Religious Exemptions To The Mark Of The Beast May Have More Legal Heft

jonathanturley |  “Come on, man,” seems to be President Biden’s signature response to any uncomfortable question. The phrase is meant to be both dismissive and conclusive in ending inquiries, frequently used to counter reporters before often walking away. Indeed, it is so often repeated that it appears on T-Shirts or coffee mugs and in remixes.

This week, however, it was not the pesky press but freedom itself that got hit with a version of the comeback. When asked during a CNN town hall program about those still objecting to taking COVID vaccines, Biden mocked them and their claimed rights with “Come on, ‘freedom.’ ” He then called for any police officers, firefighters, medical personnel or other first responders to be fired en masse if they refuse to be vaccinated.

Biden’s response to the question was applauded by the CNN audience, as if to say “Freedom Pfff, that is so last century.” And he reduced any vaccine refusals to claiming “I have the freedom to kill you with my COVID.”

He is not alone in such rhetoric. Chicago’s Mayor Lori Lightfoot declared that police officers refusing to take vaccines are insurrectionists.

The problem is that the courts already recognize some religious exemption arguments. Those arguments are based on both the constitutional protection of religious values but also laws like Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, 42 U.S.C. §2000e-2(a), which declares unlawful any “employment practice for an employer … to fail or refuse to hire or to discharge any individual, or otherwise to discriminate against any individual with respect to his compensation, terms, conditions, or privileges of employment because of such individual’s … religion.”

The federal government also is subject to the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA), which prohibits the government and other covered entities like the District of Columbia from “substantially burden[ing]” a person’s exercise of religion. Under RFRA, there is no “Come on, man,” defense. Instead, the federal government must show that the burden imposed furthers a “compelling governmental interest” and is “the least restrictive means” of furthering that interest.

There is a move in many states to refuse to allow such exemptions, but courts have pushed back. In New York, the state is appealing a preliminary injunction against its refusal to allow religious exemptions to its vaccine mandate. A lower court found the governor’s mandate “has effectively foreclosed the pathway to seeking a religious accommodation that is guaranteed under Title VII.”

Likewise, the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals this month affirmed such a preliminary injunction against Western Michigan University. The university allowed students to ask for individual exemptions but failed to grant religious exemptions under its discretionary policy.

The issue reached the Supreme Court this week when health workers challenged a similar law in Maine allowing for medical but not religious exemptions. Justice Stephen Breyer rejected an emergency motion but too much has been made over that order, which was not based on the merits of the claim. The appellate court was already expediting review of the case, and the dismissal was “without prejudice.” The health care workers can refile if circumstances change or if the appellate court rules against them.  They also can refile if the lower court has not reached a decision by Oct. 29, when the vaccine requirement is scheduled to go into effect.

Call It What You Like - But Complete Access To Digital DNA Has No Precedent

 wired |  In terms of the SolarWinds incident, the deterrence game is not yet over. The breach is still ongoing, and the ultimate end game is still unknown. Information gleaned from the breach could be used for other detrimental foreign policy objectives outside of cyberspace, or the threat actor could exploit its access to US government networks to engage in follow-on disruptive or destructive actions (in other words, conduct a cyberattack).

But what about the Department of Defense’s new defend forward strategy, which was meant to fill in the gap where traditional deterrence mechanisms might not work? Some view this latest incident as a defend-forward failure because the Defense Department seemingly did not manage to stop this hack before it occurred. Introduced in the 2018 Defense Department Cyber Strategy, this strategy aims to “disrupt or halt malicious cyber activity at its source.” This represented a change in how the Defense Department conceptualized operating in cyberspace, going beyond maneuvering in networks it owns, to operating in those that others may control. There has been some controversy about this posture. In part, this may be because defend forward has been described in many different ways, making it hard to understand what the concept actually means and the conditions under which it is meant to apply.

Here’s our take on defend forward, which we see as two types of activities: The first is information gathering and sharing with allies, partner agencies, and critical infrastructure by maneuvering in networks where adversaries operate. These activities create more robust defense mechanisms, but largely leave the adversary alone. The second includes countering adversary offensive cyber capabilities and infrastructure within the adversaries’ own networks. In other words, launching cyberattacks against adversary hacking groups—like threat actors associated with the Russian government. It isn’t clear how much of this second category the Defense Department has been doing, but the SolarWinds incident suggests the US could be doing more.

How should the US cyber strategy adapt after SolarWinds? Deterrence may be an ineffective strategy for preventing espionage, but other options remain. To decrease the scope and severity of these intelligence breaches, the US must improve its defenses, conduct counterintelligence operations, and also conduct counter-cyber operations to degrade the capabilities and infrastructure that enable adversaries to conduct espionage. That’s where defend forward could be used more effectively.

This doesn’t mean deterrence is completely dead. Instead, the US should continue to build and rely on strategic deterrence to convince states not to weaponize the cyber intelligence they collect.

Covid: Complications and Kwestins

theconversation |  Some evidence suggests that patients experience low oxygen saturation days before they appear in the ER. If so, is there a way to treat patients earlier?

Even before symptoms arise, people infected with SARS-CoV-2 show damage to their lungs. This is likely why low oxygen saturation – that is, below-normal oxygen levels in their blood – occurs before the patient goes to the ER. Restoring those levels to normal is presumed, though not proven, to be beneficial; giving patients supplemental oxygen via a nasal cannula, a flexible tube that delivers oxygen, placed just inside the nostrils, will restore oxygen to normal levels unless disease worsens to the extent that mechanical ventilation is needed.

Young adults are having strokes with COVID-19. Does this suggest the illness is more of a vascular disease than a lung disease in that age group?

COVID-19 can be a devastating disease to multiple organs and systems in the body, including the vascular and immune systems. A lung infection is the primary cause of disease and death. There are examples of the clotting system being activated and causing strokes, perhaps caused by an immune system responding abnormally to COVID-19. 

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recently updated its official list of symptoms. Does this suggest anything unusual about COVID-19?

This new information is due to a greater number of infected individuals being studied. The update simply reflects a better understanding of the full spectrum of illness due to COVID-19, from asymptomatic to presymptomatic to severe and fatal infections.

Covid and Bloodclots?

wired |  As if it weren’t enough that the new coronavirus can steal away your ability to breathe and make your immune system turn against you, now we know this fearsome pathogen can also literally curdle your blood. News of the “bizarre, unsettling” complication—one that’s been killing young and middle-aged patients with Covid-19—made headlines last month. “ It crept up on us,” one doctor told The Washington Post for a story published on April 22. “We are scared,” said another.

Other outlets quickly added to the terrifying coverage. Vox cited a hematologist who called the disturbing new outcome “unprecedented … This is not like a disease we’ve seen before.” AFP described the “mysterious” clotting phenomenon as the coronavirus’s “latest lethal surprise.” The New York Times wondered if it might explain another unexpected symptom seen in patients: swollen, red and purple “Covid toes.” There was coverage of a 41-year-old Broadway star, hospitalized with the virus, who’d had to have his leg amputated due to a clot. Yet for all the seeming strangeness of these cases, it’s stranger still that so many people would be acting so bewildered. In fact, researchers have long known about the link between infectious diseases and blood clotting. There’s even data to suggest a heightened risk of fatal heart attacks—a related complication—among those who get plain old influenza.

The study of disease-induced clotting stretches back more than a century. Writing in 1903, pathologists described the same phenomenon in typhoid fever. Adam Cunningham, an immunologist at the University of Birmingham, notes that many common bacteria, such as Helicobacter pylori and Escherichia coli, have also been associated with an increased risk of blood clots. If this fact has mostly been forgotten, it may be on account of our success at treating such infections. “One of the things that probably made a big difference was the introduction of the antibiotic era, so many of the pathogens didn’t get that severe,” Cunningham says.

Covid and Kawasaki?

apnews |  Dozens of U.S. children have been hospitalized with a serious inflammatory condition possibly linked with the coronavirus and first seen in Europe.

New York authorities announced Wednesday that 64 potential cases had been reported to the state. The advisory followed an alert earlier this week about 15 cases in New York City.

A few other U.S. children have been affected during the pandemic, including a 6-month-old infant in California diagnosed with COVID-19 and Kawasaki disease, a rare condition that causes swelling in blood vessels.

 Fever, abdominal pain and skin rashes are common symptoms, while some New York children have developed heart inflammation requiring intensive care. Most had evidence of current or past coronavirus infections. 

Medical groups in Britain, Italy and Spain warned doctors last month to look out for the condition.

Some doctors say the New York cases increase the likelihood that the syndrome is a rare complication of COVID-19 although that remains to be proven.

“It raises our antenna a bit and tells is we need to be vigilant about unusual and more severe complications of COVID-19” in children, said Dr. Larry Kociolek, an infectious disease specialist at Lurie Children’s Hospital in Chicago.

SARS-CoV2 Situation Report From Italy

Beijing Hospital Confirms SARS-CoV2 Attacks Central Nervous System

cntechpost |  Beijing Ditan Hospital affiliated to the Capital Medical University said on March 4 that the first patient with novel coronavirus pneumonia complicated with encephalitis was discharged from the hospital on February 25.

Liu Jingyuan, director of the ICU at the Hospital, presided over the treatment of the patient. He reminded that patients with conscious disturbances must consider the possibility that the virus may attack the central nervous system.

At present, patients with new type of coronavirus pneumonia can be combined with multiple organ damages such as severe respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS), myocardial damage, abnormal coagulation function, kidney damage, liver damage, etc. However, no central nervous system involvement has been reported. The case report is the first in the world.

Previous studies on SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome) and MERS (Middle East Respiratory Syndrome) have also shown that the coronaviruses that cause these two diseases also cause cases of central nervous system damage.

 According to the introduction of Beijing Ditan Hospital, two suspected cases of new-type coronavirus pneumonia have been treated since January 12 this year (confirmed on January 20). As of 7:00 on March 4, the hospital has accumulatively received 150 patients with new-type coronavirus pneumonia, of which 150 The above patient is the only patient with new type of coronavirus pneumonia and encephalitis.

The 56-year-old patient was admitted to the hospital on January 24 with new coronavirus pneumonia, critical illness, and respiratory failure. After admission, he was given a combination of interferon nebulization, antiviral treatment, prevention of bacterial infection, and TCM syndrome differentiation. No improvement, high fever, fatigue, and dyspnea gradually increased.

The Omnigenic Model Of Complex Human Traits

quantamagazine |  The question most of genetics tries to answer is how genes connect to the traits we see. One person has red hair, another blonde hair; one dies at age 30 of Huntington’s disease, another lives to celebrate a 102nd birthday. Knowing what in the vast expanse of the genetic code is behind traits can fuel better treatments and information about future risks and illuminate how biology and evolution work. For some traits, the connection to certain genes is clear: Mutations of a single gene are behind sickle cell anemia, for instance, and mutations in another are behind cystic fibrosis.

But unfortunately for those who like things simple, these conditions are the exceptions. The roots of many traits, from how tall you are to your susceptibility to schizophrenia, are far more tangled. In fact, they may be so complex that almost the entire genome may be involved in some way, an idea formalized in a theory put forward last year.

Starting about 15 years ago, geneticists began to collect DNA from thousands of people who shared traits, to look for clues to each trait’s cause in commonalities between their genomes, a kind of analysis called a genome-wide association study (GWAS). What they found, first, was that you need an enormous number of people to get statistically significant results — one recent GWAS seeking correlations between genetics and insomnia, for instance, included more than a million people. 

Second, in study after study, even the most significant genetic connections turned out to have surprisingly small effects. The conclusion, sometimes called the polygenic hypothesis, was that multiple loci, or positions in the genome, were likely to be involved in every trait, with each contributing just a small part. (A single large gene can contain several loci, each representing a distinct part of the DNA where mutations make a detectable difference.)

How many loci that “multiple” description might mean was not defined precisely. One very early genetic mapping study in 1999 suggested that “a large number of loci (perhaps > than 15)” might contribute to autism risk, recalled Jonathan Pritchard, now a geneticist at Stanford University. “That’s a lot!” he remembered thinking when the paper came out.

Over the years, however, what scientists might consider “a lot” in this context has quietly inflated. Last June, Pritchard and his Stanford colleagues Evan Boyle and Yang Li (now at the University of Chicago) published a paper about this in Cell that immediately sparked controversy, although it also had many people nodding in cautious agreement. The authors described what they called the “omnigenic” model of complex traits. Drawing on GWAS analyses of three diseases, they concluded that in the cell types that are relevant to a disease, it appears that not 15, not 100, but essentially all genes contribute to the condition. The authors suggested that for some traits, “multiple” loci could mean more than 100,000.

Evolution Is Cleverer Than You Are

theatlantic |  But chimeras are not just oddities. You surely know one. In pregnant women, fetal stem cells can cross the placenta to enter the mother’s bloodstream, where they may persist for years. If Mom gets pregnant again, the stem cells of her firstborn, still circulating in her blood, can cross the placenta in the other direction, commingling with those of the younger sibling. Heredity can thus flow “upstream,” from child to parent—and then over and down to future siblings.

The genome, Zimmer goes on to reveal, eludes tidy boundaries too. Forget the notion that your genome is just the DNA in your chromosomes. We have another genome, small but vital, in our cells’ mitochondria—the tiny powerhouses that supply energy to the cell. Though the mitochondrial genes are few, damage to them can lead to disorders of the brain, muscles, internal organs, sensory systems, and more. At fertilization, an embryo receives both chromosomes and mitochondria from the egg, and only chromosomes from the sperm. Mitochondrial heredity thus flows strictly through the maternal line; every boy is an evolutionary dead end, as far as mitochondria are concerned.

Beyond the genome are more surprises. Schoolchildren learn that Darwin’s predecessor, the great French naturalist Jean-Baptiste Lamarck, got heredity wrong when he suggested that traits acquired through experience—like the giraffe’s neck, elongated by straining and stretching to reach higher, perhaps tenderer, leaves—could be passed down. The biologist August Weismann famously gave the lie to such theories, which collectively are known as “soft” heredity. If Lamarckism were true, he said, chopping the tail off mice and breeding them, generation after generation, should eventually produce tailless mice. It didn’t. Lamarck wasn’t lurking in the details.

Recent research, however, is giving Lamarck a measure of redemption. A subtle regulatory system has been shown to silence or mute the effects of genes without changing the DNA itself. Environmental stresses such as heat, salt, toxins, and infection can trigger so-called epigenetic responses, turning genes on and off to stimulate or restrict growth, initiate immune reactions, and much more. These alterations in gene activity, which are reversible, can be passed down to offspring. They are hitchhikers on the chromosomes, riding along for a while, but able to hop on and off. Harnessing epigenetics, some speculate, could enable us to create Lamarckian crops, which would adapt to a disease in one or two generations and then pass the acquired resistance down to their offspring. If the disease left the area, so would the resistance.

All of these heredities—chromosomal, mitochondrial, epigenetic—still don’t add up to your entire you. Not even close. Every one of us carries a unique flora of hundreds if not thousands of microbes, each with its own genome, without which we cannot feel healthy—cannot be “us.” These too can be passed down from parent to child—but may also move from child to adult, child to child, stranger to stranger. Always a willing volunteer, Zimmer allowed a researcher to sample the microbes living in his belly-button lint. Zimmer’s “navelome” included 53 species of bacteria. One microbe had been known, until then, only from the Mariana Trench. “You, my friend,” the scientist said, “are a wonderland.” Indeed, we all are.

With this in mind, reconsider the ongoing effort to engineer heredity. The motto of the Second International Eugenics Congress, in 1921, was “Eugenics is the self-direction of human evolution.” Since then, controlling heredity has become technically much easier and philosophically more complicated. When, in the 1970s, the first genetic engineering made medical gene therapy feasible, many of its pioneers urged caution, lest some government try to create a genetic Fourth Reich. In particular, two taboos seemed commonsense: no enhancement, only therapy (thou shalt not create a master race); and no alterations in germ-line tissues, only in somatic cells (thou shalt not make heritable modifications).

Time and its Structure (Chronotopology)

intuition |  MISHLOVE: I should mention here, since you've used the term, that chronotopology is the name of the discipline which you founded, which is the study of the structure of time. 

MUSES: Do you want me to comment on that? 

MISHLOVE: Yes, please. 

MUSES: In a way, yes, but in a way I didn't found it. I was thinking cybernetics, for instance, was started formally by Norbert Weiner, but it began with the toilet tank that controlled itself. When I was talking with Weiner at Ravello, he happily agreed with this. 

MISHLOVE: The toilet tank. 

MUSES: He says, "Oh yes." The self-shutting-off toilet tank is the first cybernetic advance of mankind. 

MISHLOVE: Oh. And I suppose chronotopology has an illustrious beginning like this also. 

MUSES: Well, better than the toilet tank, actually. It has a better beginning than cybernetics. 

MISHLOVE: In effect, does it go back to the study of the ancient astrologers? 

MUSES: Well, it goes back to the study of almost all traditional cultures. The word astronomia, even the word mathematicus, meant someone who studied the stars, and in Kepler's sense they calculated the positions to know the qualities of time. But that's an independent hypothesis. The hypothesis of chronotopology is whether you have pointers of any kind -- ionospheric disturbances, planetary orbits, or whatnot -- independently of those pointers, time itself has a flux, has a wave motion, the object being to surf on time. 

MISHLOVE: Now, when you talk about the wave motion of time, I'm getting real interested and excited, because in quantum physics there's this notion that the underlying basis for the physical universe are these waves, even probability waves -- nonphysical, nonmaterial waves -- sort of underlying everything. 

MUSES: Very, very astute, because these waves are standing waves. Actually the wave-particle so-called paradox isn't that bad, when you consider that a particle is a wave packet, a packet of standing waves. That's why an electron can go through a plate and leave wavelike things. Actually our bodies are like fountains. The fountain has a shape only because it's being renewed every minute, and our bodies are being renewed. So we are standing waves; we're no exception. 

MISHLOVE: This deep structure of matter, where we can say what we really are in our bodies is not where we appear to be -- you're saying the same thing is true of time. It's not quite what it appears to be. 

MUSES: No, we're a part of this wave structure, and matter and energy all occur in waves, and time is the master control. I will give you an illustration of that. If you'll take a moment of time, this moment cuts through the entire physical universe as we're talking. It holds all of space in itself. But one point of space doesn't hold all of time. In other words, time is much bigger than space. 

MISHLOVE: That thought sort of made me gasp a second -- all of physical space in each now moment -- 

MUSES: Is contained in a point of time, which is a moment. And of course, a line of time is then an occurrence, and a wave of time is a recurrence. And then if you get out from the circle of time, which Nietzsche saw, the eternal recurrence -- if you break that, as we know we do, we develop, and then we're on a helix, because we come around but it's a little different each time. 

MISHLOVE: Well, now you're beginning to introduce the notion of symbols -- point, line, wave, helix, and so on. 

MUSES: Yes, the dimensions of time. 

MISHLOVE: One of the interesting points that you seem to make in your book is that symbols themselves -- words, pictures -- point to the deeper structure of things, including the deeper structure of time. 

MUSES: Yes. Symbols I would regard as pointers to their meanings, like revolving doors. There are some people, however, who have spent their whole lives walking in the revolving door and never getting out of it. 

Time and its Structure (Chronotopology)
Foreword by Charles A. Muses to "Communication, Organization, And Science" by Jerome Rothstein - 1958 

Governance Threat Is Not Russians, Cambridge Analytica, Etc, But Surveillance Capitalism Itself...,

newstatesman |  It’s been said in some more breathless quarters of the internet that this is the “data breach” that could have “caused Brexit”. Given it was a US-focused bit of harvesting, that would be the most astonishing piece of political advertising success in history – especially as among the big players in the political and broader online advertising world, Cambridge Analytica are not well regarded: some of the people who are best at this regard them as little more than “snake oil salesmen”. 

One of the key things this kind of data would be useful for – and what the original academic study it came from looked into – is finding what Facebook Likes correlate with personality traits, or other Facebook likes. 

The dream scenario for this would be to find that every woman in your sample who liked “The Republican Party” also liked “Chick-Fil-A”, “Taylor Swift” and “Nascar racing”. That way, you could target ads at people who liked the latter three – but not the former – knowing you had a good chance of reaching people likely to appreciate the message you’ve got. This is a pretty widely used, but crude, bit of Facebook advertising. 

When people talk about it being possible Cambridge Analytica used this information to build algorithms which could still be useful after all the original data was deleted, this is what they’re talking about – and that’s possible, but missing a much, much bigger bit of the picture.

So, everything’s OK then?

No. Look at it this way: the data we’re all getting excited about here is a sample of public profile information from 50 million users, harvested from 270,000 people. 

Facebook itself, daily, has access to all of that public information, and much more, from a sample of two billion people – a sample around 7,000 times larger than the Cambridge Analytica one, and one much deeper and richer thanks to its real-time updating status. 

If Facebook wants to offer sales based on correlations – for advertisers looking for an audience open to their message, its data would be infinitely more powerful and useful than a small (in big data terms) four-year-out-of-date bit of Cambridge Analytica data. 

Facebook aren’t anywhere near alone in this world: every day your personal information is bought and sold, bundled and retraded. You won’t know the name of the brands, but the actual giants in this company don’t deal in the tens of millions with data, they deal with hundreds of millions, or even billions of records – one advert I saw today referred to a company which claimed real-world identification of 340 million people. 

This is how lots of real advertising targeting works: people can buy up databases of thousands or millions of users, from all sorts of sources, and turn them into the ultimate custom audience – match the IDs of these people and show them this advert. Or they can do the tricks Cambridge Analytica did, but refined and with much more data behind them (there’s never been much evidence Cambridge Analytica’s model worked very well, despite their sales pitch boasts). 

The media has a model when reporting on “hacks” or on “breaches” – and on reporting on when companies in the spotlight have given evidence to public authorities, and most places have been following those well-trod routes. 

But doing so is like doing forensics on the burning of a twig, in the middle of a raging forest fire. You might get some answers – but they’ll do you no good. We need to think bigger. 

The Promise and Peril of Immersive Technologies

weforum |  The best place from which to draw inspiration for how immersive technologies may be regulated is the regulatory frameworks being put into effect for traditional digital technology today. In the European Union, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) will come into force in 2018. Not only does the law necessitate unambiguous consent for data collection, it also compels companies to erase individual data on request, with the threat of a fine of up to 4% of their global annual turnover for breaches. Furthermore, enshrined in the bill is the notion of ‘data portability’, which allows consumers to take their data across platforms – an incentive for an innovative start-up to compete with the biggest players. We may see similar regulatory norms for immersive technologies develop as well.

Providing users with sovereignty of personal data

Analysis shows that the major VR companies already use cookies to store data, while also collecting information on location, browser and device type and IP address. Furthermore, communication with other users in VR environments is being stored and aggregated data is shared with third parties and used to customize products for marketing purposes.

Concern over these methods of personal data collection has led to the introduction of temporary solutions that provide a buffer between individuals and companies. For example, the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s ‘Privacy Badger’ is a browser extension that automatically blocks hidden third-party trackers and allows users to customize and control the amount of data they share with online content providers. A similar solution that returns control of personal data should be developed for immersive technologies. At present, only blunt instruments are available to individuals uncomfortable with data collection but keen to explore AR/VR: using ‘offline modes’ or using separate profiles for new devices.

Managing consumption

Short-term measures also exist to address overuse in the form of stopping mechanisms. Pop-up usage warnings once healthy limits are approached or exceeded are reportedly supported by 71% of young people in the UK. Services like unGlue allow parents to place filters on content types that their children are exposed to, as well as time limits on usage across apps.

All of these could be transferred to immersive technologies, and are complementary fixes to actual regulation, such as South Korea’s Shutdown Law. This prevents children under the age of 16 from playing computer games between midnight and 6am. The policy is enforceable because it ties personal details – including date of birth – to a citizen’s resident registration number, which is required to create accounts for online services. These solutions are not infallible: one could easily imagine an enterprising child might ‘borrow’ an adult’s device after-hours to find a workaround to the restrictions. Further study is certainly needed, but we believe that long-term solutions may lie in better design.

Have you read?

• The true power of immersive virtual reality
• Augmented Reality is already changing the way we work. Here's the proof
• The next stage of virtual reality is coming, and it's all in your mind

Rethinking success metrics for digital technology

As businesses develop applications using immersive technologies, they should transition from using metrics that measure just the amount of user engagement to metrics that also take into account user satisfaction, fulfilment and enhancement of well-being. Alternative metrics could include a net promoter score for software, which would indicate how strongly users – or perhaps even regulators – recommend the service to their friends based on their level of fulfilment or satisfaction with a service.

The real challenge, however, is to find measures that align with business policy and user objectives. As Tristan Harris, Founder of Time Well Spent argues: “We have to come face-to-face with the current misalignment so we can start to generate solutions.” There are instances where improvements to user experience go hand-in-hand with business opportunities. Subscription-based services are one such example: YouTube Red will eliminate advertisements for paying users, as does Spotify Premium. These are examples where users can pay to enjoy advertising-free experiences and which do not come at the cost to the content developers since they will receive revenue in the form of paid subscriptions.

More work remains if immersive technologies are to enable happier, more fulfilling interactions with content and media. This will largely depend on designing technology that puts the user at the centre of its value proposition.

This is part of a series of articles related to the disruptive effects of several technologies (virtual/augmented reality, artificial intelligence and blockchain) on the creative economy.

Virtual Reality Health Risks...,

medium |  Two decades ago, our research group made international headlines when we published research showing that virtual reality systems could damage people’s health.

Our demonstration of side-effects was not unique — many research groups were showing that it could cause health problems. The reason that our work was newsworthy was because we showed that there were fundamental problems that needed to be tackled when designing virtual reality systems — and these problems needed engineering solutions that were tailored for the human user.

In other words, it was not enough to keep producing ever faster computers and higher definition displays — a fundamental change in the way systems were designed was required.

So why do virtual reality systems need a new approach? The answer to this question lies in the very definition of how virtual reality differs from how we traditionally use a computer.

Natural human behaviour is based on responses elicited by information detected by a person’s sensory systems. For example, rays of light bouncing off a shiny red apple can indicate that there’s a good source of food hanging on a tree.

A person can then use the information to guide their hand movements and pick the apple from the tree. This use of ‘perception’ to guide ‘motor’ actions defines a feedback loop that underpins all of human behaviour. The goal of virtual reality systems is to mimic the information that humans normally use to guide their actions, so that humans can interact with computer generated objects in a natural way.

The problems come when the normal relationship between the perceptual information and the corresponding action is disrupted. One way of thinking about such disruption is that a mismatch between perception and action causes ‘surprise’. It turns out that surprise is really important for human learning and the human brain appears to be engineered to minimise surprise.

This means that the challenge for the designers of virtual reality is that they must create systems that minimise the surprise experienced by the user when using computer generated information to control their actions.

Of course, one of the advantages of virtual reality is that the computer can create new and wonderful worlds. For example, a completely novel fruit — perhaps an elppa — could be shown hanging from a virtual tree. The elppa might have a completely different texture and appearance to any other previously encountered fruit — but it’s important that the information used to specify the location and size of the elppa allows the virtual reality user to guide their hand to the virtual object in a normal way.

If there is a mismatch between the visual information and the hand movements then ‘surprise’ will result, and the human brain will need to adapt if future interactions between vision and action are to maintain their accuracy. The issue is that the process of adaptation may cause difficulties — and these difficulties might be particularly problematic for children as their brains are not fully developed. 

This issue affects all forms of information presented within a virtual world (so hearing and touch as well as vision), and all of the different motor systems (so postural control as well as arm movement systems). One good example of the problems that can arise can be seen through the way our eyes react to movement.

In 1993, we showed that virtual reality systems had a fundamental design flaw when they attempted to show three dimensional visual information. This is because the systems produce a mismatch between where the eyes need to focus and where the eyes need to point. In everyday life, if we change our focus from something close to something far away our eyes will need to change focus and alter where they are pointing.

The change in focus is necessary to prevent blur and the change in eye direction is necessary to stop double images. In reality, the changes in focus and direction are physically linked (a change in fixation distance causes change in the images and where the images fall at the back of the eyes).

Sport Death Coming to an End at MIT's Senior House...,

qz |  Senior House, a dorm beloved by many underrepresented minority groups at MIT, has been described many ways: free-wheeling, experimental, diverse, inclusive—and, in the words of one former student, in constant violation of “campus policy on smoking, pets, drugs, alcohol, public sex, (insert flavor-of-the-month form of rebellion here).”

The dorm is about to be dismantled. MIT has decided to kick everyone out, allowing its current members to reapply for residence in the space for the fall, but insisting it will repopulate it. “You will see that we are seeking individuals who are committed to contributing to a residential environment that supports residents’ academic and personal development,” chancellor Cynthia Barnhart wrote in a letter to current and former student members, obtained by Quartz and confirmed by the university.

MIT, which prides itself on exalting data, says data drove the decision: 59.7% of students who start off (pdf) living in Senior House graduate in four years. That compares to a university-wide average of 83.7%. More than a fifth of students had not graduated after their sixth year, nearly double the rate of the next worst-performing dorm, called Random.

MIT initially proposed overhauling the house, based on the graduation data and concerns over illegal drug use. It halted 2016-2017 freshman from moving in, appointed a turnaround committee, and added more mental health resources to the house. But the administration ultimately concluded that revamping it wasn’t worth the bother. Senior House was filled with “serious and unsafe behaviors” which undermine the university’s goals for the health, safety and academic success of the students, the letter stated. The university declined to elaborate on the nature of the serious and unsafe behaviors.

Whose Side is He On?

QZ |  Former secretary of state Henry Kissinger may be in his nineties, but he’s continuing to play a key, globe-spanning role in one of the most substantive foreign policy negotiations of the US presidency so far.

Kissinger, who brokered a ground-breaking detente between the US and China’s Communist Party’s in 1972, has served a valued go-between for the two nations for more than four decades, earning him the nickname of “old friend of the Chinese people.” It’s privilege he has shared with at least 600 people, although Kissinger may be the living person who has held the nickname the longest.

As recently as December, when then US president-elect Donald Trump threatened upheaval between the world’s most powerful nations, by accepting a congratulatory call from Taiwan’s Tsai Ing-wen, Kissinger was already in Beijing with Chinese president Xi Jinping, reassuring him that “overall, we hope to see the China-US relationship moving ahead in a sustained and stable manner.” (A Bloomberg report suggested that Xi may have turned to the venerable diplomat to better understand Trump, telling Kissinger he was “all ears” regarding what he had to say about the future of US-China relations.)

Kissinger met with the incoming Trump administration soon after the election, and helped to connect Chinese politicians with the US president’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, the Washington Post reports—connections that ultimately led to this week’s meeting.

In doing so, he’s opened up a now familiar controversy in the US—who does Kissinger work for, exactly, and whose side is he on?

Kissinger is “representing China’s interests and trying to influence American foreign policy,” said Craig Holman, a government affairs lobbyist for Public Citizen, a nonpartisan group that advocates for citizens’ rights in Congress. “That crosses the threshold for FARA,” he said, referring to the Foreign Agents Registration Act.

Trump Will Persist

unz |  Michael Moore’s flabby mug always looks indecently exposed, like middle-aged female genitalia. The fat slob could lead the old hags’ march without the pink pussyhat. Just his own visage would suffice. He is actually similar to George Soros: the same obscene pussyface. For me, his appearance would doom him: like Oscar Wilde, I believe that ugly creatures are immoral as well. It’s enough to look at Madeleine Albright, another pussyface, for a proof. But if you need more, his Stupid White Men has been the most execrable book produced in the US in this century: there he claimed that were 9/11 passengers black, the hijack would never have succeeded. Now the Pussyface bared the hidden plans of Putin and called for enthroninge Clinton because Trump is a Russian spy. Years ago he spoke against the Iraq War; now he calls for the nuclear Armageddon. With such enemies, we should not give up on Trump.

Trump is down, cry the fans and haters alike. He’s been defeated, broken, never to rise again. He is a lame duck soon to be impeached. He will crawl back to his golden lair leaving the White House to his betters, or even better, he will run to his pal Vlad Putin.

No, my friends and readers, Trump is fighting, not running, but things take time. It is not easy to change the paradigm, and the odds were heavily slanted against Trump from step one. Still, he got this far, and he will go on. Stubborn guy, and he perseveres. The corrupt judges chain his hands; the CIA and NSA reveal his moves to the NYT, CNN, NBC; but he stands up, ready to carry the fight to his – and American people’s – enemy, the hydra of so many triple-letter heads.

Now you understand why the pessimistic assessments of our colleagues Paul Craig Roberts and The Saker are at least premature. In the face of the ancient regime’s hostility, Trump will need at least six months merely to settle properly in the White House. Just for comparison: Putin had spent five years consolidating his power, and another five years solidifying it, though he had full support of Russian security services and a most authoritarian constitution written by the Americans for their stooge Mr Yeltsin.

President Putin remembers that it takes time. For this reason, he is not unduly upset by President Trump’s delay with normalising US-Russia relations. The fake news of Russian disenchantment with Trump are exactly that, fake news. Russians believe in positive developments for US-Russia relations, and they do not hold their breath.

But why I do believe that Trump will win, at the end? The US is not an island; it is a part of the West, and the West is going through a paradigm change. Cuntfaces lost, Deplorables won, and not as a fluke. Remember, Trump was not the first victory; the Brexit preceded him. Between the Brexit vote and the Trump election, the British government hesitated and postponed acting upon. The Brits weren’t sure whether that vote was a sign of change, or a fluke. After Trump’s victory, the Brits marched on.

nobel laureate can't bust a grape didn't sign on for this world war isht!

tomdispatch |  World War IV would require at least a five-fold increase in the current size of the U.S. Army -- and not as an emergency measure but a permanent one. Such numbers may appear large, but as Cohen would be the first to point out, they are actually modest when compared to previous world wars. In 1968, in the middle of World War III, the Army had more than 1.5 million active duty soldiers on its rolls -- this at a time when the total American population was less than two-thirds what it is today and when gender discrimination largely excluded women from military service. If it chose to do so, the United States today could easily field an army of two million or more soldiers.

Whether it could also retain the current model of an all-volunteer force is another matter. Recruiters would certainly face considerable challenges, even if Congress enhanced the material inducements for service, which since 9/11 have already included a succession of generous increases in military pay. A loosening of immigration policy, granting a few hundred thousand foreigners citizenship in return for successfully completing a term of enlistment might help. In all likelihood, however, as with all three previous world wars, waging World War IV would oblige the United States to revive the draft, a prospect as likely to be well-received as a flood of brown and black immigrant enlistees. In short, going all out to create the forces needed to win World War IV would confront Americans with uncomfortable choices.

The budgetary implications of expanding U.S. forces while conducting a perpetual round of what the Pentagon calls “overseas contingency operations” would also loom large. Precisely how much money an essentially global conflict projected to extend well into the latter half of the century would require is difficult to gauge. As a starting point, given the increased number of active duty forces, tripling the present Defense Department budget of more than $600 billion might serve as a reasonable guess.

At first glance, $1.8 trillion annually is a stupefyingly large figure. To make it somewhat more palatable, a proponent of World War IV might put that number in historical perspective. During the first phases of World War III, for example, the United States routinely allocated 10% or more of total gross domestic product (GDP) for national security. With that GDP today exceeding $17 trillion, apportioning 10% to the Pentagon would give those charged with managing World War IV a nice sum to work with and no doubt to build upon.

Of course, that money would have to come from somewhere. For several years during the last decade, sustaining wars in Iraq and Afghanistan pushed the federal deficit above a trillion dollars. As one consequence, the total national debt now exceeds annual GDP, having tripled since 9/11. How much additional debt the United States can accrue without doing permanent damage to the economy is a question of more than academic interest.

To avoid having World War IV produce an endless string of unacceptably large deficits, ratcheting up military spending would undoubtedly require either substantial tax increases or significant cuts in non-military spending, including big-ticket programs like Medicare and social security -- precisely those, that is, which members of the middle class hold most dear.

In other words, funding World War IV while maintaining a semblance of fiscal responsibility would entail the kind of trade-offs that political leaders are loathe to make. Today, neither party appears up to taking on such challenges. That the demands of waging protracted war will persuade them to rise above their partisan differences seems unlikely. It sure hasn’t so far.

info-capitalism is inherently malthusian, sharply favoring the right side of the bell curve...,

guardian |  Today, the thing that is corroding capitalism, barely rationalised by mainstream economics, is information. Most laws concerning information define the right of corporations to hoard it and the right of states to access it, irrespective of the human rights of citizens. The equivalent of the printing press and the scientific method is information technology and its spillover into all other technologies, from genetics to healthcare to agriculture to the movies, where it is quickly reducing costs.

The modern equivalent of the long stagnation of late feudalism is the stalled take-off of the third industrial revolution, where instead of rapidly automating work out of existence, we are reduced to creating what David Graeber calls “bullshit jobs” on low pay. And many economies are stagnating.

The equivalent of the new source of free wealth? It’s not exactly wealth: it’s the “externalities” – the free stuff and wellbeing generated by networked interaction. It is the rise of non-market production, of unownable information, of peer networks and unmanaged enterprises. The internet, French economist Yann Moulier-Boutang says, is “both the ship and the ocean” when it comes to the modern equivalent of the discovery of the new world. In fact, it is the ship, the compass, the ocean and the gold.

The modern day external shocks are clear: energy depletion, climate change, ageing populations and migration. They are altering the dynamics of capitalism and making it unworkable in the long term. They have not yet had the same impact as the Black Death – but as we saw in New Orleans in 2005, it does not take the bubonic plague to destroy social order and functional infrastructure in a financially complex and impoverished society.

Once you understand the transition in this way, the need is not for a supercomputed Five Year Plan – but a project, the aim of which should be to expand those technologies, business models and behaviours that dissolve market forces, socialise knowledge, eradicate the need for work and push the economy towards abundance. I call it Project Zero – because its aims are a zero-carbon-energy system; the production of machines, products and services with zero marginal costs; and the reduction of necessary work time as close as possible to zero.

Most 20th-century leftists believed that they did not have the luxury of a managed transition: it was an article of faith for them that nothing of the coming system could exist within the old one – though the working class always attempted to create an alternative life within and “despite” capitalism. As a result, once the possibility of a Soviet-style transition disappeared, the modern left became preoccupied simply with opposing things: the privatisation of healthcare, anti-union laws, fracking – the list goes on.

If I am right, the logical focus for supporters of postcapitalism is to build alternatives within the system; to use governmental power in a radical and disruptive way; and to direct all actions towards the transition – not the defence of random elements of the old system. We have to learn what’s urgent, and what’s important, and that sometimes they do not coincide.

rotflmbao..., trump calls a tard a tard...,

thehill |  Donald Trump on Thursday fired back at criticism from presidential rival Rick Perry.

The former Texas governor "failed on the border. He should be forced to take an IQ test before being allowed to enter the GOP debate," Trump tweeted Thursday afternoon.

The comment came hours after Perry issued a blistering statement that said Trump was mistaken on border security and only offered "a toxic mix of demagoguery and nonsense."

It was another in a series of jabs between the two candidates, to which Trump countered in another tweet by saying that Perry "doesn't understand what the word demagoguery means."

Perry, whose "oops" moment during a televised debate during the 2012 campaign kneecapped his previous White House bid, has himself addressed the relationship of intelligence and the presidency.

"Running for president is not an IQ test," Perry said in December when preparing to exit office.

"It is a test of an individual’s resolve; it is a test of an individual’s philosophy; it is a test of an individual’s life experiences," Perry said then, alluding to his 14-year tenure as governor.

krauthammer - a dummy and a clown...,

thehill |  Donald Trump lashed out at Charles Krauthammer, a conservative columnist and Fox News analyst, after Krauthammer panned the potential 2016 contender, citing his low standing in presidential polls.

Trump fired off multiple tweets late Thursday evening calling the pundit a "dummy" and "overrated clown," and even taking issue with him over the Iraq war.