move along, move along, nothing to see over here....,

Gawker | The internet has been freaking out all weekend over an ominously-titled surveillance program called "TrapWire," after it showed up in some leaked Wikileaks emails. If you've listened to the hype, you might think TrapWire was an evil omniscient spy robot that runs off the fumes of our burning Constitution. But What is TrapWire, really? Here is your guide:

So what is TrapWire, some sort of government spying program?
TrapWire is a surveillance system sold by a Virginia-based firm of the same name, which is meant to thwart terrorist attacks before they happen. TrapWire works by collecting data from thousands of security cameras and reports of suspicious activity from security teams at potential terrorist targets (known as "high value targets") and analyzing them for patterns that indicate planning of a terrorist attack. (Or other criminal activity.) It's used by some government agencies to safeguard their buildings, but it's not a government project.

So TrapWire is basically a data-mining company?
Yeah. Like any data-mining operation, they're trying to automate the search for meaningful patterns in huge databases that would be missed by someone just combing through it manually. But instead of the data being the purchases of Target customers, it's suspicious people or vehicles spotted near potential terrorist targets. TrapWire also assembles a big database of suspicious reports from all its clients, which can then be used to cross-reference threats among different facilities.

But TrapWire is super-secret, right? That's why everyone's freaking out?
TrapWire isn't secret at all. A 2006 patent application lays the whole thing out in detail. (It also offers the single best explanation of what TrapWire does.) And TrapWire's website offers a helpful description of how TrapWire ideally works:

Through the systematic capture of... pre-attack indicators, terrorist or criminal surveillance and pre-attack planning operations can be identified — and appropriate law enforcement counter measures employed ahead of the attack.

TrapWire has many government and private clients, including government buildings, military installations, casinos, and hotels. The VP of security firm Stratfor claimed that "TrapWire is in place at every [high value target] in NYC, DC, Vegas, London, Ottawa and LA," in an email leaked by Wikileaks.

If TrapWire has existed publicly since 2006, why is everyone talking about it all of a sudden?
TrapWire turned up in a bunch of emails leaked recently by Wikileaks. If you remember, Wikileaks has been slowly publishing a cache of five million emails that Anonymous hackers stole from the private security firm Stratfor. Last week, they released some that revealed Stratfor had a partnership with TrapWire, where they both agreed to promote each other's products to clients and in turn shared commissions if anything came out of the deal. The emails also included some discussion of TrapWire's capabilities.

Since geeks take everything contained in a Wikileaks release as a "revelation"—even if it's already well-known—the emails have been breathlessly pumped up as the revelation of some super-secret "mass surveillance program" that "monitors your every move."

anonymous message to the uk (free assange)

Fist tap Dale.

700 terabytes of data stored in one gram of dna

Information Storage in DNA from Wyss Institute on Vimeo.

harvard | Using next-generation sequencing technology and a novel strategy to encode 1,000 times the largest data size previously achieved in DNA, a Harvard geneticist encodes his book in life’s language.

Although George Church’s next book doesn’t hit the shelves until Oct. 2, it has already passed an enviable benchmark: 70 billion copies—roughly triple the sum of the top 100 books of all time. And they fit on your thumbnail.

That’s because Church, the Robert Winthrop Professor of Genetics at Harvard Medical School and a founding core faculty member of the Wyss Institute for Biomedical Engineering at Harvard University, and his team encoded the book, Regenesis: How Synthetic Biology Will Reinvent Nature and Ourselves, in DNA, which they then read and copied.

Biology’s databank, DNA has long tantalized researchers with its potential as a storage medium: fantastically dense, stable, energy efficient and proven to work over a timespan of some 3.5 billion years. While not the first project to demonstrate the potential of DNA storage, Church’s team married next-generation sequencing technology with a novel strategy to encode 1,000 times the largest amount of data previously stored in DNA.

The team reports its results in the Aug. 17 issue of the journal Science.

The researchers used binary code to preserve the text, images and formatting of the book. While the scale is roughly what a 5 ¼-inch floppy disk once held, the density of the bits is nearly off the charts: 5.5 petabits, or 1 million gigabits, per cubic millimeter. “The information density and scale compare favorably with other experimental storage methods from biology and physics,” said Sri Kosuri, a senior scientist at the Wyss Institute and senior author on the paper. The team also included Yuan Gao, a former Wyss postdoc who is now an associate professor of biomedical engineering at Johns Hopkins University.

And where some experimental media—like quantum holography—require incredibly cold temperatures and tremendous energy, DNA is stable at room temperature. “You can drop it wherever you want, in the desert or your backyard, and it will be there 400,000 years later,” Church said.

Reading and writing in DNA is slower than in other media, however, which makes it better suited for archival storage of massive amounts of data, rather than for quick retrieval or data processing. “Imagine that you had really cheap video recorders everywhere,” Church said. “Just paint walls with video recorders. And for the most part they just record and no one ever goes to them. But if something really good or really bad happens you want to go and scrape the wall and see what you got. So something that’s molecular is so much more energy efficient and compact that you can consider applications that were impossible before.”

About four grams of DNA theoretically could store the digital data humankind creates in one year.

what IS the human genome?

TheScientist | The Human Genome project sequenced “the human genome” and is widely credited with setting in motion the most exciting era of fundamental new scientific discovery since Galileo. That’s remarkable, because in important ways “the human genome” that we have labeled as such doesn’t actually exist.

Plato essentially asserted that things like chairs and dogs, which we observe in this physical world, and even concepts like virtues, are but imperfect representations or instances of some ideal that exists, but not in the material world. Such a Platonic ideal is “the human genome,” a sequence of about 3 billion nucleotides arrayed across a linear scale of position from the start of chromosome 1 to the end of the sex chromosomes. Whether it was obtained from one person or several has so far been shrouded in secrecy for bioethical reasons, but it makes no real difference. What we call the human genome sequence is really just a reference: it cannot account for all the variability that exists in the species, just like no single dog on earth, real or imagined, can fully incorporate all the variability in the characteristics of dogs.

Nor is the human genome we have a “’normal” genome. What would it mean to be “normal” for the nucleotide at position 1,234,547 on chromosome 11? All we know is that the donor(s) had no identified disease when bled for the cause, but sooner or later some disease will arise. Essentially all available whole genome sequences show potentially disease-producing variants, even including nonfunctional genes, in donors who were unaffected at the time.

but then I told you this a looooong time ago, right?

TheScientist | A usually benign strain of the gut microbe E. coli produces toxins in mice with inflammatory bowel disease, which can lead to DNA-damage and cancer in the host tissue. The results were reported last week in Science (August 16).

“They’re not exactly your flagship disease-causing bacteria,” lead researcher Christian Jobin, from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, told Nature.

Individuals with inflammatory bowel disease are at higher risk of developing colorectal cancer than the general population. But researchers thought that the main culprit was the over-active immune cells, which released DNA-damaging molecules. The new work suggests that gut microbes may also contribute to the process, as inflammation appears to change the microbial composition of the gut to favor toxin-producing E. coli strains.

Experts think that the research could lead to methods of reducing the risk of cancer by altering the microbial community, though that strategy has to be tested.

deft rendering of recent living memory history...,

I, pet goat II from Heliofant on Vimeo.

A story about the fire at the heart of suffering.
Bringing together dancers, musicians, visual artists and 3d animators, the film takes a critical look at the events of the past decade that have shaped our world.
Main softwares used: Maya, Vray, FumeFX, RealFlow
Download the wallpapers on our site.
www.heliofant.com

Original soundtrack "the Stream", written and performed by Tanuki Project.
www.thetanukiproject.com

Some of the stellar artists that worked on the short: strob.net, huguescoupal.com, sebastienlarroude.com, arnaudbrisebois.carbonmade.com, daverand.com, beatstreetclassic.com

Animation is about half keyframe animation and half motion capture.
Motion capture recording by Lartech. Fist tap Nomad.

speaking of the need for effective formations...,

Guardian | A software engineer in my Facebook community wrote recently about his outrage that when he visited Disneyland, and went on a ride, the theme park offered him the photo of himself and his girlfriend to buy – with his credit card information already linked to it. He noted that he had never entered his name or information into anything at the theme park, or indicated that he wanted a photo, or alerted the humans at the ride to who he and his girlfriend were – so, he said, based on his professional experience, the system had to be using facial recognition technology. He had never signed an agreement allowing them to do so, and he declared that this use was illegal. He also claimed that Disney had recently shared data from facial-recognition technology with the United States military.

Yes, I know: it sounds like a paranoid rant.

Except that it turned out to be true. News21, supported by the Carnegie and Knight foundations, reports that Disney sites are indeed controlled by face-recognition technology, that the military is interested in the technology, and that the face-recognition contractor, Identix, has contracts with the US government – for technology that identifies individuals in a crowd.

Fast forward: after the Occupy crackdowns, I noted that odd-looking CCTVs had started to appear, attached to lampposts, in public venues in Manhattan where the small but unbowed remnants of Occupy congregated: there was one in Union Square, right in front of their encampment. I reported here on my experience of witnessing a white van marked "Indiana Energy" that was lifting workers up to the lampposts all around Union Square, and installing a type of camera. When I asked the workers what was happening – and why an Indiana company was dealing with New York City civic infrastructure, which would certainly raise questions – I was told: "I'm a contractor. Talk to ConEd."

I then noticed, some months later, that these bizarre camera/lights had been installed not only all around Union Square but also around Washington Square Park. I posted a photo I took of them, and asked: "What is this?" Commentators who had lived in China said that they were the same camera/streetlight combinations that are mounted around public places in China. These are enabled for facial recognition technology, which allows police to watch video that is tagged to individuals, in real time. When too many people congregate, they can be dispersed and intimidated simply by the risk of being identified – before dissent can coalesce. (Another of my Facebook commentators said that such lamppost cameras had been installed in Michigan, and that they barked "Obey", at pedestrians. This, too, sounded highly implausible – until this week in Richmond, British Columbia, near the Vancouver airport, when I was startled as the lamppost in the intersection started talking to me – in this case, instructing me on how to cross (as though I were blind or partially sighted).

Finally, last week, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg joined NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly to unveil a major new police surveillance infrastructure, developed by Microsoft. The Domain Awareness System links existing police databases with live video feeds, including cameras using vehicle license plate recognition software. No mention was made of whether the system plans to use – or already uses – facial recognition software. But, at present, there is no law to prevent US government and law enforcement agencies from building facial recognition databases.

And we know from industry newsletters that the US military, law enforcement, and the department of homeland security are betting heavily on facial recognition technology. As PC World notes, Facebook itself is a market leader in the technology – but military and security agencies are close behind.

h.p. lovecraft got nothing on darpa: swarms, and worms, and jellies oh my!!!

capitalcolumn | The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has released information about a new, chameleon-like soft robot that has a range of capabilities and can be produced at a very low cost. DARPA hopes the new “hiding in plain sight” robot will be used by various defense agencies for many types of missions.

Researchers led by Drs. George Whitesides and Stephen Morin at Harvard University’s Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology and the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering successfully created the robot under DARPA’s Maximum Mobility and Manipulation (M3) program. The robot can walk on its own, glow, carry certain liquids, and change color, apparent shape and temperature.

DARPA’s press release further explained the new soft robot’s capabilities: “What DARPA has achieved with silicone-based soft robots is development of a very low cost manufacturing method that uses silicone molds. By introducing narrow channels into the molds through which air and various types of fluids can be pumped, a robot can be made to change its color, contrast, apparent shape and temperature to blend with its environment, glow through chemiluminescence, and most importantly, achieve actuation, or movement, through pneumatic pressurization and inflation of the channels. The combination of low cost and increased capabilities means DARPA has removed one of the major obstacles to greater DoD adoption of robot technology.”

DARPA’s report on the chameleon-lik robot comes about one week after another DARPA-financed robot project was announced, the creation of a soft, autonomous robot called a “Meshworm” that resembles an Earthworm.

Gill Pratt, the DARPA program manager for M3, put the achievement in context. “DARPA is developing a suite of robots that draw inspiration from the ingenuity and efficiency of nature. For defense applications, ingenuity and efficiency are not enough—robotic systems must also be cost effective,” he said. “This novel robot is a significant advance towards achieving all three goals.”

assange will take britain to the "world court"

Telegraph | The 1961 Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations says a host country may not enter the premises of an embassy without the represented country's permission.

Sir Tony Brenton, who served as the United Kingdom's ambassador to Russia between 2004 and 2008, said "arbitrarily" overturning the status of the building where Mr Assange has taken shelter to avoid extradition, would make life "impossible" for British diplomats overseas.

But embassies are not fully exempt from the jurisdiction of the countries they're in and are not sovereign territory of the represented state.

The FCO wrote to the embassy saying "You need to be aware that there is a legal base in the UK, the Diplomatic and Consular Premises Act 1987, that would allow us to take actions in order to arrest Mr Assange in the current premises of the Embassy.

"We sincerely hope that we do not reach that point, but if you are not capable of resolving this matter of Mr Assange's presence in your premises, this is an open option for us."

Baltasar Garzon, Mr Assange's lawyer who came to international attention in 1998 when he indicted Chilean ex-dictator Augusto Pinochet, said Britain was acting far beyond its authority because Mr Assange was a political refugee accepted for asylum by a sovereign nation and Britain was obligated to honour that.

"They have to comply with diplomatic and legal obligations under the 1951 UN Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees, and respect the sovereignty of a country that has granted asylum," he told the Spanish newspaper El Pais.

The refugee convention defines who is a refugee, and sets out the rights of individuals granted asylum and the responsibilities of nations that grant asylum.

It provides for special travel arrangements for refugees granted asylum under the convention.

He said: "If Britain doesn't comply with its obligations, we will go before International Court of Justice to demand that Britain complies with its obligations because there is a person who runs the risk of being persecuted politically."

not a single iota of testicular fortitude between the two-of-em...,

RollingStone | I’ve been on deadline in the past week or so, so I haven't had a chance to weigh in on Eric Holder’s predictable decision to not pursue criminal charges against Goldman, Sachs for any of the activities in the report prepared by Senators Carl Levin and Tom Coburn two years ago.

Last year I spent a lot of time and energy jabbering and gesticulating in public about what seemed to me the most obviously prosecutable offenses detailed in the report – the seemingly blatant perjury before congress of Lloyd Blankfein and other Goldman executives, and the almost comically long list of frauds committed by the company in its desperate effort to unload its crappy “cats and dogs” mortgage-backed inventory.

In the notorious Hudson transaction, for instance, Goldman claimed, in writing, that it was fully "aligned" with the interests of its client, Morgan Stanley, because it owned a $6 million slice of the deal. What Goldman left out is that it had a $2 billion short position against the same deal.

If that isn’t fraud, Mr. Holder, just what exactly is fraud?

Still, it wasn’t surprising that Holder didn’t pursue criminal charges against Goldman. And that’s not just because Holder has repeatedly proven himself to be a spineless bureaucrat and obsequious political creature masquerading as a cop, and not just because rumors continue to circulate that the Obama administration – supposedly in the interests of staving off market panic – made a conscious decision sometime in early 2009 to give all of Wall Street a pass on pre-crisis offenses.

No, the real reason this wasn’t surprising is that Holder’s decision followed a general pattern that has been coming into focus for years in American law enforcement. Our prosecutors and regulators have basically admitted now that they only go after the most obvious and easily prosecutable cases.

If the offense committed doesn’t fit the exact description in the relevant section of the criminal code, they pass. The only white-collar cases they will bring are absolute slam-dunk situations where some arrogant rogue commits a blatant crime for individual profit in a manner thoroughly familiar to even the non-expert portion of the jury pool/citizenry.

miners-2, cops-34 in south african 99% vs. 1% throwdown...,

Reuters | In a loping, crouching run, striking South African miners advance towards a line of police in helmets and flak-jackets who are pointing automatic rifles at them. The police open fire.

In less than a minute, the men, some of whom police say conducted witchcraft rituals they believed would protect them from bullets, crumple and fall in a hail of gunfire that kicks up clouds of yellow dust.

Television footage starkly captures the moment of the police shootings at a dusty platinum mine northwest of Johannesburg on Thursday that killed at least 34 protesting workers and tore a gash in the soul of post-apartheid South Africa.

The sight of protesters falling dead before guns fired by government security forces strikes a jarringly painful chord in a nation ruled by Africa's oldest liberation movement, the African National Congress.

Its proud anti-apartheid image has long been nurtured by memories of fallen martyrs and massacres committed by police and troops under white-minority rule that ended 18 years ago.

Except this time the shooting, the deadliest security operation since apartheid was abolished, was carried out by a police force under the responsibility of an ANC government.

Seeking to answer why an industrial dispute ended in what many are calling a "bloodbath", ministers and senior police went out of their way to say officers were forced to fire to protect themselves from charging armed strikers.

"We did what we could with what we had," Police Commissioner Riah Phiyega told a news conference on Friday, flanked by senior officers who were peppered with questions by journalists about how and why the police used their firearms as they did.

Phiyega, a former banker only months in the job and seen by many in the force as a political appointee, said the police were responding to a week of violence in which two Marikana security guards, a supervisor and two police officers were hacked to death by workers armed with spears, machetes and clubs.

kip's trips....,

federalnewsradio | The former commander of U.S. Africa Command engaged in "multiple forms of misconduct" related to his use of government aircraft, misused and wasted government funds on parties and gifts and abused his authority during his four-year tenure as the command's first leader, a Defense Department Inspector General's report alleges.

The report, provided to Federal News Radio in response to a Freedom of Information Act request, sheds new light on allegations against Gen. William "Kip" Ward that were first reported by the Associated Press earlier this week.

Although the Army held a retirement ceremony for Ward last year, he has been temporarily serving as a two-star general in a Pentagon staff job while the Army decides whether to pursue disciplinary action against him.

The IG recommends Army Secretary John McHugh consider "appropriate action" against Ward, and that Defense Secretary Leon Panetta take steps to train combatant commands on the appropriate use of military aircraft and other ethics matters.

On the matter of travel, the inspector general found several instances in which Ward travelled at government expense for personal matters and conducted little government business at his destination. Seven times he extended his stay on what were claimed as official trips without spending much time on official business.

In one case, the IG found the main purpose of a government-funded, three-day, two-night trip to New York City in July 2010 was to socialize and see a Broadway show. Investigators also determined he accepted free tickets to that performance from a defense contractor, a "prohibited source" under federal laws.

In another example, Ward hastily arranged a meeting with the commander of Army Forces Command in Atlanta after being told he could not use military aircraft for unofficial travel to attend an awards ceremony. The 90-minute meeting was intended to turn the previously-planned trip into "official" travel, the report suggests.

The Atlanta visit was part of an 11-day, $129,000 U.S. trip that also included travel to the D.C. area for Ward, his wife Joyce and 13 aides. Ward conducted official business on only three of those 11 days, but Ward never took any leave and billed the government for reimbursement for each day of the trip.

In other cases, he wasted travel funds including during a stopover in Bermuda where he stayed in a $740 a night hotel suite — twice the allowable rate, the report found.

While Ward's wife frequently travelled with him, the couple never reimbursed the government for the cost of airfare, a requirement under DoD regulations unless both of them were travelling in an official capacity for an "unquestionably official" function.

In many cases, they were not, the report found. Investigators determined Ward's practice was to "identify reasons to allow Mrs. Ward to accompany him…and Mrs. Ward directed the [redacted] to 'make programs' to enable this practice."

One unidentified witness told investigators that planning such trips was "an ethics nightmare…[we had to] swim the waters and know the code. Nothing's kept me awake in the past 20 years except this."

Nonetheless, on at least 15 flights, Mrs. Ward was travelling in an "unofficial" capacity. The general also misused military aircraft to provide free transportation to other generals and members of the media without proper authorization, the report found.

The IG also found Ward abused his authority by having military staff perform personal errands for him and his wife Joyce using government vehicles.

Of one AFRICOM staffer, a witness said "everyone knew he was Joyce's driver," who transported her to spas, department stores and fundraisers. Military personnel also were used for such things as dropping off personal real estate documents, shopping, delivering flowers and picking up candy.

intellectually aggressive statement of the week!!!

White racists - I mean conservatives - hate Obama because, though his policies are exactly like Bush, he's black. (Many) Black people love Obama because, though his policies are exactly like Bush, he's black.

britain's threat to ecuador without precedent...,

TheAustralian | The mother of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, Christine Assange, says it would be an act of war for police to enter Ecuadorian embassy in London where her son seeking political asylum. BRITIAIN'S threat to revoke Ecuador's diplomatic immunity and arrest Julian Assange is "extraordinary and without precedent", an Australian international law expert has said.

"It highlights how serious the United Kingdom government is about extraditing Assange to Sweden where he is wanted for questioning over sexual assault," the Australian National University's Don Rothwell said in a statement.

"If the United Kingdom revoked the Embassy's diplomatic protection and entered the Embassy to arrest Assange, Ecuador could rightly view this as a significant violation of international law which may find its way before an international court."

The WikiLeaks founder sought refuge in Ecuador's London embassy on June 19 to avoid extradition to Sweden, where he is wanted for questioning about allegations of rape and sexual assault.

But Britain is now threatening to revoke the embassy's diplomatic immunity and take Mr Assange into custody for breaching his bail conditions.

Britain's Foreign Office has issued a statement citing a 1987 British law it says permits the revocation of diplomatic status of a building if the foreign power occupying it "ceases to use land for the purposes of its mission or exclusively for the purposes of a consular post."Ecuador says it will announce its decision on the WikiLeaks founder's asylum application at 10.00pm AEST on Thursday.

The British Foreign Office said in its statement that it hoped a "mutually acceptable" solution could still be found, but warned it would do all it could to extradite the former hacker.

EcuadorianEmbassy | An Ecuadorian government spokesperson commenting on the threats by the British Government to enter the Embassy said:

“We are deeply shocked by British government’s threats against the sovereignty of the Ecuadorian Embassy and their suggestion that they may forcibly enter the embassy.

This is a clear breach of international law and the protocols set out in the Vienna Convention.

Throughout out the last 56 days Mr. Julian Assange has been in the Embassy, the Ecuadorian Government has acted honourably in all our attempts to seek a resolution to the situation. This stands in stark contrast to the escalation of the British Government today with their threats to breakdown the door of the Ecuadorian Embassy.

Instead of threatening violence against the Ecuadorian Embassy the British Government should use its energy to find a peaceful resolution to this situation which we are aiming to achieve. “

ecuador has no rights we're bound to respect...,

WaPoBlog | Arguing that the United Kingdom “does not accept” the principle of diplomatic asylum, British Foreign Secretary William Hague said Ecuador’s decision to grant asylum to Julian Assange doesn’t change Britain’s determination to extradite the Australian citizen to Sweden.

“Under our law, with Mr. Assange having exhausted all options of appeal, the British authorities are under a binding obligation to extradite him to Sweden. We must carry out that obligation and of course we fully intend to do so. The Ecuadorian Government’s decision this afternoon does not change that in any way,” reads a statement posted by the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office.

Here is the full text of the statement:

“We are disappointed by the statement by Ecuador’s Foreign Minister today that Ecuador has offered political asylum to Julian Assange.

“Under our law, with Mr Assange having exhausted all options of appeal, the British authorities are under a binding obligation to extradite him to Sweden. We must carry out that obligation and of course we fully intend to do so. The Ecuadorian Government’s decision this afternoon does not change that in any way. Nor does it change the current circumstances in any way. We remain committed to a diplomatic solution that allows us to carry out our obligations as a nation under the Extradition Act.

“It is important to understand that this is not about Mr Assange’s activities at Wikileaks or the attitude of the United States of America. He is wanted in Sweden to answer allegations of serious sexual offences.

“His case has been heard in our Courts. Following the court decision of 30 May this year, he exhausted all legal options available to him in the UK to prevent his extradition to Sweden. He then entered the Ecuadorian Embassy in London on 19 June. And since then we have worked patiently with the Ecuadorian authorities, both in London and Quito, in private discussions to seek a mutually acceptable resolution to this situation. We have held seven formal discussions as well as many other conversations.

“Given our need to fulfil our obligations under international law to deliver a suspect for questioning on serious offences, we have ensured that the Ecuadorian authorities have a complete understanding of the full legal context in this country.

“It is a matter of regret that instead of continuing these discussions they have instead decided to make today’s announcement. It does not change the fundamentals of the case. We will not allow Mr Assange safe passage out of the UK, nor is there any legal basis for us to do so. The UK does not accept the principle of diplomatic asylum. It is far from a universally accepted concept: the United Kingdom is not a party to any legal instruments which require us to recognise the grant of diplomatic asylum by a foreign embassy in this country. Moreover, it is well established that, even for those countries which do recognise diplomatic asylum, it should not be used for the purposes of escaping the regular processes of the courts. And in this case that is clearly what is happening.

“Ecuador has expressed its concerns about the human rights of Mr Assange and sought guarantees from us in that area regarding his extradition to Sweden and indeed about any onward extradition and we have painstakingly explained the extensive human rights safeguards built into our law.

“No-one, least of all the Government of Ecuador, should be in any doubt that we are determined to carry out our legal obligation to see Mr Assange extradited to Sweden. He faces serious charges in a country with the highest standards of law and where his rights are guaranteed. We believe that should be assurance enough for Ecuador and any supporters of Mr Assange.

“We will remain fully committed to seeking a legal and binding bilateral solution to this with the Government of Ecuador but it is important that everyone understands that as a nation under law, believing in the rule of law, we must ensure that our laws are respected and followed.”

human cycles: history as science?

nature | Sometimes, history really does seem to repeat itself. After the US Civil War, for example, a wave of urban violence fuelled by ethnic and class resentment swept across the country, peaking in about 1870. Internal strife spiked again in around 1920, when race riots, workers' strikes and a surge of anti-Communist feeling led many people to think that revolution was imminent. And in around 1970, unrest crested once more, with violent student demonstrations, political assassinations, riots and terrorism (see 'Cycles of violence').

To Peter Turchin, who studies population dynamics at the University of Connecticut in Storrs, the appearance of three peaks of political instability at roughly 50-year intervals is not a coincidence. For the past 15 years, Turchin has been taking the mathematical techniques that once allowed him to track predator–prey cycles in forest ecosystems, and applying them to human history. He has analysed historical records on economic activity, demographic trends and outbursts of violence in the United States, and has come to the conclusion that a new wave of internal strife is already on its way1. The peak should occur in about 2020, he says, and will probably be at least as high as the one in around 1970. “I hope it won't be as bad as 1870,” he adds.

Turchin's approach — which he calls cliodynamics after Clio, the ancient Greek muse of history — is part of a groundswell of efforts to apply scientific methods to history by identifying and modelling the broad social forces that Turchin and his colleagues say shape all human societies. It is an attempt to show that “history is not 'just one damn thing after another'”, says Turchin, paraphrasing a saying often attributed to the late British historian Arnold Toynbee.

scientists declare that non-human animals are conscious

fcmconference | The First Annual Francis Crick Memorial Conference, focusing on "Consciousness in Humans and Non-Human Animals", aims to provide a purely data-driven perspective on the neural correlates of consciousness. The most advanced quantitative techniques for measuring and monitoring consciousness will be presented, with the topics of focus ranging from exploring the properties of neurons deep in the brainstem, to assessing global cerebral function in comatose patients. Model organisms investigated will span the species spectrum from flies to rodents, humans to birds, elephants to dolphins, and will be approached from the viewpoint of three branches of biology: anatomy, physiology, and behavior. Until animals have their own storytellers, humans will always have the most glorious part of the story, and with this proverbial concept in mind, the symposium will address the notion that humans do not alone possess the neurological faculties that constitute consciousness as it is presently understood.

taste receptors of the moral mind...,

edge | Well, if we were to write a history of moral philosophy, I think the next chapter would be called, "Attack of the Systemizers." Most of you know that autism is a spectrum. It's not a discrete condition. And Simon Baron-Cohen tells us that we should think about it as two dimensions. There's systemizing and empathizing. So, systemizing is the drive to analyze the variables in a system, and to derive the underlying rules that govern the behavior of a system. Empathizing is the drive to identify another person's emotions and thoughts, and to respond to these with appropriate emotion.

So, if you place these two dimensions, you make a 2x2 space, you get four quadrants. And, autism and Asperger's are, let's call it the bottom right corner of the bottom right quadrant. That is, very high on systemizing, very low on empathizing. People down there have sort of the odd behaviors and the mind-blindness that we know as autism or Asperger's.

The two major ethical systems that define Western philosophy were developed by men who either had Asperger's, or were pretty darn close. For Jeremy Bentham, the principal founder of utilitarianism, the case is quite strong. According to an article titled "Asperger's Syndrome and the Eccentricity and Genius of Jeremy Bentham," published in the Journal of Bentham Studies, (Laughter), Bentham fit the criteria quite well. I'll just give a single account of his character from John Stuart Mill, who wrote, "In many of the most natural and strongest feelings of human nature, he had no sympathy. For many of its graver experiences, he was altogether cut off. And the faculty by which one mind understands a mind different from itself, and throws itself into the feelings of that other mind was denied him by his deficiency of imagination."

For Immanuel Kant, the case is not quite so clear. He also was a loner who loved routine, feared change, focused on his few interests, to the exclusion of all else. And, according to one psychiatrist, Michael Fitzgerald, who diagnoses Asperger's in historical figures and shows how it contributed to their genius, Fitzgerald thinks that Kant would be diagnosed with Asperger's. I think the case is not nearly so clear. I think Kant did have better social skills, more ability to empathize. So I wouldn't say that Kant had Asperger's, but I think it's safe to say that he was about as high as could possibly be on systemizing, while still being rather low on empathizing, although not the absolute zero that Bentham was.

Now, what I'm doing here, yes, it is a kind of an ad hominem argument. I'm not saying that their ethical theories are any less valid normatively because of these men's unusual mental makeup. That would be the wrong kind of ad hominem argument. But I do think that, if we're doing history in particular, we're trying to understand, why did philosophy and then psychology, why did we make what I'm characterizing as a wrong turn? I think personality becomes relevant.

And, I think what happened is that, we had these two ultra-systemizers, in the late 18th and early 19th century. These two ultra-systemizers, during the early phases of the Industrial Revolution, when Western society was getting WEIRDer, and we were in general shifting towards more systemized and more analytical thought. You had these two hyper-systemized theories, and especially people in philosophy just went for it, for the next 200 years, it seems. All it is is, you know, utility, no. Deontology. You know, rights, harm.

And so, you get this very narrow battle of two different systemized groups, and virtue ethics--which fit very well with The Enlightenment Project; you didn't need God for virtue ethics at all--virtue ethics should have survived quite well. But it kind of drops out. And I think personality factors are relevant.

Because philosophy went this way, into hyper-systemizing, and because moral psychology in the 20th century followed them, referring to Kant and other moral philosophers, I think we ended up violating the two giant warning flags that I talked about, from these two BBS articles. We took WEIRD morality to be representative of human morality, and we've placed way too much emphasis on reasoning, treating it as though it was capable of independently seeking out moral truth.

I've been arguing for the last few years that we've got to expand our conception of the moral domain, that it includes multiple moral foundations, not just sugar and salt, and not just harm and fairness, but a lot more as well. So, with Craig Joseph and Jesse Graham and Brian Nosek, I've developed a theory called Moral Foundations Theory, which draws heavily on the anthropological insights of Richard Shweder.

Down here, I've just listed a very brief summary of it. That the five most important taste receptors of the moral mind are the following…care/harm, fairness/cheating, group loyalty and betrayal, authority and subversion, sanctity and degradation. And that moral systems are like cuisines that are constructed from local elements to please these receptors.

So, I'm proposing, we're proposing, that these are the five best candidates for being the taste receptors of the moral mind. They're not the only five. There's a lot more. So much of our evolutionary heritage, of our perceptual abilities, of our language ability, so much goes into giving us moral concerns, the moral judgments that we have. But I think this is a good starting point. I think it's one that Hume would approve of. It uses the same metaphor that he used, the metaphor of taste.

that's a wrap on the mysterious "goings-on" reported by alien abductees....,

genuine and conspicuous BD "burn the witch" insanity...,

dailykenn | There's a reason Gary Harrington is in jail.

The Oregon resident has been fighting for years to preserve his right to collect rain water. A 1925 law prohibits residents from diverting water from streams. Harrington's ponds ran afoul of that law and now he is serving 30 days in jail. He was also slapped with $1,500 in fines.

The state claims it has a vested interest in protecting the water supply of all its residents. Warehousing rain water in reservoirs on private property before it has a chance to channel downstream apparently robs others of the precious resource. The state's solution is to impose effective water rationing.

Did the state overstep it bounds? Most think so.

There is, however, an ongoing problem: Use of ground water is outstripping its supply in parts of the nation. The more people, the more water is used.

One has to wonder why state and federal governments worry themselves with ponds like Harrington's while aggressively dismantling the nation's wall of separation between illegal immigration and states' vested interest in protecting our resources, water in particular.

Or, to offer a more blunt rendition: Why do state governments jail and fine minuscule offenders like Harrington while intentionally absorbing literally millions of humans via immigration.

Mayo Clinic says every adult requires 11 cups of water per day. That's 4,015 cups of water per year, or about 250 gallons.

I don't know how many gallons of water were held in Harrington's ponds, but my best guess would suppose it's a tad bit less than the 2.5 billion gallons of water consumed each year by 10 million illegal aliens.

So how serious is the problem? Fist tap Big Don.