
Still, it’s one thing to use biometrics at the gates to Busch Gardens, where the worst that can happen is a missed lunch at Das Festhaus. A computer glitch at an immigration checkpoint is different. It could result in a trip to Das Hoosegow.
If that happens, no one will be smiling.
Posted by Epiphany at 07:27 AM | Comments (9)
Gene Tweak Ends Procrastination
Now in pill format. =)
Just in time for back-to-school season, researchers have turned procrastinating monkeys into workaholics by suppressing a gene that encodes a receptor for a key brain chemical.
The receptor, for the neurotransmitter dopamine, is important for reward learning. By suppressing it, researchers at the US National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) in Bethesda, Maryland caused monkeys to lose their sense of balance between reward and the work required to get it.
"Like many of us, monkeys normally slack off initially in working toward a distant goal. They work more efficiently—make fewer errors—as they get closer to being rewarded," says Barry Richmond of the NIMH Laboratory of Neuropsychology. "But without the dopamine receptor, they consistently stayed on-task and made few errors, because they could no longer learn to use visual cues to predict how their work was going to get them a reward."
Receptor suppression
The ability to associate work with reward is thought to go awry in many mental disorders, says Richmond, including schizophrenia, mood disorders and obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD).
"For example, people who are depressed often feel nothing is worth the work," says Richmond. "People with OCD work incessantly; even when they get rewarded they feel they must repeat the task. In mania, people will work feverishly for rewards that aren't worth the trouble to most of us."
For their study, Richmond and colleagues used a molecular technique to shut off expression of a gene encoding receptors called D2. They created a DNA antisense agent—a genetic mirror image that shuts off production of target proteins—and injected it into an area of the brain called the rhinal cortex. The area was targeted because it's rich in dopamine and was previously associated with reward learning. The antisense agent turned off D2 expression for several weeks.
Reward learning impaired
Injected monkeys had been trained to release a lever when a spot on a monitor turned from red to green. If they did it right, the spot turned blue. A gray bar on the monitor indicated their progress, and when they successfully completed a trial they would get a juice treat.
Before the gene tweak, the monkeys would make fewer errors as they got closer to receiving a reward. After the gene tweak, they couldn't associate visual cues with workload and therefore couldn't figure out how much more they had to work to get a reward.
"The monkeys became extreme workaholics, as evidenced by a sustained low rate of errors in performing the experimental task, irrespective of how distant the reward might be," says Richmond. "This was conspicuously out-of-character for these animals. Like people, they tend to procrastinate when they know they will have to do more work before getting a reward."
Besides helping researchers understand reward learning—and giving hope to procrastinators everywhere—the study also points to a new technique for exploring molecular aspects of behavior.
Posted by Epiphany at 07:26 AM | Comments (49)
Italian school blocks cell signal
How cell phones will be disabled from schools and government buildings.
ROME (Reuters) - Mobile phone-savvy teenagers tempted to cheat on exams by sending text messages or scanning pictures of tests could be thwarted by a device that jams signals inside the school walls.
The Enrico Tosi Technical Institute school in northern Italy has found a way to foil the next generation of would-be cheats with the help of military technology.
"Most schools try and confiscate phones before exams, but this way we can be sure nobody slips through," said Benedetto Di Rienzo, the head of the school in Busto Arsizio which is testing the devices for the Education Ministry during exams this week.
The box-like units, called C-Guard, were developed by experts from the military and defense industries for Netline Communications Technologies. They jam signals in a 262-foot radius in enclosed spaces.
They could eventually be installed across Italy to prevent cheating during university exams.
Di Rienzo said they have been so successful that the school plans to start using them during regular classes -- a measure likely to ruffle feathers in mobile phone-obsessed Italy where not even the teachers like to be left incommunicado.
"We hope to keep complaints to a minimum by turning the instruments off during lunch breaks," he said.
Posted by Epiphany at 07:24 AM | Comments (3)
The Cybernetic Manifesto
http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/MANIFESTO.html
1.Philosophy
Philosophy is the putting of our thought and language in order. Philosophy is important. Philosophy is a part of our knowledge.
2.Knowledge
Cybernetic epistemology defines knowledge as the existence in a cybernetic system of a model of some part of reality as it is perceived by the system. A model is a recursive generator of predictions about the world which allow the cybernetic system to make decisions about its actions. The notions of meaning and truth must be defined from this perspective.
Knowledge is both objective and subjective because it results from the interaction of the subject (the cybernetic system) and the object (its environment). Knowledge about an object is always relative: it exists only as a part of a certain subject. We can study the relation between knowledge and reality (is the knowledge true or false, first of all); then the subject of knowledge becomes, in its turn, an object for another subject of knowledge. But knowledge in any form (a proposition, a prediction, a law), irrespective of any subject is a logical absurdity. A detailed development of cybernetic epistemology on the basis of these definitions is critical for the formalization of the natural science and natural philosophy, and the interpretation of mathematical systems.
3.Freedom, will, control
Cybernetic metaphysics asserts that freedom is a fundamental property of things. Natural laws act as constraints on that freedom; they do not necessarily determine a course of events. This notion of freedom implies the existence of an agency, or agencies, that resolve the indeterminacy implicit in freedom by choosing one of the possible actions. Such an agency is defined as a will. A will exercises control over a system when the freedom of that system is constrained by actions chosen by the will.
4.God
We understand God in the spirit of pantheism. God is the highest level of control in the Universe. God is for the Universe what human will is for human body. Natural laws are one of the manifestations of God's will. Another manifestation is the evolution of the Universe: the Evolution.
5.Metasystem transition
When a number of systems become integrated so that a new level of control emerges, we say that a metasystem has formed. We refer to this process as a metasystem transition.
A metasystem transition is, by definition, a creative act. It cannot be solely directed by the internal structure or logic of a system, but must always comes from outside causes, from "above".
6.Evolution
The metasystem transition is the quantum of evolution. Highly organized systems, including living creatures, are multilevel hierarchies of control resulting from metasystem transitions of various scales.
Major evolutionary events are large-scale metasystem transitions which take place in the framework of the trial-and-error processes of natural selection.
Examples include: the formation of self-duplicating macromolecules; formation of multicellular organisms; emergence of intelligent organisms; formation of human society.
7. Human intelligence
Human intelligence, as distinct from the intelligence of non-human animals, emerges from a metasystem transition, which is the organism's ability to control the formation of associations of mental representations. All of specifically human intelligence, including imagination, language, self-consciousness, goal-setting, humor, arts and sciences, can be understood from this perspective.
8.Social integration
The emergence of human intelligence precipitated a further, currently ongoing, metasystem transition, which is the integration of people into human societies. Human societies are qualitatively different from societies of animals because of the ability of the human being to create (not just use) language. Language serves two functions: communication between individuals and modeling of reality. These two functions are, on the level of social integration, analogous to those of the nervous system on the level of integration of cells into a multicellular organism.
Using the material of language, people make new --- symbolic - models of reality (scientific theories, in particular) such as never existed as neural models given us by nature. Language is, as it were, an extension of the human brain. Moreover, it is a unitary common extension of the brains of all members of society. It is a collective model of reality that all members of society labor to improve, and one that preserves the experience of preceding generations.
9.The era of Reason
We make a strong analogy between societies and neural, multicellular organisms. The body of a society is the bodies of all people plus the things made by them. Its "physiology" is the culture of society. The emergence of human society marks the appearance of a new mechanism of Universal Evolution: previously it was natural selection, now it becomes conscious human effort. The variation and selection necessary for the increase of complexity of the organization of matter now takes place in the human brain; it becomes inseparable from the willed act of the human being. This is a turning point in the history of the world: the era of Reason begins.
The human individual becomes a point of concentration of Cosmic Creativity. With the new mechanism of evolution, its rate increases manifold.
10.Global integration
Turning to the future we predict that social integration will continue in two dimensions, which we can call width and depth. On the one hand (width), the growth of existing cultures will lead to the formation of a world society and government, and the ecological unification of the biosphere under human control. The ethics of cybernetical world-view demands that each of us act so as to preserve the species and the ecosystem, and to maximize the potential for continued integration and evolution.
11.Human super-beings
On the other hand (depth), we foresee the physical integration of individual people into "human super-beings", which communicate through the direct connection of their nervous systems. This is a cybernetic way for an individual human person to achieve immortality.
12.Ultimate human values
The problem of immortality is the problem of ultimate human values, and vice versa.
Living creatures display a behavior resulting from having goals. Goals are organized hierarchically, so that in order to achieve a higher-level goal the system has to set and achieve a number of lower-level goals (subgoals). This hierarchy has a top: the supreme, ultimate goals of a creature's life. In an animal this top is inborn: the basic instincts of survival and reproduction. In a human being the top goals can go beyond animal instincts. The supreme goals, or values, of human life are, in the last analysis, set by an individual in an act of free choice. This produces the historic plurality of ethical and religious teachings. There is, however a common denominator to these teachings: the will to immortality. The animal is not aware of its imminent death; the human person is. The human will to immortality is a natural extension of the animal will for life.
13.Decline of metaphysical immortality
One concept of immortality we find in the traditional great religions. We designate it as metaphysical. It is known as immortality of soul, life after death, etc. The protest against death is used here as a stimulus to accept the teaching; after all, from the very beginning it promises immortality. Under the influence of the critical scientific method, the metaphysical notions of immortality, once very concrete and appealing, are becoming increasingly abstract and pale; old religious systems are slowly but surely losing their influence.
14.Creative immortality
Another concept of immortality can be called creative, or evolutionary. The idea is that mortal humans contribute, through their creative acts, to the ongoing universal and eternal process -- call it Evolution, or History, or God -- thus surviving their physical destruction. This uniquely human motive underlies, probably, all major creative feats of human history.
15.Cybernetic immortality
The successes of science make it possible to raise the banner of cybernetic immortality. The idea is that the human being is, in the last analysis, a certain form of organization of matter. This is a very sophisticated organization, which includes a high multilevel hierarchy of control. What we call our soul, or our consciousness, is associated with the highest level of this control hierarchy. This organization can survive a partial --- perhaps, even a complete --- change of the material from which it is built. It is a shame to die before realizing one hundredth of what you have conceived and being unable to pass on your experience and intuition. It is a shame to forget things even though we know how to store huge amount of information in computers and access them in split seconds.
16.Evolution and immortality
Cybernetic integration of humans must preserve the creative core of human individual, because it is the engine of evolution. And it must make it immortal, because for the purpose of evolution there is no sense in killing humans. In natural selection, the source of change is the mutation of the gene; nature creates by experimenting on genes and seeing what kind of a body they produce. Therefore, nature has to destroy older creations in order to make room for the newer ones. The mortality of multicellular organisms is an evolutionary necessity. At the present new stage of evolution, the evolution of human-made culture, the human brain is the source of creativity, not an object of experimentation. Its loss in death is unjustifiable; it is an evolutionary absurdity. The immortality of human beings is on the agenda of Cosmic Evolution.
17.Evolution of the human person
The future immortality of the human person does not imply its frozen constancy. We can understand the situation by analogy with the preceding level of organization.
Genes are controllers of biological evolution and they are immortal, as they should be. They do not stay unchanged, however, but undergo mutations, so that human chromosomes are a far cry from the chromosomes of primitive viruses.
Cybernetically immortal human persons may mutate and evolve in interaction with other members of the super-being, while possibly reproducing themselves in different materials. Those human persons who will evolve from us may be as different from us as we are different from viruses. But the defining principle of the human person will probably stay fixed, as did the defining principle of the gene.
18. How integration may occur
Should we expect that the whole of humanity will unite into a single super-human being?
This does not seem likely, if we judge from the history of evolution. Life grows like a pyramid; its top goes up while the basis is widening rather than narrowing. Even though we have seized control of the biosphere, our bodies make up only a small part of the whole biomass. The major part of it is still constituted by unicellular and primitive multicellular organisms, such as plankton. Realization of cybernetic immortality will certainly require some sacrifices --- a vehement drive to develop science, to begin with. It is far from obvious that all people and all communities will wish to integrate into immortal super-beings. The will to immortality, as every human feature, varies widely in human populations. Since the integration we speak about can only be free, only a part of mankind -- probably a small part - should be expected to integrate. The rest will continue to exist in the form of "human plankton".
19.Integration on the Cosmic scene
But it is the integrated part of humanity that will ultimately control the Universe. Unintegrated humanity will not be able to compete with the integrated part. This becomes especially clear when we realize that the whole Cosmos, not the planet Earth, will be the battlefield. No cosmic role for the human race is possible without integration. The units that take decisions must be rewarded for those decisions, otherwise they will never take them. Can we imagine "human plankton" crowded in rockets in order to reach a distant star in ten, twenty or fifty generations? Only integrated immortal creatures can conquer the outer space.
20.Current problems
At present our ideas about the cybernetic integration of humans are very abstract and vague. This is inevitable; long range notions and goals may be only abstract. But this does not mean that they are not relevant to our present concerns and problems. The concept of cybernetic immortality can give shape to the supreme goals and values we espouse, even though present-day people can think realistically only in terms of creative immortality (although -- who knows?).
The problem of ultimate values is the central problem of our present society. What should we live for after our basic needs are so easily satisfied by the modern production system? What should we see as Good and what as Evil? Where are the ultimate criteria for judging social organization?
Historically, great civilizations are inseparable from great religions which gave answers to these questions. The decline of traditional religions appealing to metaphysical immortality threatens to degrade modern society. Cybernetic immortality can take the place of metaphysical immortality to provide the ultimate goals and values for the emerging global civilization.
21.Integration and freedom
We are living at a time when we can see the basic contradiction of the constructive evolution of mankind very clearly: it is the contradiction between human integration and human freedom. Integration is an evolutionary necessity. If humanity sets itself goals which are incompatible with integration the result will be an evolutionary dead end: further creative development will become impossible. Then we shall not survive. In the evolving Universe there is no standstill: all that does not develop perishes. On the other hand, freedom is precious for the human being; it is the essence of life. The creative freedom of individuals is the fundamental engine of evolution in the era of Reason. If it is suppressed by integration, as in totalitarianism, we shall find ourselves again in an evolutionary dead end. This contradiction is real, but not insoluble. After all, the same contradiction has been successfully solved on other levels of organization in the process of evolution. When cells integrate into multicellular organisms, they continue to perform their biological functions--metabolism and fission. The new quality, the life of the organism, does not appear despite the biological functions of the individual cells but because of them and through them. The creative act of free will is the "biological function" of the human being. In the integrated super-being it must be preserved as an inviolable foundation, and the new qualities must appear through it and because of it. Thus the fundamental challenge that the humanity faces now is to achieve an organic synthesis of integration and freedom.
Posted by Epiphany at 07:18 AM | Comments (600)
Russia a happy haven for hackers
Just showing how other countries treat their hackers.
For all its disadvantages, the former Soviet Union had one hugely overlooked advantage: it kept hackers, crackers and virus writers confined inside the country by restricting their access to the internet.
A decade later, internet penetration is booming in the region, particularly in Russia, and viruses are epidemic. In fact, Russians are linked to some of the nastiest viruses the IT world has experienced so far: Bagel, MyDoom and NetSky, to name just a few.
Security experts warn that the situation is likely to worsen as hacking, cracking and virus writing shift from being a mischievous hobby of young kids to a lucrative occupation of skilled professionals working hand-in-hand with hardened criminals.
"The influence of organised crime in this area is steadily growing, says Alexander Gostev, a security expert with Moscow-based Kaspersky Labs. "We are now seeing more malicious programs written by professionals, and not by script kiddies as we experienced two to three years ago."
DK Matai, chairman of Mi2g, a London-based security service provider, agrees. "The Mafia, which has been using the internet as a communication vehicle for some time, is using it increasingly as a resource for carrying out mass identity theft and financial fraud," he says.
The motive is obvious: money - in some cases, big money, which fuels other traditional Mafia activities, such as drug smuggling and prostitution.
"There is more of a financial incentive now for hackers and crackers as well as for virus writers to write for money and not just for glory or some political motive," says one former hacker, known as 3APA3A, who is now employed as a security expert.
That view contrasts sharply with the situation several years ago when hacking had another status in Russia. In a message published on www.globalsecurity.org, one former hacker-turned-teacher wrote that during his childhood, he and a couple of friends hacked programs and distributed them for free. "It was like our donation to society," he writes. "It was a form of honour; [we were] like Robin Hood bringing programs to people."
Today, hundreds or even possibly thousands of skilled Russians desperate for cash are scouring the internet looking for security vulnerability in the computer networks of companies, particularly in the US and Europe. They are creating worms and Trojans for stealing credit card and other financial information, or turning inflected computers into zombie hosts to establish illegal spam farms, or extorting money by threatening companies with a distributed denial-of-service attack if they don't pay. And more.
If there were a happy haven for hackers these days, it would be Russia, says Ken Dunham, director of malicious code at US-based iDefense. "In Russia, perhaps more than in most other countries right now, hacking magazines and software are sold on the streets of Moscow," he says. "It's not a secret as you'd expect, but right out there in the open."
Moscow even has a hacking school: http://hscool.net.
The combination of overeducated and underemployed specialists has made Russia an ideal breeding ground for hackers. The hacker community was infused with professionals following a financial crash in 1998 that left many computer programmers and business people financially destroyed and out of work. Even today, the country continues to churn out plenty of students who excel at mathematics and physics, but who struggle to find work.
"Russian criminals offer students money to spend time with them to carry out illegitimate activities in return for cash," Matai says. "They are active not only in schools and universities, but also through their own recruitment centres where they siphon off talent for organised criminal purposes, which include selling services to groups in other countries, such as Islamic hackers."
Another factor making Russia an even more fertile nest for hackers is the growing number of residents now able to access the internet. The Ministry for Communications projects their numbers to grow from 6% of the population (around 148 million) in 2003 to 15% by 2005. Some 11 million people currently use the internet, while about nine million own a computer.
Cybercrime doubled in 2003 to 11,000 reported cases, according to the Ministry of Internal Affairs. The most frequent crimes were illegal access to computer information, distribution of pirated software and cyberattacks on financial institutions.
Russian hackers have been behind some of the most audacious cybercrimes ever reported. Mathematician and computer specialist Vladimir Levin was arrested in 1995 and sentenced to three years in a prison in the US in 1997 for hacking into Citibank's computers and electronically transferring about $10m out of the bank's accounts. To this day, no one knows exactly how he broke into the bank's system.
In 1999, Russian hackers were credited with disrupting Nato and US government websites.
In 2000, Vasiliy Gorshkov and Alexey Ivanov were lured to the US by FBI agents and later arrested. Gorshkov was sentenced to three years in prison and given a $700,000 fine after he was convicted on 20 counts of conspiracy, fraud and other related computer crimes. The pair had admitted hacking into the computers of US companies to steal credit card information and other personal financial data and then extort money from the victims by threatening to expose that information to the public on the internet or to damage the companies' computers.
A gang of computer hackers, headed by a 63-year-old pensioner, was arrested by Russian police in 2001. The former computer programmer for a Moscow institute was apparently bitter over receiving no royalties from his work. So he teamed up with a former policeman and three others to steal the details of credit cards from individuals in the US and Europe and use them to make online purchases. The gang then channelled their income back to Moscow through a bogus internet site they had created, which sold useless information about timber in Russia.
Hacking is illegal in Russia, but is sometimes more akin to a getting a parking ticket than a serious felony - something that on paper is wrong but not morally reprehensible, according to Timofey Saitarly, project administrator at the Ukrainian Computer Crime Research Centre (www.crime-research.org). "Young people often hack expensive foreign software because they can't afford it," he says. "Some of the software costs as much as they make in an entire month or even more."
Sergey Bratus, a research associate at the Institute for Security Technologies Studies in the US, has a similar opinion. "A huge problem in Russia, particularly Moscow, is violent crime," she says. "Compared to this, small-time computer crime doesn't seem to be a big issue to society. Hackers aren't making the streets unsafe."
Local investigations also are hampered because authorities cite other, higher priorities. That means many hackers are able to operate in what are essentially safe havens. And in an interconnected world such as the internet, a few safe havens are all that is needed to wreak havoc on every country.
"I know of no hackers being imprisoned in Russia," says Gostev. "Law enforcement officials don't seem to be taking any real major action maybe because none of this hacking has been directed at Russian companies or organisations. They seem to be more interested in protecting national security."
The Russian government has several groups hunting cybercriminals. The Ministry of Internal Affairs, for instance, has a special task force dubbed "the spider group". And there is a unit within the Federal Security Services, the successor to the Soviet Union's KGB. How effective they are, particularly when a crime extends beyond their borders, is unclear.
"It is one thing to criminalise the creation of viruses," says Gus Hosein, senior fellow at The London School of Economics and Political Science. "It is another to investigate the means through which viruses are propagated in the hope to trace it back to its origin."
Such investigations, according to Hosein, would require access to traffic data at internet service providers throughout the world. So what about a virus that emerges in the US, but is traced back to Russia? Who would do the tracing?
If Russia, for example, were to take the lead, how would US ISPs or those in other countries know that a Russian request for traffic data is "for the investigation of a virus trail or to track the dissemination of information regrading Chechnya?" Hosein says.
"The point is that policies will be developed to enhance the investigation of viruses in order to trace virus makers and other perpetrators of cybercrimes, only to see those same powers used for different purposes, such as pursuing copyright crime and 'indecent' communications."
Add to that the global approach virus writers are now taking to make their assaults even more difficult to track. "We are monitoring virus incidents whereby writers operating in country A launch a virus in country B to infect computers in country C," says Mikko Hyppönen, director of antivirus research at F-Secure in Finland. "It is hard to prosecute offenders especially when laws are nonexistent in many of the countries that these guys are using to launch their virus attacks."
International law is often ill-suited to deal with the problem, with conflicting views on what constitutes cybercrime, how - or if - perpetrators should be punished and how national borders should be applied to a medium that is essentially borderless.
"What is needed is the ability to extradite," says Matai. "But this is not easy because of the anonymous nature of organised crime - it is very difficult to pin down who actually committed a crime - and because individuals who are caught committing a crime in one country may not have any laws against that crime in their own country."
Efforts to establish global cybercrime laws exist. Hosein points to the Council of Europe convention on cybercrime, a treaty signed in November 2001 that calls on countries to harmonise their laws on and investigative powers of all illegal behaviour, including hacking and child pornography, and to ensure international co-operation in investigations. But Hosein warns that as countries adopt the convention into national law, many tend to go further than necessary in order to expand their powers.
Some experts are in favour of establishing a special global cybercrime task force, similar to the Interpol international police network. "We just need to copy the Interpol structure for traditional crime, make some slight changes and establish cooperative programmes," Gostev says.
In the absence of a global net policeman, Microsoft has been offering Wild West-like bounties to catch cybercriminals. But one former virus writer in the Czech Republic dismisses the bounty as a marketing tactic, saying it will have no deterrent effect. "For Microsoft, it's just another excuse for their buggy software," says Benny. "It's only about marketing."
Security experts believe the best way to curb cybercrime is for each and every user to make sure his or her front door is securely locked.
"A due diligence approach is required to help fight off this new wave of cybercrime," says Dunham. "Everyone must take responsibility for helping to harden computers against attack, from the end-user to the chief executive officer of a large corporation."
Posted by Epiphany at 07:14 AM | Comments (2)
Boy used chat room to get himself killed
A representation that a simulation (internet) can become more real than the real world. Increase in Simulacra.
A 15-year-old British grammar school boy has been convicted of inciting an internet friend to murder him.
The boy, who can be identified only by the pseudonym John, invented a cast of characters in a chat room as part of a plan to commission his own murder. Some of his inspiration came from James Bond films and the science-fiction blockbuster Men In Black.
He was 14 when he fell in love with Mark, a boy two years older, and adopted the guise of a female secret service agent to order his friend to stab him in an alleyway.
Mark was meant to end his life with the words: "I love you, bro."
Mark carried out the stabbing in Altrincham, Cheshire, shortly before 8pm on June 29 last year. He knifed John in the chest and abdomen. The second blow cut into his kidney, liver and gall bladder, nearly killing him. Minutes later, Mark reported the attack on his mobile phone.
Police launched a manhunt after both boys told them a stranger in black had dragged John into the alleyway and stabbed him.
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It was only when officers studied CCTV footage that they realised the boys were lying.
Manchester Crown Court heard detectives studied 58,000 lines of internet text to break down the boys' account and show that John, who surfed the net for seven hours at a time, had spent six months manipulating Mark until he felt he was ready to commit murder.
It emerged that John had introduced himself to Mark on the internet as a teenage girl. Mark performed sexual acts for the girl on a webcam which John watched.
Later John introduced a series of other characters to the chat room, including a second girlfriend, a stalker and two secret service agents modelled on Bond films.
One of the agents, identified as Agent 47695, told Mark she had been assigned to protect John. Later she ordered Mark to kill the boy, promising him a gun, a large sum of money and a meeting with British Prime Minister Tony Blair as a reward.
John, wearing a checked shirt, pale blue tie and dark trousers, sat crying in the dock as the bizarre story was told. Mark, in a blue and white jumper, sat a few feet away.
John pleaded guilty to inciting someone to murder him - a crime described by Judge David Maddison as "extraordinary" - and perverting the course of justice. John was sentenced to a three-year supervision order.
Mark admitted attempted murder and was given a two-year supervision order. The boys were also banned from contacting each other. John was ordered to use the internet only under supervision and told that he must never go into a chat room again.
Mr Clarke said: "The whole scheme John designed was to bring about his death. He was depressed, having fallen out with friends at school and having problems with his stepfather at home."
John's mother told the court he now had a wider circle of friends, including a girlfriend.
Posted by Epiphany at 05:28 AM | Comments (6)