Artificial Intelligence and Creative Work

cnbc |  To the average person, the billboard on the bus stop on London's Oxford Street was a standard coffee-brand ad.  Every few seconds, the digital poster would change. Sometimes, it would feature a wide range of drab grays and blocks of text. Other times, it was a minimalistic image with a short saying.

What was unique about this particular poster, which ran in two locations at the end of July 2015, wasn't the fact that people were looking at it. Rather, it was looking at them — and learning. Using facial tracking technology and genetics-based algorithms, the poster took the aspects that people looked at the longest and then incorporated that into the next design evolution.

"We were surprised how quickly it learned," said Sam Ellis, business director of innovation at M&C Saatchi. "It got to a state of where it felt like it was in the right place a bit faster than we thought."

In less than 72 hours, the M&C Saatchi advertisement was creating posters in line with the current best practices in the advertising industry, which had been developed over decades of human trial and error like realizing three to five word slogans work best.

"We thought [our employees] would be nervous about it: Is this going to kill off creative?" Ellis said. "What they started to realize is that it could be really, really useful based on its insight."

M&C Saatchi's Ellis believes eventually ad agencies will be smaller, because AI will be able to accomplish tasks with a high degree of accuracy — for much less money than now — and will make outsourcing tasks a lot more effective.

As our machines become more sophisticated and more details about our lives are recorded as data points, AI is getting to the point where it knows a tremendous amount about humans. It can tell what a person is feeling. It knows the difference between a truth and a lie. It can go through millions of permutations in a second, coming up with more variations than a human could think of. It knows your daily routine, like when you're most likely going to want a cold beer on a hot summer day.

Better Be Careful What You Say To Me, Cause It Might Turn Around On You

justsecurity |  Once again, Donald Trump has kicked off a media firestorm with a series of early-morning Tweets, this time leveling the serious accusation that “President Obama had my ‘wires tapped’ in Trump Tower”  just prior to the presidential election.

Though Trump asserted he had “just found out” about this surveillance, he appears to be referencing a series of reports that began with a piece by Louise Mensch in Heat Street back in November, which was later corroborated by articles published by The Guardian and the BBC in January.  The reports may have come to Trump’s attention by way of a Breitbart story that ran on Friday, summarizing claims of a “Deep State” effort to undermine the Trump administration advanced by conservative talk radio host Mark Levin.

If it were true that President Obama had ordered the intelligence community to “tapp” Trump’s phones for political reasons, that would of course be a serious scandal—and crime—of Nixonian proportions. Yet there’s nothing in the published reports—vague though they are—to support such a dramatic allegation.  Let’s try to sort out what we do know.

First, as one would hope Trump is aware, presidents are not supposed to personally order electronic surveillance of particular domestic targets, and the Obama camp has, unsurprisingly, issued a statement denying they did anything of the sort:

Neither President Obama nor any White House official ever ordered surveillance on any U.S. citizen. Any suggestion otherwise is simply false.

Rather, the allegation made by various news sources is that, in connection with a multi-agency intelligence investigation of Russian interference with the presidential election, the FBI sought an order from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court authorizing them to monitor transactions between two Russian banks and four persons connected with the Trump campaign.  The Guardian‘s report alleges that initial applications submitted over the summer, naming “four members of the Trump team suspected of irregular contacts with Russian officials,” were rejected by the FISC. But according to the BBC, a narrower order naming only the Russian banks as direct targets was ultimately approved by the FISC in October.  While the BBC report suggests that the surveillance was meant to ferret out “transfers of money,” the Mensch article asserts that a “warrant was granted to look at the full content of emails and other related documents that may concern US persons.”

Taking all these claims with the appropriate sodium chloride seasoning, what can we infer?

"Computer Virus" Will Cease Being a Metaphor During My Lifetime

thescientist |  Yaniv Erlich and colleagues encoded large media files in DNA, copied the DNA multiple times, and still managed to retrieve the files without any errors, they reported in Science today (March 2). Compared with cassette tapes and 8 mm film, DNA is far less likely to become obsolete, and its storage density is roughly 215 petabytes of data per gram of genetic material, the researchers noted.

To test DNA’s media-storage capabilities, Erlich, an assistant professor of computer science at Columbia University in New York City, and Dina Zielinski, a senior associate scientist at the New York Genome Center, encoded six large files—including a French film and a computer operating system (OS), complete with word-processing software—into DNA. They then recovered the data from PCR-generated copies of that DNA. The Scientist spoke with Erlich about the study, and other potential data-storage applications for DNA.

The Scientist: Why is DNA a good place to store information?

Yaniv Erlich: First, we’re starting to reach the physical limits of hard drives. DNA is much more compact than magnetic media—about 1 million times more compact. Second, it can last for a much longer time. Think about your CDs from the 90s, they’re probably scratched by now. [Today] we can read DNA from a skeleton [that is] 4,000 years old. Third, one of the nice features about DNA is that it is not subject to digital obsoleteness. Think about videocassettes or 8 mm movies. It’s very hard these days to watch these movies because the hardware changes so fast. DNA—that hardware isn’t going anywhere. It’s been around for the last 3 billion years. If humanity loses its ability to read DNA, we have much bigger problems than data storage.

TS: Have other researchers tried to store information in DNA?

YE: There are several groups that have already done this process, and they inspired us, but our approach has several advantages. Ours is 60 percent more efficient than previous strategies and our results are very immune to noise and error. Most previous studies reported some issues getting the data back from the DNA, some gaps [in the information retrieved], but we show it’s easy. We even tried to make it harder for ourselves . . . so we tried to copy the data, and the enzymatic reaction [involved in copying DNA] introduces errors. We copied the data, and then copied that copy, and then copied a copy of that copy—nine times—and we were still able to recover the data without one error. We also . . . achieved a density of 215 petabytes per one gram of DNA. Your laptop has probably one terabyte. Multiply that by 200,000, and we could fit all that information into one gram of DNA.

It Will Take AI to Discern and to Prove Genetic Discrimination

thescientist |  It wouldn’t be the first time Shubhayan Sanatani wrote one of these letters, nor would it be the last. A child under his care at the British Columbia Children’s Hospital had been unable to obtain health insurance ever since testing positive in a genetic screen for a sudden arrhythmia death syndrome (SADS). Whenever this happened to one of his patients, Sanatani, a pediatric cardiologist, would write a letter to the insurance company in question, explaining that the positive test did not necessarily indicate a significant increase in risk for a cardiac event.

“We haven’t had much to offer, other than to write letters of support saying the child has an extremely low risk of an event,” Sanatani told The Scientist. “All we can do, really, is advocate for our patients. I’m not confident about how successful we are.”

How often do parents discover that a genetic screening result has rendered their children uninsurable, or subject to prohibitively high insurance premiums? Sanatani resolved to find out. In a January 24 study in Circulation: Cardiovascular Genetics, Sanatani and colleagues conducted informal interviews of 202 people across North America who had either a SADS diagnosis (which, in 73 percent of cases, involved a genetic screen) or an affected family member. Despite its limitations—the survey did not ask when the alleged acts of insurance discrimination occurred, for instance—the self-reported results shed some anecdotal light on what Sanatani said he had been observing in his medical practice.

Thirty-nine percent of the respondents with a SADS diagnosis or an affected family member reported an increase in their existing insurance premiums. Just more than half said they applied for insurance only after receiving the diagnosis; 60 percent of these respondents indicated that they were rejected by insurers.

Before initiating the study, “a lot of families came to us with the notion that having their kids tested would impact their health coverage, but whenever we went to the literature to see if we could substantiate this or refute this, we couldn’t find much,” Sanatani told The Scientist. Yet, after examining the data, the team concluded that “a large percentage of the respondents had experienced some form of insurance rejection,” he said, “with most of them being rejected on the basis of the diagnosis.”

The results were surprising because, according to the researchers, most of the survey respondents were from the United States, where the 2008 Genetic Information Non-Discrimination Act (GINA) should have protected them.

Open Post: Prove You're Not a Bot

How a typo took down S3

28blackdaysin2017 |  If you already recognize that Black gestures, speech, trends, ideas and attitudes are not exclusive to actual Black Bodies then you are ready for the concept of BlacOS.
If you already recognize that Not All Black People Are The Same (aka, I'm not your Monolith,) and that Alain Locke was onto something with his "New Negro," and that "Black Is Beautiful" was an adjustment in Black folks' ways of being in the world then you are ready for the concept of BlacOS.
If you understand that any given instance of Black representation in the media is a complex mixture of agency, randomness, creative inspiration, hopelessness and straight coonery then you are ready for the concept of BlacOS.
It's simple: Blackness, however you understand, celebrate or loathe it, is software: an operating system (OS) to be specific. The job of the OS is to make the resources of a computing system's hardware and programs available to the user. Windows. Macintosh. Linux. Be. Android. iOS. These are all systems that sit on top of a layer of hardware, and make it possible for you to interact with web browsers, video games, word processors, screen savers, and spreadsheets. You know, the stuff that makes the computer usable. 

Music as a Means of Social Control

PenelopeGouk |  Ancient models: Plato and Aristotle

Anyone thinking about music and social control in the early modern period would tend to look for precedents in antiquity, the most significant authors in this regard being Plato and Aristotle. The two crucial texts by Plato are his Republic and the Laws, both of which are concerned with the nature of the best form of political organisation and the proper kind of education for individuals that lead to a stable and harmonious community.

Education of the republic's citizens includes early training in both gymnastics and mousike, which Andrew Barker defines as 'primarily an exposure to poetry and to the music that is its key vehicle.' (For the rest of this discussion I will simply refer to 'music' but will be using it in the broader sense of poetry set to musical accompaniment.) The crucial point is that within Plato's ideal society the kinds of 'music' that are performed must be firmly controlled by the law givers, the argument being that freedom of choice in music and novelty in its forms will inevitably lead to corruption and a breakdown of society. 

Plato's distrust of musical innovation is made concrete in his Laws where he describes what he thinks actually happened once in Greek society, namely that the masses had the effrontery to suppose they were capable of judging music themselves, the result being that 'from a starting point in music, everyone came to believe in their own wisdom about everything, and to reject the law, and liberty followed immediately'. (To Plato liberty is anathema since some people have much greater understanding and knowledge than others.) 

This close association between the laws of music and laws of the state exists because according to Plato music imitates character, and has a direct effect on the soul which itself is a harmonia, the consequence being that bad music results in bad citizens. To achieve a good state some form of regulation must take place, the assumption being that if the right musical rules are correctly followed this will result in citizens of good character. It is fascinating to discover that Plato looks to Egypt with approval for its drastic control of music in society, claiming that its forms had remained unchanged for ten thousand years because of strict regulation that 'dedicated all dancing and all melodies to religion'. To prescribe melodies that possessed a 'natural correctness' he thinks 'would be a task for a god, or a godlike man, just as in Egypt they say that the melodies that have been preserved for this great period of time were the compositions of Isis.' (In fact as we shall see there were similar arguments made for the divine origins of sacred music in the Hebrew tradition.) 

Perhaps thinking himself to be a 'godlike man', Plato lays down a series of strict rules governing musical composition and performance, a prescription that if correctly followed would ensure the virtue of citizens and the stability of the state, as well as the banishment of most professional musicians from society. First, Plato wants to limit the kind of poetry that is set to music at all because songs have such a direct and powerful effect on people's morals. Thus any poems that portray wickedness, immorality, mourning or weakness of any kind must be banned, leaving only music that encourages good and courageous behaviour among citizens. The next thing to be curtailed is the range of musical styles allowed in the city, which Plato would confine to the Dorian and the Phrygian 'harmoniai', a technical term for organisations of musical pitch that for the purposes of this paper need not be discussed in any more detail. Between them these two 'harmoniai' appropriately 'imitate the sounds of the self-restrained and the brave man, each of them both in good fortune and bad.' Thirdly, as well as controlling the words to be sung and the manner in which they are performed, Plato would also regulate the kinds of instrument used for accompaniment, the two most important being the lyra and the kithara. Those that are forbidden include the aulos as well as a range of multi-stringed instruments capable of playing in a variety of different modes. Finally, Plato is emphatic in stating that the metrical foot and the melody must follow the words properly for the right effect to be achieved, rather than the other way around. 

Of course these rules are intrinsically interesting, since they tell us about what Plato thought was wrong with music of his own time. However, for my purposes they are also interesting because they seem to have had a discernable influence on would-be reformers of music and society in the early modern period (that is, between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries) which I will come to further on in my paper.

Bioaccoustic Biology?

soundhealthinc |  Welcome to The Journal of BioAcoustic Biology (JBAB), sponsored by the Sound Health Research Institute, Inc., a duly recognized exempt organization (SHRI). This Journal has been established in response to the calls for a peer-reviewed venue for the publication of articles and practice notes on the subject of Human BioAcoustic Vocal Profiling and Sound Presentation. 

The SHRI trustees responded by adopting, as part of the Credentials System sponsored by the Institute, authorization for the establishment of this Journal. According to the enabling Resolution, “The Journal publishes in the area of Human BioAcoustics as established by the research initiated by Sharry Edwards…” articles and practice notes subject to the oversight of the Peer Review Subcommittee. The general Peer Review Standards can be found under the JBAB links to the right. 

Our Premier Public Issue features a seminal article on the Theory of Human BioAcoustics. This issue was prepared by the Journal staff under the direction of Ms. Edwards. This issue represents the first public issue of a Journal that has been privately published since 1995. 

The Research Reports published in the Journal have had any specific Frequencies referenced redacted (and usually replaced with the musical note in which the Frequency occurs). The Reports are intended to provide brief introductions to ongoing research.

Exploring the Mechanisms of Music Therapy

thescientist |  A man with Parkinson’s disease sitting in a crowded restaurant has to use the rest room, but he cannot get there. His feet are frozen; he cannot move. The more he tries, the more stressed he becomes. People are beginning to stare at him and wonder what is wrong. Then he remembers the song “You Are My Sunshine,” which his music therapist taught him to use in situations like this. He starts humming the tune. In time with the music, he steps forward—one foot and then the other—and begins walking to the beat in his head. Still humming, he makes it to the rest room, avoiding a potentially embarrassing situation.

Freezing of gait is a common occurrence for many people with Parkinson’s disease. Such struggles can limit social experience and lead to seclusion and depression. Unfortunately, available pharmacological and surgical treatments for Parkinson’s do a poor job of quelling this and many other symptoms. But where conventional medicine has failed, music therapy can sometimes provide relief.

Music therapy is the use of music by a credentialed professional as an intervention to improve, restore, or maintain a non-music-related behavior in a patient or client. As a music therapist, I have worked with many people with Parkinson’s disease and have seen how music can provide an external cue for patients to walk in time to, allowing them to overcome freezing. I have also used group singing to help patients with Parkinson’s improve their respiratory control and swallowing. Impaired swallowing can lead to aspiration pneumonia, which is a leading cause of death among this patient population.

But perhaps the most powerful component of music therapy is the social benefit derived from making music together, which can help patients combat depression. When patients with Parkinson’s engage in music therapy, often one of the first behaviors to emerge is smiling, and the flat affect and masked face that are characteristic symptoms of the disease fade away. These participants comment on how music therapy is the best part of their week, and their caregivers state that their loved ones are in much better moods—with fewer Parkinson’s symptoms—after returning home from music therapy.

While all of this is interesting, it is not new. Aristotle and Plato were among the first to write on the healing influence of music. The earliest references to music as therapy occurred in the late 1700s and early 1800s, and the field formally began after World War I, when professional and amateur musicians played for veterans who had suffered physical and emotional trauma as a result of the war. Nowadays, certified music therapists seek to do more than just play the right song at the right time. They use music to help people with many different physical and emotional disorders or diseases.

Big Data Won't Make People Unsee the Democratic Party's Shrivelled Nakedness....,

nakedcapitalism |  It has long been the case that “Big Data” has been treated as a magical, unstoppable force that will reap power and profits for those who can channel it effectively. In the 2016 Presidential election, the Clinton campaign and Democratic National Committee relied heavily on Ada (named after Lord Byron’s mathematician daughter, a perfect identitarian for Clintonian Democrats, combining as she does into one symbolic person aristocratic status, the creative class, feminism and computing). Ada was the Democrats’ attempt at a Big Data Election-Winning Machine, apparently created for it in secret in a dark cave at the top of a mountain by Eric Schmidt and unknown coding slaves who were probably killed as soon as Eric carried his prize down the mountain to Hillary’s waiting arms.

That last part is made up.

But the Democrats did have Ada, which only top aides were allowed to use or even see. Very little is known about Ada, because (spoiler alert) Clinton lost and the brain trust leading the party (if you can call it that) didn’t want anyone to focus on their incompetence and wasteful spending because RUSSIA. Ada said Wisconsin was a safe state. Ada said paying Jay Z to perform would win Ohio. Ada failed, along with Clinton.

Yet now there are rumblings that there is a REAL Death Star, a Big Data system perfect in its design, malevolent in its intent, and all-powerful in its capacity to segment and manipulate every human being on Earth. (No, not the NSA – how silly of you to worry about an arm of the government!) It’s Cambridge Analytica, of which Robert Mercer, right wing hedge fund billionaire, is a major investor. That Robert Mercer, who backed Donald Trump, the crazy-haired real estate hair and game show host who won the 2016 Presidential election.

The thinking is, now that Trump has access to all that otherwise completely benign NSA data, he and Mercer can conspire to feed all of America into the gaping maw of this algorithmic monster, and manipulate otherwise good-thinking Americans into…I’m not sure, exactly. Trump already won the Presidency. The Republican Party – the party notably less aligned with Silicon Valley, although that is rapidly changing because Silicon Valley boys know to go where the money is – is already so dominant, it controls not only every branch of the Federal Government,¹ but such a large percentage of the states it only needs one or two more to call a Constitutional Convention. It did all of this without an Election-Winning Death Star.

This suggests a number of questions:

• How much should we fear Big Data?
• How much should we fear Cambridge Analytica?
• Are we on the verge having of a new, uniquely powerful propaganda tool?
• And the secret question, the one unsaid in most of these pieces: Can the Democrats get their hands on it to win back power?

The short answers are:

• A lot
• No more or less than every other Big Data operation
• No
• No

All this extensive data gathering and mining of people without their full knowledge and consent is bad. It’s bad when the NSA does it. It’s bad when Facebook does it. It’s bad when Cambridge Analytica does it. There is the potential for tremendous harm. There is also the potential (which is, to some degree, already occurring) for massive manipulation of people’s emotions in new ways. Targeted segmentation and messaging works for many purposes. Here’s a primer.

"Truth" is Whatever Those in Authority Say It Is

consortiumnews |  On Nov. 20, the Times published a lead editorial calling on Facebook and other technology giants to devise algorithms that could eliminate stories that the Times deemed to be “fake.” The Times and other mainstream news outlets – along with a few favored Internet sites – joined a special Google-sponsored task force, called the First Draft Coalition, to decide what is true and what is not. If the Times’ editorial recommendations were followed, the disfavored stories and the sites publishing them would no longer be accessible through popular search engines and platforms, essentially blocking the public’s access to them. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “What to Do About ‘Fake News.’”]

On Thanksgiving Day, the Post ran a front-page story citing an anonymous group, called PropOrNot, blacklisting 200 Web sites, including Consortiumnews.com and other important sources of independent journalism, because we supposedly promoted “Russian propaganda.”

Although PropOrNot and the Post didn’t bother to cite any actual examples or to ask the accused for comment, the point was clear: If you didn’t march in lockstep behind the Official Narrative on, say, the Ukraine crisis or the war in Syria, you were to be isolated, demonized and effectively silenced. In the article, the Post blurred the lines between “fake news” – stories that are simply made up – and what was deemed “propaganda,” in effect, information that didn’t jibe with what the U.S. State Department was saying.

Back then, in November, the big newspapers believed that the truth was easy, simple, obvious, requiring only access to some well-placed government official or a quick reading of the executive summary from some official report. Over the last quarter century or so, the Times, in particular, has made a fetish out of embracing pretty much whatever Officialdom declared to be true. After all, such well-dressed folks with those important-sounding titles couldn’t possibly be lying.

That gullibility went from the serious, such as rejecting overwhelming evidence that Ronald Reagan’s Nicaraguan Contra rebels were deeply involved in drug trafficking, to the silly, trusting the NFL’s absurd Deflategate allegations against Tom Brady. In those “old” days, which apparently ended a few weeks ago, the Times could have run full-page ads, saying “Truth is whatever those in authority say it is.”

J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. Embracing AI and Shedding Useless Humans

bloomberg |  At JPMorgan Chase & Co., a learning machine is parsing financial deals that once kept legal teams busy for thousands of hours.

The program, called COIN, for Contract Intelligence, does the mind-numbing job of interpreting commercial-loan agreements that, until the project went online in June, consumed 360,000 hours of work each year by lawyers and loan officers. The software reviews documents in seconds, is less error-prone and never asks for vacation.

While the financial industry has long touted its technological innovations, a new era of automation is now in overdrive as cheap computing power converges with fears of losing customers to startups. Made possible by investments in machine learning and a new private cloud network, COIN is just the start for the biggest U.S. bank. The firm recently set up technology hubs for teams specializing in big data, robotics and cloud infrastructure to find new sources of revenue, while reducing expenses and risks.

The push to automate mundane tasks and create new tools for bankers and clients -- a growing part of the firm’s $9.6 billion technology budget -- is a core theme as the company hosts its annual investor day on Tuesday.

Behind the strategy, overseen by Chief Operating Operating Officer Matt Zames and Chief Information Officer Dana Deasy, is an undercurrent of anxiety: Though JPMorgan emerged from the financial crisis as one of few big winners, its dominance is at risk unless it aggressively pursues new technologies, according to interviews with a half-dozen bank executives.

Uber-Loving DNC Created Useless Class of Humans

easydns |  Today, the mainstream media, rather than objectively and rationally report on facts, are instead complicit in a sustained, wide-ranging campaign of demonization of “all things non-Democrat”. There is blanket categorical denial of any valid basis for why the citizenry worldwide are rejecting what they increasingly see as an “Establishment Elite” agenda.

Greece, Brexit, Trump and quite possibly soon, Marine Le Pen in France are all continuations of a theme. These events are referendums unto themselves and those “Global Elites” are on a losing streak. Instead of trying to understand the basis of these rejections (that the populace are sick and tired of having a two-tiered society in which their civil rights are eroded and they get saddled with all the debt, while the elites get to operate under a different set of rules and gobble up all the assets); they have mounted a concerted campaign of outright propaganda and mind-numbingly nonsensical narratives to dismiss away these acts of “defiance”.

As alt-market.com’s Brandon Smith commentary  observes:

“One of the most favored propaganda tactics of establishment elites and [those] they employ … is to relabel or redefine an opponent before they can solidly define themselves. In other words, elites [and their media] will seek to “brand” you (just as corporations use branding) in the minds of the masses so that they can take away your ability to define yourself as anything else.” (emphasis added)

And this is exactly what’s happening. For example, when you say “Breitbart”, your average person is so inculcated from the repetition of the words “white supremacist”, “racist”, and “ nazi” that people just assume that’s what it is. From there people think that it’s ok to #boycottshopify simply for supplying basic online ecommerce services to them (where does it stop? Btw, Breitbart derives 100% of it’s revenues from the internet, perhaps everybody in a twist about it should do us all a favour and boycott that too).

Is Breitbart really white supremacist, racist nazi hate site? Actually, no it isn’t. Most people think it is however, because they’ve been conditioned to believe it, and they’ve never actually gone there to see for themselves.

AI Will Create Useless Class of Humans

ted |  The most important question in 21st-century economics may well be: What should we do with all the superfluous people, once we have highly intelligent non-conscious algorithms that can do almost everything better than humans?

This is not an entirely new question. People have long feared that mechanization might cause mass unemployment. This never happened, because as old professions became obsolete, new professions evolved, and there was always something humans could do better than machines. Yet this is not a law of nature, and nothing guarantees it will continue to be like that in the future. The idea that humans will always have a unique ability beyond the reach of non-conscious algorithms is just wishful thinking. The current scientific answer to this pipe dream can be summarized in three simple principles:

1. Organisms are algorithms. Every animal — including Homo sapiens — is an assemblage of organic algorithms shaped by natural selection over millions of years of evolution.

2. Algorithmic calculations are not affected by the materials from which the calculator is built. Whether an abacus is made of wood, iron or plastic, two beads plus two beads equals four beads.

3. Hence, there is no reason to think that organic algorithms can do things that non-organic algorithms will never be able to replicate or surpass. As long as the calculations remain valid, what does it matter whether the algorithms are manifested in carbon or silicon?

Would You Trust A Robot to Perform Surgery?

sciencefriday  |  Forget about finding the best surgeon in town. Why not undergo your operation by a robot, which has learned from the best, without the element of human error? Researchers have now developed a robot that can perform sutures and other delicate operations completely autonomously. But would you trust it? Physician Peter Kim and his colleagues recently detailed their invention, which they call the Smart Tissue Autonomous Robot, in Science Translational Medicine. Kim says his goal is to get the robot into hospitals nationwide by keeping the price well below the cost of the surgeon-assisted robots used today. 

technologyreview |   A robot surgeon has been taught to perform a delicate procedure—stitching soft tissue together with a needle and thread—more precisely and reliably than even the best human doctor.

The Smart Tissue Autonomous Robot (STAR), developed by researchers at Children’s National Health System in Washington, D.C., uses an advanced 3-D imaging system and very precise force sensing to apply stitches with submillimeter precision. The system was designed to copy state-of-the art surgical practice, but in tests involving living pigs, it proved capable of outperforming its teachers.

Currently, most surgical robots are controlled remotely, and no automated surgical system has been used to manipulate soft tissue. So the work, described today in the journal Science Translational Medicine, shows the potential for automated surgical tools to improve patient outcomes. More than 45 million soft-tissue surgeries are performed in the U.S. each year. Examples include hernia operations and repairs of torn muscles.

Status Quo Token "Latino" Tops DNC Bowl With A Cluster of Democrat Floaters....,

freebeacon |  Labor Secretary Tom Perez, one of Hillary Clinton’s top choices for vice president, misrepresented his grandfather’s relationship to a Dominican dictator, according to a report.

Perez has lauded his grandfather, Rafael Brache, for “standing on the right side of history” against the brutal regime of Rafael Trujillo in the Dominican Republic. He said that Brache was expelled for speaking out against the regime, but a new Wall Street Journal investigation revealed that Brache exited the country after years of support for the regime.

“In his comments, Mr. Perez rarely, if ever, mentions that Mr. Brache was one of the dictator’s champions during at least the first five years of his repressive three-decade regime, a fact documented in dozens of cables, letters and memos in public archives in the U.S. and the Dominican Republic,” the article states.

“In addition, Mr. Perez testified in 2013 at his Senate confirmation hearing that his grandfather ‘was declared ‘non grata’ for speaking out against the dictator following the brutal massacre of thousands of Haitians’ in 1937. But in fact, Mr. Brache had left the Dominican Republic about two years earlier, according to State Department memos and media accounts at the time.”

Memos from the State Department reveal that Trujillo was angry at Brache for his inability to get a loan. A friend of Trujillo referred to Brache as a leech.

bloomberg |  Holder’s law firm, Covington & Burling, advises Uber on safety issues, according to the company. Margaret Richardson, Holder’s former chief of staff and a Covington employee, has sat on Uber’s safety advisory board since it was formed last fall.

A spokesman for Covington said Uber “is a client of the firm” and declined to make Holder available for an interview.

There’s also another link between Holder and the ride-hailing giant: Former Obama strategist David Plouffe is now a senior adviser to the company and a member of its board. Several former White House staff members have decamped to the company since Plouffe was hired.

Holder’s letters on background checks went out to Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed, Chicago Alderman Anthony Beale and Paul Sarlo, the deputy majority leader of the New Jersey Senate.  Fist tap Vic.

Trump – All Words, No Action, But Good Words...,

thesaker |  In the meantime, Trump has been busy doing speeches. Which sounds pretty bad until you realize that these are good speeches, very good ones even. For one thing, he still is holding very firmly to the line that the “fake news” (which in “Trumpese” means CNN & Co. + BBC) are the enemies of the people. The other good thing that twice in a row now he has addressed himself directly to the people. Sounds like nothing, but I think that this is huge because the Neocons have now nicely boxed Trump in with advisors and aides which span from mediocre, to bad to outright evil. The firing of Flynn was a self-defeating disaster for Trump who now is more or less alone, with only one loyal ally left, Bannon. I am not sure how much Bannon can do or, for that matter, how long until the Neocons get to him too, but besides Bannon I see nobody loyal to Trump and his campaign promises. Nobody except those who put him in power of course, the millions of Americans who voted for him. And that is why Trump is doing the right thing speaking directly to them: they might well turn out to be his biggest weapon against the “DC swamp”.

Furthermore, by beating on the media, especially CNN and the rest of the main US TV channels, Trump is pushing the US public to turn to other information sources, including those sympathetic to him, primarily on the Internet. Good move – that is how he won the first time around and that is how he might win again.

The Neocons and the US ‘deep state’ have to carefully weigh the risks of continuing their vendetta against Trump. Right now, they appear to be preparing to go after Bannon. But what will they do if Trump, instead of ditching Bannon like he ditched Flynn, decides to dig in and fight with everything he has got? Then what? If there is one thing the Neocons and the deep state hate is to have a powerful light pointed directly at them. They like to play in the dark, away from an always potentially hostile public eye. If Trump decides to fight back, really fight back, and if he appeals directly to the people for support, there is no saying what could happen next.

I strongly believe that the American general public is deeply frustrated and angry. Obama’s betrayal of all his campaign promises only made these feelings worse. But when Obama had just made it to the White House I remember thinking that if he really tried to take on the War Machine and if he came to the conclusion that the ‘deep state’ was not going to let him take action or threaten him he could simply make a public appeal for help and that millions of Americans would flood the streets of Washington DC in support of “their guy” against the “bastards in DC”. Obama was a fake. But Trump might not be. What if the Three Letter Agencies or Congress suddenly tried to, say, impeach Trump and what if he decided ask for the support of the people – would millions not flood the streets of DC? I bet you that Florida alone would send more than a million. Ditto for Texas. And I don’t exactly imagine the cops going out of their way to stop them. The bottom line is this: in any confrontation between Congress and Trump most of the people will back Trump. And, if it ever came to that, and for whatever it is worth, in any confrontation between Trump-haters and Trump-supporters the latter will easily defeat the former. The “basket of deplorables” are still, thank God, the majority in this country and they have a lot more power than the various minorities who backed the Clinton gang.

There are other, less dramatic but even more likely scenarios to consider. Say Congress tries to impeach Trump and he appeals to the people and declares that the “DC swamp” is trying to sabotage the outcome of the elections and impose its will upon the American people. Governors in states like Florida or Texas, pushed by their public opinion, might simply decide not to recognize the legitimacy of what would be an attempted coup by Congress against the Executive branch of government. Now you tell me – does Congress really have the means to impose it’s will against states like Florida or Texas? I don’t mean legally, I mean practically. Let me put it this way: if the states revolt against the federal government does the latter have the means to impose its authority? Are the creation of USNORTHCOM and the statutory exceptions from the Posse Comitatus Act (which makes it possible to use the National Guard to suppress insurrections, unlawful obstructions, assemblages, or rebellions) sufficient to guarantee that the “DC swamp” can impose its will on the rest of the country? I would remind any “DC swamp” members reading these lines that the KGB special forces refused not once, but twice, to open fire against the demonstrators in Moscow (in 1991 and 1993) even though they had received a direct order by the President to do just that. Is there any reason to believe that US cops and soldiers would be more willing than the KGB special forces to massacre their own people?

Donald Trump has probably lost most of his power in Washington DC, but that does not entail that this is the case in the rest of the USA. The Neocons can feel like the big guy on the block inside the Beltway, but beyond that they are mostly in “enemy territory” controlled by the “deplorables”, something to keep in mind before triggering a major crisis.

This week I got the feeling that Trump was reaching out and directly seeking for the support to the American people. I think he get it if needed. If this is so, then the focus of his Presidency will be less on foreign affairs, were the USA will be mostly paralyzed, than on internal US politics were he still might make a difference. On Russia the Neocons have basically beat Trump – he won’t have the means to engage in any big negotiating with Vladimir Putin. But, at least, neither will he constantly be trying to make things worse. The more the US elites fight each other, the less venom they will have left for the rest of mankind. Thank God for small favors…

I can only hope that Trump will continue to appeal directly the people and try to bypass the immense machine which is currently trying to isolate him. Of course, I would much prefer that Trump take some strong and meaningful action against the deep state, but I am not holding my breath.

Tonight I spoke with a friend who knows a great deal more about Trump than I do and he told me that I have been too quick in judging Trump and that while the Flynn episode was definitely a setback, the struggle is far from over and that we are in for a very long war. I hope that my friend is right, but I will only breathe a sigh of relief if and when I see Trump hitting back and hitting hard. Only time will tell.

Leslie Wimes Burned the DNC Down On Morning Edition Today

Her article nicely states what she said to a dumbfounded interviewer on air, this morning. Establishment democrats appear to genuinely despise Ms. Wimes truth bombs and her willingness to detonating them.

sunshinestatenews |  Make no mistake about it, Keith Ellison is not the chair of the Democratic National Committee because of a combination of things.

First is the racist bigotry of a group of people who couldn't stand the thought that a Black Muslim would be leading the Democratic Party.

The Alan Dershowitzes of the Democratic Party, you know, the ones who threaten to leave, should let the doorknob hit them where the good Lord split them.

Get out. Go. Leave.

They are just as racist and bigoted as they claim Donald Trump is, yet establishment Democrats will condone their despicable behavior, and the despicable behavior of those who waged that smear campaign against Keith Ellison, all for money.

Speaking of money.

That's what drove the Clinton/Obama wing to insert into the race Tom Perez, who is nothing more than Debbie Wasserman Schultz with XY chromosomes.

Nothing will change with the DNC.

Ellison had the momentum, and the guys giving the Democrats the big bucks who also suffer from Islamophobia, had to, again, stop that at all costs.

So, like they did in Florida with Dwight Bullard and Stephen Bittel, they had to find a viable candidate to run against Ellison.

They used President Obama this time, since Podesta-stamped candidate Jaime Harrison turned out to be a big fat dud.

Let's be clear, folks.

President Obama didn't care about the DNC.

He did not give a rat's crack about the DNC.

He didn't use them in his first election, nor did he use them in his second.

He let the DNC wither on the vine. Furthermore, he left a clearly toxic Debbie Wasserman Schultz in place, after she showed she not only was losing seats across the country, but she ran a losing strategy that kept candidates away from HIM.

So this newfound love of President Obama's for the DNC isn't passing the smell test with me.

He was helping someone out all right, but it wasn't the DNC.

When 2018 rolls around and Democrats get crushed, the establishment will blame everyone and everything except its own blind greed.

Establishment Democrats have clearly gotten comfortable with losing, as long as they maintain their position and power within the rotting party.

And make no mistake, it is rotting from the head, just like a fish!

Real War on Drugs = War on the Deep State

The situation is this: PhDs in the Philippines flip hamburgers, and they are very lucky to get even that job.  Ten elite families basically control 90% of the country's wealth, and the entire economy is based on sending workers(probably 20% of the population), to foreign countries, to wire money back home. (like Mexico?)

How long before economic conditions in the U.S. mirror this state of affairs?

Instead of fueling our own street violence and funding the drug cartels in Mexico and the Opium farmers in Afghanistan and the Golden Triangle (Intelligence Community Drug Dealing). Executing high-level drug dealers, manufacturers and traffickers is the only way to wage a "war on drugs". No nation has ever successfully fought drug manufacturing and importation without a death sentence for the perpetrators. (This would literally entail specifically targeted extrajudicial war against the Intelligence and Banking Communities)

Drug pushing and manufacture, like any other business, is a network. A loosely hierarchical network. If you are going to carry out what essentially amount to extra-judicial killings, then there needs to be targeted executions.

This is the major problem in developing countries, and in a place like the Philippines.

The system is so utterly disorganized, that there is a large amount of [ultimately unacceptable] collateral damage.

The number of executions in this case is extremely high, and is focused primarily on the deterrent effect of slaughtering lowest level peasant drug-addicts and pushers. If such a policy is carried out over an extended period of time, and the underlying (Manufacture/Import/Money Laundering) supply chains remain intact, then public malaise can set in - without ever damaging the root cause network underlying the problem.

This is dangerous, as the policy can in the future be rolled back, with re-distribution beginning rather quickly [the growth in demand will more than pay back for any lost earnings for the real drug-supplier networks].

So the policy must be short, sharp, and to-the-point. Head shots, and head shots only - taking out the thought and profit leadership of the supply networks.

This requires a lot of research and planning.

This latter aspect is totally missing from the Philippines scenario.

Hence the exorbitant body count.

Better to cut off the specific, high-level nodes on the supply and profit-chains of the network, than to blindly shoot at anything in sight, totally missing the key networks and causing a LOT of collateral damage.

Anything else is merely window dressing for low information political followers.

The low-level drug-war in the U.S. is a perfect long-term example of the exact failure to wage real war against the top-level nodes on the drug supply and profit chain.

I used to say to our audiences: "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!"

I, Candidate for Governor: And How I Got Licked (1935), ISBN 0-520-08198-6; repr. University of California Press, 1994, p. 109. 

Low-information "Just say no" Drug Warriors refuse to process these facts.

The American Drug War has been the most intractable, anti-science exercise in all-pervading State Oppression in American history. At best, an entirely inappropriate over-reaction targeting the low-hanging fruit users and dealers; at worst, a fear-driven witch-hunt driven by superstition, corruption, and cynically partisan fascist political advantage.

Fascism is capitalism plus murder.

Presidential Agent II (1944), ISBN 1-93131-318-0 

I can't help but wonder if it wouldn't be more effective and responsive for the Philippine universal health care system (yes, they have one) to simply provide the methamphetamine users with prescriptions for Dexedrine or Desoxyn, to pull them out of the street life of chasing shabu on the black market and replace it with a stable daily regimen under medical supervision.

It's entirely possible that most of the shabu users have undiagnosed ADD; it's a rarely discussed fact that the vast majority of "normal people" don't like the effects of psychostimulants, particularly when taken over a protracted period of time (except for Nazis)

Although the way it plays out in the USA, once someone has a meth conviction or rehab on their record, their physicians are strongly discouraged from prescribing amphetamines to them- because that would mean they're "using" again. So while they might have been effectively self-medicating undiagnosed ADD with an illegal stimulant (albeit without medical supervision, in a criminal environment, and very often overusing the substance while concommitantly abusing alcohol)- once they get pulled into the criminal justice system or mandated rehab, thereafter, as a rule, they're practically forbidden from ever receiving a similar substance from a physician as an ADD treatment.

100 Strange Russian Deaths - Deep State Hitting Licks

anthraxvaccine |  Vitaly Churkin, Russia's UN ambassador since 2006,  died unexpectedly at age 64 in the consulate, two days ago.  And while it was said initially that Churkin died of a heart attack, that is not the case, according to his autopsy.

He is the fifth Russian diplomat to die unexpectedly in 3 months.  Turkish ambassador Karlov was shot at an art exhibition in December, Soviet Foreign Ministry officer Polshikov was shot in his Moscow apartment in December, Indian ambassador Kadakin died "from illness" in January, and Greek consul Malanin's death in January is unexplained. 

Putin's chauffeur is the sixth politically important Russian to die recently and suspiciously. 

Don't forget that on Christmas day, a Russian military jet went down over the Black Sea, killing 60 members of the Red Army choir and 33 others.

Sergei Krivov, said to be a security officer, died in the Russian consulate in NY on election day 2016 from an undisclosed cause, possibly head trauma.

The video of Putin's chauffeur crashing and dying (passenger less) looked like no ordinary wreck.

And here is another odd coincidence:  none of the western mainstream media have reported this spate of Russian diplomat deaths, at least not with my Google search.

Hapless Peasant Guilty of Getting Setup and Running His Mouth Reckless

theintercept |  THE DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE announced the first FBI terror arrest of the Trump administration on Tuesday: an elaborate sting operation that snared a 25-year-old Missouri man who had no terrorism contacts besides the two undercover FBI agents who paid him to buy hardware supplies they said was for a bomb — and who at one point pulled a knife on him and threatened his family.

Robert Lorenzo Hester of Columbia, Missouri, didn’t have the $20 he needed to buy the 9-volt batteries, duct tape, and roofing nails his new FBI friends wanted him to get, so they gave him the money. The agents noted in a criminal complaint that Hester, who at one point brought his two small children to a meeting because he didn’t have child care, continued smoking marijuana despite professing to be a devout Muslim.

One of the social media posts that initially caught the FBI’s attention referred to a group called “The Lion Guard.” Hester told one of the undercover agents the name came from “a cartoon my children watch.”

But according to the DOJ press release, Hester had plans to conduct an “ISIS-sponsored terrorist attack” on President’s Day that would have resulted in mass casualties had it succeeded.

News reports breathlessly echoed the government’s depiction of Hester as a foiled would-be terrorist. But the only contact Hester had with ISIS was with the two undercover agents who suggested to him that they had connections with the group. The agents, who were in contact with him for five months, provided him with money and rides home from work as he dealt with the personal fallout of an unrelated arrest stemming from an altercation at a local grocery store.

Hester, who had briefly enlisted in the U.S. Army before being discharged in 2013, had posted images of weapons and a flag sometimes associated with terrorist groups on a social media platform. He had also written “Burn in hell FBI” and “Brothers in AmurdiKKKa we need to get something going here all those rednecks have their little militias why shouldn’t we do the same.” In another post, he asserted that ISIS was created as part of a conspiracy by the United States and Israel.

Deconstruction of the Administrative State Will Require Unending Daily Battle

WaPo |  Stephen K. Bannon, President Trump’s reclusive chief strategist and the intellectual force behind his nationalist agenda, said Thursday that the new administration is locked in an unending battle against the media and other globalist forces to “deconstruct” an outdated system of governance.

In his first public speaking appearance since Trump took office, Bannon made his comments alongside White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus at a gathering of conservative activists. They sought to prove that they are not rivals but partners in fighting on Trump’s behalf to transform Washington and the world order.

“They’re going to continue to fight,” Bannon said of the media, which he repeatedly described as “the opposition party,” and other forces he sees as standing in the president’s way. “If you think they are giving you your country back without a fight, you are sadly mistaken.”

Atop Trump’s agenda, Bannon said, was the “deconstruction of the administrative state” — meaning a system of taxes, regulations and trade pacts that the president and his advisers believe stymie economic growth and infringe upon one’s sovereignty.

“If you look at these Cabinet nominees, they were selected for a reason, and that is deconstruction,” Bannon said. He posited that Trump’s announcement withdrawing from the Trans-Pacific Partnership was “one of the most pivotal moments in modern American history.”

When Argentina Elected a Populist President - Some Companies Left the Country

NPR |  A charismatic populist president in Argentina wanted to boost manufacturing and create jobs. So she told companies that if they wanted to sell their products in Argentina, they had to build them there, too.

AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:

Ten years ago, Argentina was in a situation that may sound a bit familiar. The country had just elected a populist president, Cristina Kirchner, with big plans for their economy. Kirchner wanted to control imports and exports and bring manufacturing to Argentina, so she placed huge tariffs on items made overseas. For some products, she said, if you want to sell this in Argentina, you'll have to make it in Argentina. One of those items was the cell phone. Stacey Vanek Smith from our Planet Money podcast has the story.

STACEY VANEK SMITH, BYLINE: Cristina Kirchner's made-in-Argentina rule drove some companies away. Apple stopped selling iPhones in Argentina, but other companies played ball, including the company that made Blackberry phones.

HUGO BONOFACCINI: In Argentina, everybody was crazy for BlackBerry.

Good Only for Rotting Fish - CIA's Newspaper Wrapping Itself in Patriotism and Service...,

spokesman |  Thomas Gibbons-Neff, a fourth-generation military man, deployed twice to Afghanistan. The second time, as a 22-year-old Marine corporal in 2010, he led an eight-man infantry team into combat. Two of his men were wounded by enemy sniper fire, and one of his best buddies later died in combat.

Now President Trump says Thomas is an enemy of the American people.

Thomas, a Pentagon correspondent for the Washington Post, was so labeled, along with everybody else in the media, by the commander in chief on Friday. “The FAKE NEWS media,” Trump tweeted, “is not my enemy, it is the enemy of the American People!”

I asked my colleague, who went to Georgetown University on the G.I. Bill before joining the Post two years ago, how it felt to be called an enemy of the country he volunteered to serve in combat.

“It’s alarming, like a bunch of other things these days,” Thomas said. “It also feels like bait.”

And Thomas isn’t taking the bait. Like the rest of us, he’s keeping his head down and doing his job.

Trump’s Stalinist labeling of the media is his latest attempt to delegitimize the structures of civil society, following similar attacks on the courts and the intelligence community. We in the press are an easy mark because we’re already held in low esteem. In this case, the charge, using the universal language of autocrats, probably shouldn’t be dignified with a refutation: To be forced to make the case that a free press isn’t the enemy of a free people is to fight on Trump’s terms.

Enemy or Friend of the Deep State - It's ALWAYS About the MONEY!!!

theatlantic |  Ben Rhodes, one of Barack Obama’s top advisers, once dismissed the American foreign-policy establishment—those ex-government officials and think-tank scholars and journalists in Washington, D.C. who advocate for a particular vision of assertive U.S. leadership in the world—as the “Blob.” Donald Trump had harsher words. As a presidential candidate, he vowed never to take advice on international affairs from “those who have perfect resumes but very little to brag about except responsibility for a long history of failed policies and continued losses at war.” Both men pointed to one of the Beltway establishment’s more glaring errors: support for the war in Iraq.

Now the Blob is fighting back. The “establishment” has been unfairly “kicked around,” said Robert Kagan, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and former official in the Reagan administration. As World War II gave way to the Cold War, President Harry Truman and his secretary of state, Dean Acheson, “invented a foreign policy and sold it successfully to the American people. That’s what containment was and that’s what the Truman Doctrine was. … That was the foreign-policy establishment.” During that period, the U.S. government also helped create a system for restoring order to a world riven by war and economic crisis. That system, which evolved over the course of the Cold War and post-Cold War period, includes an open international economy; U.S. military and diplomatic alliances in Asia, Europe, and the Middle East; and liberal rules and institutions (human rights, the United Nations, and so on).

WaPo |   Security Minister Ben Wallace said in support of the bill: “We need to make the UK a hostile environment for those seeking to move, hide and use the proceeds of crime and corruption. In an increasingly competitive international marketplace, the UK simply cannot afford to be seen as a haven for dirty money.” He added, “They all have expensive properties in London and think they are untouchable.”

Not only cutting off but also exposing the flow of money outside Russia, the result of widespread graft, should be part and parcel of our countermeasures to check Russian assault (physical and otherwise) on democracies.

Beyond that, Congress should consider a financial-crimes bill that would provide tools to seize assets of Russian and other foreign plutocrats who abscond with millions upon millions of dollars, thereby contributing to the misery of the Russian people. Vladimir Putin’s friendly oligarchs do not support Putin for ideological reasons. It’s about the money — and the more effective the West can be in depriving them of the fruits of their ill-gotten gains, the better.