Question Technology

America's Meat Industry: Extreme Cruelty

Salon has an interview today with the Humane Society investigator who triggered the recent beef recall with his undercover video of a "downer" cow being dragged to slaughter: Extreme acts of animal cruelty.

See also the Human Society's Factory Farming site.

More on Lessig

Shelley Powers has posted an excellent analysis at her blog.  Excerpt:

There are probably a half dozen organizations focusing on political campaign reform, some more successful than others. There's Clean Money Clean Elections, efforts by Public Citizen, and Open Secrets Tracking the Payback. All of these organizations are populated by people who have been committed to this action for years, even decades. People knowledgeable about the issues and problems, as well as informed about the loop holes (and how to plug).

Which then leads us back to the whole Change Congress platform. Here we're talking about an organization populated by neophytes who got a hankering to "change Congress", without once considering that some of most important changes must occur at the local and state level, and in the executive branch, as well as Congress. Populated by people who seem to think that all one needs is a weblog, the right social network (and associated tools), and a leader who is wired.

In a way, this new Change Congress movement is precisely why I would not vote for Lessig. Rather than join with others who have been working these issues for the last several years, start up a new effort with lots of cool slogans and neat videos, and catchy phrases–no real plans, no organization, no experience. After all, all we need to make change is a catchy video and a great speech, right?

Link: Shiny, Happy People Going to Congress (via Seth Finkelstein).

Google Health: Privacy Disaster Waiting to Happen?

Those aren't my words.  That's from the title to a post by John Paczkowski on the Wall Street Journal's All Things Digital blog.  In regard to Google's new pilot program with the Cleveland Clinic to store patients' health records, he writes:

Of course, by making such records easier to share with medical providers, Google may be making them easier to “share” with less well-intentioned entities. Health insurance carriers. Potential employers. Online marketers. The government.

Google, too.

As the World Privacy Forum pointed out yesterday, companies like Google are not governed by the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act or HIPAA. “Don’t assume your medical records are protected no matter where they are: HIPAA privacy protections generally do not follow the health-care files,” the WPF warned. “HIPAA’s protections generally do not ‘travel’ with or follow a medical record that is disclosed to a third party outside the health-care treatment and payment system. … After you have disclosed your health care information to a PHR (Personal Health Records) outside the privacy protections of the health care system (HIPAA), your information can be used or redisclosed by the PHR in ways that would not be permitted for the same information if held by your doctor or health plan. Depending on the applicable privacy policy, health records outside of HIPAA can potentially be bought and sold, shared with merchants, and even disclosed to employers.”

Link: New from Google: "Google Privacy Disaster Waiting to Happen"

Update: Lots of interesting discussion on this: see Michael Zimmer, Fred Stutzman.  Michael Zimmer has also been discussing privacy concerns with Microsoft about their similar efforts: More designing for privacy: Microsoft HealthVault.

Lessig for Congress?

Silicon Valley free culture favorite Lawrence Lessig is considering a run for US Congress.  His mission, outlined in a 10-minute video you can see at lessig08.org is to "change congress" by removing the corrupting influence of money.

I'm sure Lessig is a smart guy and the anti-lobbying, anti-corporate message is surely important (and I fully support it) but it's anything but original, having been put forth by John Edwards, Dennis Kucinich, Ralph Nader, and almost every cliche TV drama politician ever to grace the screen.  I can't see Lessig's pretentious PowerPoint playing well beyond his core nerd base, and even those followers might lose interest once we hear any other policy positions from him (if by chance he doesn't follow all of the techno-libertarian ideals).  If ever there were a candidate to typify the Facebook effect (or whatever we're calling the internet-popularity-doesn't-translate-into-votes phenomenon), then Lessig is surely the one.

I don't mean to sound unnecessarily negative.  It just sounds like Jackie Speier is a better all-around candidate for the Democrats.

See also coverage at BoingBoing, Valleywag, TechCrunch, Andrew Sullivan, Wired.

What are the True Threats to Reason?

Dan Hind writes in New Scientist:

The Enlightenment is in mortal danger from irrational forces. We know this because its self-styled defenders continually tell us so. Evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins declares, in tones which make the flesh creep, that "primitive darkness is coming back".  Politician Dick Taverne warns that "the new Rome that science built is under siege by the barbarians". [...]

No one would want to deny the challenges to the Enlightenment that are posed by fundamentalist religion and the other forces of unreason. But if we consider the facts dispassionately, it becomes clear they do not deserve top billing among the enemies of free inquiry. In fact, the institutions that noisily lay claim to the enlightened inheritance - the corporation and the state - pose a much more serious, pervasive threat to reason.

Link: What are the true threats to reason? (subscription required)

The article is based on a talk that Hind gave last November, and he has posted a transcript and audio of the talk at his blog: The Threat to Reason.  That's also the name of his book, from which all of this is drawn: The Threat to Reason.  He describes it as "still the best book-length attempt to prise the Enlightenment from the grasp of Richard Dawkins, Dick Taverne and Christopher Hitchens."  Sounds like a fine endeavor.

Presidential Candidates Invited to Science Quiz, er, Debate

The Science Debate 2008 campaign sent out invitations to the four major candidates recently for the debate, now set for April 18th if anyone shows up.  In the invitation they write:

This is a policy debate.  It is not intended to be a science quiz. Nor are we interested in state-level battles such as the evolution versus creationism/ID debate.  Our goal is to find out how aware candidates are of America's major science and technology problems and opportunities, and how they propose to offer the kind of visionary leadership and policy solutions that will tackle those challenges and ensure America's place as the most scientifically and technologically advanced nation on earth.  This is your opportunity to demonstrate that you are such a leader.

It's telling that they needed to reassure candidates that it's not a quiz, because when Science Debate first came on the scene it was clear that many of the people pushing for it wanted a quiz.  There was gloating in comment boards about the chance to make fun of candidates who don't believe in evolution or don't understand science.  (Not that those are excusable -- thank the gods that Mike Huckabee doesn't have a chance of winning.)

There are important science and tech policy issues to discuss, but I'm still skeptical of the need for a separate debate on this.  (Previous post: Do we need a presidential debate on science?)

There have been several recent articles on the story:

• New Scientist Short Sharp Science blog
• Wired (where the commenters definitely don't get the quiz vs. debate distinction, and the techno-libertarians are upset Ron Paul wasn't invited).
• Nature expresses skepticism: Nature's The Great Beyond blog, Nature editorial.
• The New York Times addresses the quiz vs. debate problem as well.
• Biopolitical Times points to Nature's doubts and has some good quotes.
• There's some interesting discussion (and confusion) in comments at the blog of Chris Mooney and Sheril Kirshenbaum, two of the organizers: The Intersection.

High-Tech Driver Distraction

The New York Times has a good article today about driver distraction.  Excerpts:

Talking on cellphones and typing text messages while driving has already led to bans in many states. But now auto companies, likening their latest models to living rooms on the road, are turning cars into cocoons of communication systems and high-tech entertainment.

Some drivers are packing their car interiors with G.P.S. navigation screens, portable DVD players and even computer keyboards and printers.

State Senator Carl L. Marcellino of New York learned this firsthand while riding in a cab in Miami — the driver was watching a boxing match on a television mounted on the dashboard.

[...]

Motorists have always engaged in risky behavior, whether it is eating a sandwich, arguing with a spouse, applying makeup or studying a map while speeding down the interstate.

But safety experts say the influx of electronics is turning cars into sometimes chaotic — and distracting — moving family rooms.

[...]

Some safety advocates wonder whether studies on driver behavior will always be a step behind new technology. “It seems that society is moving so fast that the effects on safety just aren’t fully understood until problems arise,” said Sean Kane of Safety Research and Strategies, a consulting firm in Rehoboth, Mass.

Even drivers who are focused on the road can suffer from electronic overload — from passengers who, say, might be fighting over which DVD to watch.

[...]

The Japanese automaker Nissan unveiled a concept minivan, called the Forum, at last month’s Detroit auto show. Like most minivans, the Forum has an integrated media system that allows children and other passengers to watch movies, play games and hear their favorite songs.

The designers included a low-tech feature specifically for a driver distracted by the technology — a button that immediately shuts down all the electronics to silence unruly passengers and, presumably, make driving safer.

“I guess we were all saying, when is enough enough?” said Bruce Campbell, a vice president of Nissan Design America. “At some point, you need to say time out, no more distractions.”

Linnk: More High-Tech Invitations to Take Your Mind off Road.

 

Our Paperless Future

The New York Times had an article yesterday on our glorious paperless future -- which may already be here!  It's a reasonably balanced piece, aside from some hyperbole from the experts they quote.  Most of this stuff makes sense, like using scanners to keep documents.  In fact that's mostly what the article is about (scanning documents), whereas the graphic that accompanies it shows such wonders as the electronic bartender with built-in drink recipes and a perennial futurist favorite: the smart refrigerator with digital display.  (Mark Kuniavsky recently posted a nice gallery of these: Evolution of the Fridge Computer.)

An excerpt from the NYT article:

“Paper is no longer the master copy; the digital version is,” says Brewster Kahle, the founder and director of the Internet Archive, a nonprofit digital library. “Paper has been dealt a complete deathblow. When was the last time you saw a telephone book?”

Some homes may no longer have phone books, but many have scanners — and, increasingly, more than one. Flatbed scanners, which most people use for photographs, offer high resolution but are cumbersome for scanning large volumes of paper. New, cheap document-feed scanners that can digitize a stack of papers, receipts or business cards in seconds are becoming popular. Add multiple computers, digital cameras and maybe an electronic book reader, and suddenly paper seems to be on the endangered-species list.

After rising steadily in the 1980s and ’90s, worldwide paper consumption per capita has plateaued in recent years. In the richest countries, consumption fell 6 percent from 2000 to 2005, from 531 to 502 pounds a person. The data bolsters the view of experts like Mr. Kahle who say paper is becoming passé. [...]

A paperless world isn’t automatically a boon for the environment, though. While these digital toys reduce dependence on one resource, they increase it on another: energy. Some devices are always plugged in, eating electricity even when not in use, and gobbling huge amounts of power when they are. Others, like digital cameras and laptop computers, use electricity while they are recharging.

And the shift might not happen as fast as some technology gurus predict. The paperless office, which some experts had said would be the norm by the 1990s, has so far failed to materialize. Employees are reckless about printing long e-mail messages, reports and memos, largely because the company picks up the bill for the laser printers, photocopiers, ink and paper.

Link: Pushing paper out the door.

There are some good comments on the article at TreeHugger and LifeHacker.  Many are about phone books -- in the US, phone companies keep delivering these, though hardly anybody wants one.

One thing that's not often mentioned in stories like these is that you can make paper from things other than trees, which can be more eco-friendly, and also that it's important to promote sustainable forestry and recycling.  Removing paper completely from our lives shouldn't necessarily be our goal. 

Ethics and Climate Change

Philosopher and writer Nigel Warburton interviewed James Garvey about his new book The Ethics of Climate Change: Right and Wrong in a Warming World.  An excerpt from the interview:

Nigel: Why did you write this book? What is its main message?

James: I wrote the book to help people into thinking about the ethical dimension of reflection on climate change.  There’s a great deal written concerning action on climate change, but often it’s from a scientific or economic or political point of view.  All of that matters, but climate change presents us with a host of moral problems. Getting those in plain sight is part of the point of the book.  What we do about our changing planet depends a lot on what we value, on what we think is morally right.

[...]

Nigel: Despite the bleak factual picture you paint in your first chapter, you end the book on an optimistic note. Isn't this inconsistent?

James: There is a lot of unnecessary suffering ahead if we fail to take action now.  I’m not sure that governments and businesses will do what’s right, but I surprise myself sometimes with the thought that the rest of us will.  According to a BBC World Service poll of 22,000 people in 21 countries, large majorities of people all over the world believe that human activity causes climate change and that strong action must be taken, sooner rather than later.  Human beings eventually do the right thing, and that gives me a little hope.  There’s nothing inconsistent in worrying about our future, all the while hoping that we do the right thing in the time we still have.

Link: James Garvey Interviewed on the Ethics of Climate Change (virtualphilosopher.org, Nigel Warburton's blog).

I really like that last sentence.

James Garvey writes at the Philosopher's Magazine's blog and has a short post about his book there: New Book: The Ethics of Climate Change.

Technology in Wartime Conference -- Video Now Online

Video from the Technology in Wartime conference that took place a couple weeks ago is now online.  I've been meaning to write up my notes from this but haven't found the time.

It was an excellent event -- CPSR did a great job of gathering some really impressive speakers.  Particularly good were security expert Bruce Schneier, roboticist and ethicist Ronald Arkin,  Benetech's Patrick Ball on human rights data analysis (see HRDAG), and Neil Rowe on the ethics of cyberweapons.  So if you're checking out the videos I recommend starting there.  I left before the last session, which also promised a good line-up.

Link: Technology in Wartime Video.

Mohinder Suresh is Activating Evolution (on the Web)

The TV show Heroes has a new promotional tie-in site called Activating Evolution, on which the character Mohinder tells you all about evolution and the existence of radically evolved humans.  What's creepy is the site's resemblance to real sites on the web made by transhumanists and other proponents of radical human enhancement and/or a new eugenics (e.g. Better Humans).  I wonder if the transhumanists will start contributing to Mohinder's wiki.

(via io9)

A Grumpy Google Whines about MicroHoo

Google has come out with some "fightin' words" (Jeff Jarvis) against Microsoft and its proposed buyout of Yahoo.  In a rather disingenuous post on the official Google blog, senior VP David Drummond warns:

So Microsoft's hostile bid for Yahoo! raises troubling questions. This is about more than simply a financial transaction, one company taking over another. It's about preserving the underlying principles of the Internet: openness and innovation.

Could Microsoft now attempt to exert the same sort of inappropriate and illegal influence over the Internet that it did with the PC? While the Internet rewards competitive innovation, Microsoft has frequently sought to establish proprietary monopolies -- and then leverage its dominance into new, adjacent markets.

Could the acquisition of Yahoo! allow Microsoft -- despite its legacy of serious legal and regulatory offenses -- to extend unfair practices from browsers and operating systems to the Internet? In addition, Microsoft plus Yahoo! equals an overwhelming share of instant messaging and web email accounts. And between them, the two companies operate the two most heavily trafficked portals on the Internet. Could a combination of the two take advantage of a PC software monopoly to unfairly limit the ability of consumers to freely access competitors' email, IM, and web-based services? Policymakers around the world need to ask these questions -- and consumers deserve satisfying answers.

Link: Official Google Blog: Yahoo! and the future of the Internet.

As the New York Times and others are pointing out, what Google is really doing here is getting back at Microsoft for opposing, and slowing, Google's acquisition of DoubleClick.  Neither of these behemoths really has "openness and innovation" foremost in their minds.

I love Google's products, but they shouldn't be the sole arbiter of what's right for the internet.   If a company like Ask.com had raised concerns out competition with this new deal, that's one thing, but Google whining about it is kind of laughable.

Defending Incandescent Bulbs

Update: Brendan Koerner has written a pretty solid rebuttal of Rosenbaum's article: The Case for CFLs (Slate).  I'm still not convinced about the light output, but maybe I just haven't seen the right bulbs (or data) yet.

--

Ron Rosenbaum has an article in Slate about what we lose when we outlaw incandescent bulbs in favor of compact fluorescents.  He's a bit too nostalgic for my taste, but he does raise some important points.  Excerpt:

Yes, the idiots in Congress, too torpid and ineffectual to pass a health-care bill for children, have busy-bodied themselves in a bumbling way with the way you light up your world. In December, they passed legislation that will, in practice, outlaw incandescent bulbs because they won't be able to meet the new law's strict energy-efficiency standards. The result: Between 2012 and 2014, incandescent bulbs will be driven from the market. Replaced by the ugly plasticine Dairy Queen swirl of compact fluorescent lights.

From a purely environmental perspective, this move is shortsighted. CFLs do use less energy, which is good. But they also often contain mercury, one of the most damaging—and lasting—environmental toxins. Not a ton of mercury, but still: A whole new CFL recycling structure will be required to prevent us from releasing deadly neurotoxins into the water table. CFLs: coming soon to sushi near you.

Failing to properly recycle your CFLs won't be the same as putting an Evian bottle in the wrong slot. It'll be genuinely hazardous, particularly dangerous to children. Way to go, congressional dimbulbs!

And God forbid you break a bulb. If you do, you are advised by some experts to evacuate the room for 15 minutes to escape the release of mercury vapor, then scrub the area as though there'd been a plutonium spill, virtually wearing a hazmat suit as you dispose of the glass shards. [...]

Good luck. But the greater crime of the new bulbs is not environmental but aesthetic. Think of the ugly glare of fluorescence, the light of prisons, sterile cubicle farms, precinct stations, emergency rooms, motor vehicle bureaus, tenement hallways—remember Tom Wolfe's phrase for the grim, flickering hallway lights in New York tenements: "landlords' haloes"?—and, of course, morgues. Fluorescents seem specially designed to drain life and beauty from the world.  [...]

Not fair!, say the CFL advocates. Our new fluorescent technology is not your father's fluorescence, it doesn't drain blood from complexions like a vampire, it doesn't buzz and flicker the way the old ones did.

I've tried the new CFLs, and they are a genuine improvement—they don't flicker perceptibly, or buzz, or make your skin look green. There is a difference, and I'd be in favor of replacing all current fluorescent bulbs with CFLs. But even CFLs glare and blare—they don't have that inimitable incandescent glow. So don't let them take lamplight away. Don't let them ban beauty.

Link: In defense of incandescent light.

I use CFLs, but still have some incandescents kicking around.  I couple of years ago I bought some full-spectrum incandescents, which I find much nicer for reading than regular incandescents, and they also last very long.  CFLs give worse light than either, and people seem to be ignoring the disposal/recycling problem.

Google tells me there are now bulbs marketed as "full-spectrum compact fluorescent" but I can't tell if the light output is really comparable.  I suspect "full" is marketing-speak for "a little bit wider" spectrum, but I may be wrong.
 

The Politicisation of Science

Sociologist Frank Furedi has an interesting column at Spiked Online about how scientific authority is replacing religious and moral authority.  Link: The tyranny of science (via Arts & Letters Daily).

National Research Council says Cell Phone Health Studies are Needed

From Reuters:

Researchers should study more children and pregnant women in trying to figure out if cell phones or other wireless devices could damage health, the U.S. National Research Council advised on Thursday.

A few studies have indicated a possible link between mobile telephone use and brain tumors, although far more show no connection. But because wireless devices have become almost ubiquitous, researchers wants to ensure their safety.

The Food and Drug Administration asked the National Research Council to recommend some future lines of study. The Council, which advises Congress and the federal government on scientific matters, held a meeting of experts including engineers and biologists and has now released the full report.

Most studies have looked only at short-term effects on healthy adults, the report said.

         

More study needs to be done on multiple, long-term, low-intensity radiofrequency (RF) exposure, the report said.

Link: Study children and cell phones, researchers advise (Globe & Mail/Reuters).

The NRC's press release, which links to the full report is here: Report Identifies Research to Bolster Knowledge of Any Potential Health Effects of Wireless Communication Devices.