Israel's Secret Staging Ground

U.S. officials believe that the Israelis have gained access to airbases in Azerbaijan. Does this bring them one step closer to a war with Iran?
Israel's Secret Staging Ground - By Mark Perry | Foreign Policy

Protecting your Facebook privacy at work isn't just about passwords

Many big firms use "lawful interception" appliances that monitor all employee communications, including logins to banks, health providers, family members, and other personal sites. Even firms that don't require self-signed certificates in their employees' computers may use keyloggers, screenloggers, and other spying tools to watch what you do and capture your passwords. If your employer, school or institution gets to control the software on your computer, you can't know that it's not snooping on you at all times. Just ask the kids in the Lower Merion School District, whose school-issued laptops were loaded with software that let school administrators covertly watch students at home and at school through the computers' webcams.
Protecting your Facebook privacy at work isn't just about passwords | Technology | guardian.co.uk

Facebook enemies...

College 2.0: 'Social-Media Blasphemy': Academic Adds 'Enemy' Feature to Facebook - College 2.0 - The Chronicle of Higher Education
College 2.0: 'Social-Media Blasphemy': An Academic Adds 'Enemy' Feature to Facebook - College 2.0 - The Chronicle of Higher Education

More than a third of 2012's babies predicted to live to 100

More than a third of babies born in 2012 will live to 100, report predicts

A heathen manifesto for Atheists

Atheists are too often portrayed as bishop-bashing extremists and any meaningful debate with the religious becomes impossible. How can this be remedied? At the Guardian Open Weekend, Julian Baggini presented his 12 rules for heathens
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/mar/25/atheists-please-read-heathen-manifesto

Why do we continue to ignore China's rise..arrogance?

Martin Jacques, author of a bestseller
on China, asks why the west
continues to approach the rise of the
new global powerhouse with a closed
mind. We obsess over details of the
race for the White House, yet give
scant regard to the battle to replace
China's current leadership. If we fail
to pay heed to the political and
economic shift of gravity, we will be
sidelined by histor
Why do we continue to ignore China's rise? Arrogance | World news | The Observer

Particularly interesting is the notion of China as a "civilisation state" not a nation state. Seen in this light a lot of western ideals and preoccupations might be irrelevant...

Something rotten in the state of Austria

Although from last year, an illuminating series of articles on the recent corruption scandals in Austria.
http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/0,1518,791113,00.html
http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/0,1518,791113-2,00.html
http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/0,1518,791113-3,00.html

Alternatives to for-profit media

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/greenslade/2012/mar/22/digital-media-investigative-journalism

The darwinian struggle of words..

Using googles book digitization project, studies are providing insight into the the rise,   fall and evolution of words over the last 200 years.
Study reveals words' Darwinian struggle for survival | Books | guardian.co.uk
I've often thought that it's often times of trouble and turmoil that produce new and great art, but interesting to see they might produce new language as well:
"Language is "drastically" affected by the occurrence of major events such as wars, the scientists discovered, ........"This can be understood as manifesting from the unification of public consciousness that creates fertile breeding ground for new topics and ideas," the academics write. "During war, people may be more likely to have their attention drawn to global issues." "

Modern day hard prison labour, clicks as well as picks

A recent discussion about MMORPGs (and in particular Star Wars The Old Republic) reminded me of two articles from last year : one about the practice of 'gold farming' whereby people spend hours playing these games in order to amass virtual resources which can be sold in the real world, and another story about prisoners in a Chinese prison being made to do exactly that, for the benefit of the prison guards, a story which definitely is symbolic of the modern age :

How gold farmers reap huge harvest from online gaming
Estimates suggest 400,000 people are employed to build up credits in games such as World of Warcraft and EverQuest
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2011/may/25/gold-farmers-online-gaming

China used prisoners in lucrative internet gaming work
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/may/25/china-prisoners-internet-gaming-scam

China faces 'timebomb' of ageing population

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/mar/20/china-next-generation-ageing-population

out of sight, but in focus

The camera that can see around corners : New technology could lead to devices that can spot people hidden from view or inspect components deep inside machines
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/blog/2012/mar/20/camera-see-around-corners

inequality and privitization - how very Tory...

Two elements that annoy me most in politics are actions that further inequality, and an ideological commitment to privatization. While not necessarily related, these issues often are, since inequality is often a result of excessive market forces without sufficient state involvement, and privatization (if done inappropriately) often fuels this.

So depressing to read two articles in the Guardian today on each of these topics. Though, I suppose one would hardly expect anything else from the Tory party.
Polly Toynbee on how Osborne's budget will accentuate inequality : here
Aditya Chakrabortty on the folly of privatizing roads : here

Are video games just propaganda and training tools for the military?

It's a shadowy and lucrative relationship. But just how close are video-game developers with various military outfits? And how does it affect the games we play?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2012/mar/18/video-games-propaganda-tools-military 

• ""By the late 1990s," says Nick Turse, an American journalist, historian and author of The Complex: How the Military Invades Our Everyday Lives, "the [US] army was pouring tens of millions of dollars into a centre at the University of Southern California – the Institute of Creative Technologies – specifically to build partnerships with the gaming industry and Hollywood.""

• "... Kuma Games site, an online entertainment developer and, according to reports on Iranian television, an international distributor of military propaganda. Kuma produces a range of games, from second world war air-battle shoot-'em-ups for the History Channel, through to the carnivore-themed I Predator, a tie-in for the cable station Animal Planet. Yet it's the company's Kuma\War series of topical military games, as well as a more discreet line of Arabic-language first-person shooter games, that have piqued media attention. During a televised confession on Iranian TV, alleged US agent and former marine Amir Mirzai Hekmati said he had worked for Kuma, and it was a CIA front company."

Pass notes, No 3,143: Chatterboxing

Not vocal sparring but the act of tweeting while watching a generally moronic TV programme
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/shortcuts/2012/mar/18/pass-notes-chatterboxing
"Why? Psychologist Corinne Sweet says: "Wanting to communicate with others when you experience emotions such as sadness, entertainment, fear or awe is a part of the human condition. As television often prompts these feelings, it is not surprising that more of us are taking advantage of evolving technology to share our thoughts."
We used to do that round the watercooler the following day. Exactly. The fragmentation of audiences was thought to have killed watercooler TV conversation, but these days we gather round a virtual watercooler."

Facebook's 'dark side': study finds link to socially aggressive narcissism

Psychology paper finds Facebook and other social media offer platform for obsessions with self-image and shallow friendship

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2012/mar/17/facebook-dark-side-study-aggressive-narcissism

Helium....precious resource, wasted in party balloons

Helium stocks run low – and party balloons are to blame | Science | The Observer

Cameron and Obama ended the neocon era. But the era of Assad goes on

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/mar/14/cameron-obama-ended-neocon-era

red meat and cancer

This isn't exactly new news, but anything health related worth repeating :
"Regularly eating red meat increases significantly risk of death from heart disease and cancer, according to a study of more than 120,000 people carried out over 28 years."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2012/mar/12/red-meat-death-heart-cancer
basic points

• while a vital source of some vitamins, advice is to limit red meat consumption to 500g per week
• (again no surprise) adding nuts to diet had beneficial effect on mortality

Iranian actions may be clear, motives are not

A better understanding of Iran might save us from catastrophe | Peter Beaumont | Comment is free | The Observer
"Indeed, one of the bleakest of historical ironies is that the early revolution under Ayatollah Khomeini actually halted the western-supported civil nuclear programme in place under the shah and it was only persuaded that it needed to acquire nuclear weapons technology because of Iran's massive losses in the war with Iraq, then supported by the US, which saw Iran targeted with chemical weapons."

Is there any current  US foreign policy dilemma which is not the product of previous misguided actions? Which shows the importance of getting it right once and for all...

Atheism - it's not because it's funny, it's because it's true.

Julian Baggini on Atheism : 

"Atheists have seemed rather keen in recent years to stress their jolly side.... Stressing the jolly side of atheism not only glosses over its harsher truths, it also disguises its unique selling point. The reason to be an atheist is not that it makes us feel better or gives us a more rewarding life. The reason to be an atheist is simply that there is no God and we would prefer to live in full recognition of that, accepting the consequences, even if it makes us less happy.""
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/mar/09/life-without-god-bleak-atheism
Guess it goes back to the old Woody Allen question as to whether would rather be happy or right. The problem is of course those who just by their nature cannot see the universe otherwise don't really have this choice. But that doesn't mean we can't be happy and right. And since many people can obviously be miserable and wrong, at least we've got a head start, since (I'm sure!) are already halfway there...

Celtic tiger at bay: a new generation of migrants

Sign of (old) times..."Up to 75,000 Irish citizens are predicted to emigrate in 2012 – higher than the levels of the late 1980s". That's 1.7% of the entire country...or 2.4% of those aged 15-65, i.e. the working population.
 http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/mar/08/ireland-migration-young-liverpool

$1.3B 'Brain in a Box'

Swiss Academy of Sciences members are uneasy about a project to simulate the entire brain and explore how neural circuits give rise to behavior and cognition

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=brain-in-a-box-project&WT.mc_id=SA_CAT_SP_20120227


Personally reckon such a low-level model is going to be ulimately necessary to fully understand the brain. Whether it is practically feasible is of course another thing....

"At the heart of that approach is Markram's conviction that a good unifying model has to assimilate data from the bottom up. In his view, modelers should start at the most basic level--he focuses on ion channels because they determine when a neuron fires--and get everything working at one level before proceeding to the next. This requires a lot of educated guesses, but Markram argues that the admittedly huge gaps in knowledge about the brain can be filled with data as experiments are published--the Blue Brain model is updated once a week. The alternative approach, approximating and abstracting away the biological detail, leaves no way to be sure that the model's behavior has anything to do with how the brain works, said Markram.

This is where other computational neuroscientists gnash their teeth. Most of them are already using simple models of individual neurons to explore high-level functions such as pattern recognition. Markram's bottom-up approach risks missing the wood for the trees, many of them argued in Bern: the model could be so detailed that it is no easier to understand than the real brain. And that is if Markram can build it at all. Judging by what Blue Brain has accomplished in the past six years, critics said, that seems unlikely."

The Observer : the internet privacy debate

As Google acts, the question is: have we lost our privacy to the internet? | Technology | The Observer

US healthcare costs more because...it costs more

"In 2009, Americans spent $7,960 per person on health care. Our neighbors in Canada spent $4,808. The Germans spent $4,218. The French, $3,978. If we had the per-person costs of any of those countries, America’s deficits would vanish. "

High health care costs: It’s all in the pricing - The Washington Post

The point of this to me is that far from a more free market approach which results in efficiencies and lower prices,  the US  handling of healthcare, a product like no other in its necessity at time of purchase, actually resembles a cartel-like rigged price system. How else could the same services, even drugs, cost less elsewhere? Given the "product's" importance, this is probably inevitable without a unified, i.e. state , bargaining position.