Monday links II: how robots are going to kill us...

...being a story in two parts.

In Part I, linked by Ezra Klein, the Pentagon's cyborg insects will inevitably turn against us. This horrible possibility written up by Nick Turse, who wrote The Complex: How the Military Invades Our Everyday Lives.

Right now, researchers are already growing insects with electronics inside them. They're creating cyborg moths and flying beetles that can be remotely controlled. One day, the U.S. military may field squadrons of winged insect/machine hybrids with on-board audio, video or chemical sensors. These cyborg insects could conduct surveillance and reconnaissance missions on distant battlefields, in far-off caves, or maybe even in cities closer to home, and transmit detailed data back to their handlers at U.S. military bases.

Spooky!

In Part II, Sadly, No! brings us the even more terrifying vision of robots bred to worm their way up the human colon.

As if the idea of colonoscopies didn't sound uncomfortable enough, now researchers are developing self-propelling probes that crawl inside the colon and grip its sides with the aid of sticky films.

Still, these slithery devices could lead to better, safer, more comfortable colonoscopies to help uncover cancerous polyps.

Or it could lead to all of our deaths at the hands of irate microscopic colon invaders. Take your pick.

Monday links I: Boston Massacre and the Rule of Law

Publis at OW muses about the John Adams series and its depiction of the Boston Massacre:

Mankind hasn’t really changed that much since we've emerged from the forest. Passions have consumed us for as long as there have been men. We saw it in the French Revolution. We saw it in the Russian Revolution. We saw it in Boston in 1770 when British officials were swept up and tortured with burning tar (a scene the HBO series chillingly portrays). And we saw it in 2002 when America rushed mob-like into war in a matter of weeks, based entirely on falsehoods and misguided assumptions.

He uses it as a platform to talk about judicial review, the importance of judiciary and the rule of law. I'll just link this to remind me that the scene can be a good one to show in a future class.

media cluelessness part 9,752

Glen:

No matter how corrupt and sloppy the establishment press becomes, they always find a way to go lower. Time Magazine has just published what it purports to be a news article by Massimo Calabresi claiming that "nobody cares" about the countless abuses of spying powers by the Bush administration; that "Americans are ready to trade diminished privacy, and protection from search and seizure, in exchange for the promise of increased protection of their physical security"; and that the case against unchecked government surveillance powers "hasn't convinced the people." Not a single fact -- not one -- is cited to support these sweeping, false opinions.

Some good examples of how this goes against public opinion polls. And how it MIGHT just be influenced by the media's own vapid coverage:

Here is a Nexus count of how much media coverage certain stories have received over the last 30 days, including the Surveillance State stories which Calabresi cites as proof that Americans don't care about their constitutional liberties:

* "Spitzer and prostitutes" -- 2,323 results

* "Spitzer and Kristen" -- 1,087 results

* "Obama and Rezko" -- 1,263 results

* "Obama and Jeremiah Wright" -- 466 results

* "Wall Street Journal and data mining" -- 9 results

* "FBI and National security letters" -- 149 results

* "Intelligence Oversight Board" -- 21 results

This is what establishment journalists like Calabresi always do. Their industry obsesses on the most vapid, inconsequential chatter. They ignore the stories that actually matter. And then they claim that Americans only care about vapid gossip and not substantive issues -- and point to their own shallow coverage decisions as "proof" of what Americans care about. That thought process was vividly evident with their obsession with the Edwards hair "story," when they all chattered about it endlessly, promoted it in headlines, and then, when criticized for that, claimed that it was obviously something Americans were interested in, pointing to their own media fixation as proof that Americans cared.

Do I smell something burning? Fiddle away, motherfuckers!!

more hobbits?

More small human-like bones found in Indonesia (Afarensis blog). The tone of it, unfortunately, is way out of my league. But if I understand it right, the authors don't think these are hobbits:

[W]e have an intriguing mix of morphology. What do the authors make of it? After cautioning that the traits linking H. erectus, H. floresiensis, and the Palau population could be homoplasies (early in the paper) the authors make an excellent point when they observe that small bodied populations that do not share all the traits considered taxonomically significant in the LB1 material can not support the validity of the H. floresiensis taxon. They conclude the paper by saying:

Based on the evidence from Palau, we hypothesize that reduction in the size of the face and chin, large dental size and other features noted here may in some cases be correlates of extreme body size reduction in H. sapiens. These features when seen in Flores may be best explained as correlates of small body size in an island adaptation, regardless of taxonomic affinity. Under any circumstances the Palauan sample supports at least the possibility that the Flores hominins are simply an island adapted population of H. sapiens, perhaps with some individuals expressing congenital abnormalities.

Well, that clears that up.

imperial romance

Yglesias links to some recent Bush statements:

"I must say, I'm a little envious," Bush said. "If I were slightly younger and not employed here, I think it would be a fantastic experience to be on the front lines of helping this young democracy succeed."

"It must be exciting for you ... in some ways romantic, in some ways, you know, confronting danger. You're really making history, and thanks," Bush said.

What a POS. As Yglesias points out:

Need we note that when Bush had an actual opportunity to put his life on the line in a war, he chose to avoid doing so? The guy who sent me the link observed the connection between these sentiments and the point about Bush-style democracy-promotion as the return of Victorian imperialism -- shot through with daffy romanticism about dashing off to exotic lands to take up the white man's burden. The idea isn't to identify policies that are effective at boosting the prospects for democratic reform; instead, the idea is to identify policies that are pleasurable to the egos of the politicians and opinion-leaders who frame them.

Lovely. From a Reuters story "Bush says if younger, he would work in Afghanistan".

all about the benjamins

Amanda at Pandagon links to a post on lynching:

When one of those collections fell into the hands of a professional historian, it opened up a whole large statistical universe of lynching incidents, each of which came with a location, one or more names, dozens or hundreds of faces that can be identified, and importantly, a date. That made it possible to research not just a few lynchings, but hundreds of them, and to compile statistics on what had happened before and after them. And the terrible, but fascinating, bit of secret history turned out to be the immediate aftermath of over half of those lynchings. Over half of those lynchings turned out to involve black men who owned their own successful farms and/or businesses. And the day after the lynchings, those farms and businesses were sold to white neighbors, in closed auctions, for pennies on the dollar, and the surviving real heirs were run out of town. And in a terrifyingly large number of those cases, historians were able to show one or more of the following facts. The buyer was the person who made the initial accusation against the victim. And the buyer was a relative of one or more of the following: the mayor, the chief of police, the local minister and/or the municipal judge.

What's incredibly frustrating is that he doesn't link to the original study. I'll ask the Americanists in the department.

Bonus link in the Pandagon post comments - a PBS documentary about Sundown towns ("Banished")

Achilles' Shield

From Atrios, a W.H. Auden poem that I'd never heard. And it. is. TEH. AWESOME! Seems to be a reversal of the Achilles' Shield image in Book 18 - instead of depicting on the shield a tableau of Greek society, this image reveals the destruction of society and morality when it turns its energies to war. The stanzas with shorter lines are Thetis looking over Hephaestus' shoulder expecting the images Homer described, but the longer lines describe what H. placed there -- images of war. She weeps at the end.

The opening:

She looked over his shoulder
For vines and olive trees,
Marble well-governed cities
 And ships upon untamed seas,
But there on the shining metal
 His hands had put instead
An artificial wilderness
 And a sky like lead.

A plain without a feature, bare and brown,
 No blade of grass, no sign of neighborhood,
Nothing to eat and nowhere to sit down,
 Yet, congregated on its blankness, stood
An unintelligible multitude,
A million eyes, a million boots in line,
Without expression, waiting for a sign.

Assign this next Iliad class.

Godwin?

Phoenix Woman at Firedoglake notes that the media has once again hauled out the "what will we tell the children" meme for the Spitzer case. But of course they never do this for Foley, Craig, Vittner, etc. Bonus Godwin's Law flouting: pic of Nazi Family Values.

"Sichert die Volksgemeinschaft!" Jawohl!!

The Wave

Looks like Germany is producing another quasi-Nazi film based on American postwar experiments. Yahoo article annoys me to no end.

1. "Film shows Germans not immune to return of Nazis" -- as if it's a documentary.
2. Nobody has ever argued that Germans are immune to the return of Nazis.
3. Once again, American media displaces Nazism as an exclusively German problem. IT'S BASED ON AN AMERICAN INCIDENT!!!!! So the filmmakers have taken an episode the Americans have largely forgotten, re-set it in Germany -- and somehow the article paints this as evidence that the Germans are about to slip back into Nazism. The whole point of The Wave, and the Stanford Prison experiment, and the many others done in America in the 50s and 60s is to show how authority and conformity produce Nazi-like behavior - even in the supposedly liberal and responsible US.

last poilu, last doughboy

In recent WWI news:

CNN/AP: Lazare Ponticelli, France's last veteran of World War I, has died. He was 110.

ABC, CNN, White House propaganda office: Last surviving doughboy feted at White House.

Hacking Freedom City

Awesome!

Via Andrew Leonard, a Chinese blogger fights his way into the Orwellian-named Freedom City to get powdered milk to an imprisoned dissident and her baby. It's part Matrix, part Mission Impossible, part Underground Railroad (kind of). Passages like this prepare the author for the fight:

As you are about to expend a significant effort in the invasion, the greater the return the better. So in addition to delivering the milk powder, relaying information is just as important. Preparations needed to be made:

Several copies of that day's newspaper, printouts regarding Zeng Jinyan's blog tucked inside, and copies of those printouts saved on a memory card; prepare two digital camera memory cards, one with sensitive content to be kept hidden in your sock at all times; a mobile phone—buy a new number; do not carelessly leave fingerprints behind—wear gloves; food, water, sheets of paper, a felt marker, binoculars, mobile phone battery, batter recharger, money, toilet paper, batteries; no ID whatsoever must be carried; a topographical map and the SSP license plate numbers marked down in a notebook; a fake name—choose characters homophonic to your name (this may not be of use); check keychain for any identifying markers; last, milk powder. Carry all this in a backpack, although be sure to note the necessity of keeping the bag as separate from your person to the greatest extent possible (SSP will wonder: ‘what's a resident doing toting around a backpack? What's stored in there?').

Wow. Evidently this is all part of a black-ops manual being P2P'd around Chinese dissident circles. As for the 'invasion' itself:

A direct breakthrough seems difficult, so I decide to wait until the morning shift change on day two to look for loopholes. I move to the back of the building, and see that residents on the ground floor have doors which connect directly to the garden, so I duck to the bottom one resident's stairwell and wait until a light comes on, then I knock on the door and ask if I can be let in: “one of the residents on the fourth floor's kid has no milk powder, I want to go up and deliver some, but those people at the unit entrance won't let me in, and if they catch me, I'll get taken down to the police station……” The resident refuses my request: “the police department already warned us that we're not to let you in (anyway, I was refused, who knows if there really had been a warning or not). Behind the building there also appeared to be no way in, so I'd just have to wait until the SSP changed shifts. Aye, pitiful, cowardly self-defence.

So he gets little sympathy from other residents. But eventually - after more than 24 lurking around the compound - he's able to contact the apartment, and the mom is sent down

she didn't appear to have been followed. I came out. I saw her, and she saw me. The SSP were still in front of the building eating dinner, and 京F E6034 was still by the perimeter with its engine running.

Were you followed? No. Does she need milk powder? Yes. I took it out. Thank you so much. How has life been? Okay. How's the kid's condition? Okay. Have the information channels been opened? (I guess she didn't fully understand this question). So far, so good. Do they let you go out to go shopping? I can go out with no problem, they just don't let Jinyan go out. Are you followed when you go out? No. (I take out my camera) Can you pull this up with a rope and take a few pictures? No, we can't rope things up, they'll notice…..(I didn't understand how they would be able to notice) Have the phones been tapped? (Just now I hadn't understood) Yes. Your means of communication have all been cut off, right? Right. What other information do you want me to help you get out, what else do you want to say? ….There's nothing else we can do, just wait for the government's final decision….you get out of here now, I'm worried you'll be in danger. No problem, I've already been here for 24 hours, and I've scouted things out pretty well, it's no problem.

Jinyan's mom looked shocked. Even if there was no danger, the joy of victory still had me hurrying away and out of the compound.

Jinyan's mom probably won't arouse any suspicion. Judging from her appearance, she's been through a few battles. She even came down carrying a handbag, to put the milk powder in without catching the SSP's attention.

All the way back to Dongguan Bridge I kept chanting Seek and Destroy out loud.

Inspiring!

the press and the powerful

Glen discusses a recent episode of Tucker Carlson -- and god, do I not envy him for having to watch that ass as part of his job -- in which the Scotsman reporter involved in the Powers controversy ("Hillary Clinton's a Monster") discusses journalistic standards. Glen quotes:

CARLSON: What -- she wanted it off the record. Typically, the arrangement is if someone you're interviewing wants a quote off the record, you give it to them off the record. Why didn't you do that?

PEEV: Are you really that acquiescent in the United States? In the United Kingdom, journalists believe that on or off the record is a principle that's decided ahead of the interview. If a figure in public life.

CARLSON: Right.

PEEV: Someone who's ostensibly going to be an advisor to the man who could be the most powerful politician in the world, if she makes a comment and decides it's a bit too controversial and wants to withdraw it immediately after, unfortunately if the interview is on the record, it has to go ahead.

CARLSON: Right. Well, it's a little.

PEEV: I didn't set out in any way, shape.

CARLSON: Right. But I mean, since journalistic standards in Great Britain are so much dramatically lower than they are here, it's a little much being lectured on journalistic ethics by a reporter from the "Scotsman," but I wonder if you could just explain what you think the effect is on the relationship between the press and the powerful. People don't talk to you when you go out of your way to hurt them as you did in this piece.

Don't you think that hurts the rest of us in our effort to get to the truth from the principals in these campaigns?

PEEV: If this is the first time that candid remarks have been published about what one campaign team thinks of the other candidate, then I would argue that your journalists aren't doing a very good job of getting to the truth.

Glen goes on to discuss the horrors of a quiescent American press, and includes some awesome links to interviews British journalists have done with government figures on both sides of the Atlantic.

Regarding the Powers problem itself, Kevin Drum and Matt Yglesias said basically exactly what I would. Sucks that the Clintons are playing into fake outrage games, that the media is playing along, and that a brilliant democratic voice on foreign policy has been driven out of politics. (Yeah, she should have had a bit more restraint. But get over it Hillary... if you don't want to be called a monster, don't be a monster. I thought we were supposed to admire your dirty fighting and vote for you because of it? Oh well.)

comics history

Michael Chabon writes in the New Yorker about his Jewish ethics class as a kid, and how it taught him that

what was found between the covers of a comic book was fantasy, and “fantasy” meant pretty lies, the consumption of which failed to prepare you for what lay outside those covers. Fantasy rendered you unfit to face “reality” and its hard pavement.

Of course, he disagrees. Essay is a great discussion of the superhero costume, with gems such as:

Assemble the collective, all-time memberships of the Justice League of America, the Justice Society of America, the Avengers, the Defenders, the Invaders, the X-Men, and the Legion of Super-Heroes (and let us not forget the Legion of Substitute Heroes), and you will probably find that almost all of them, from Nighthawk to the Chlorophyll Kid, arrive wearing some version of the classic leotard-tights ensemble. And yet—not everyone. Not Wonder Woman, in her star-spangled hot pants and eagle bustier; not the Incredible Hulk or Martian Manhunter or the Sub-Mariner.

Great stuff. (I'd argue that - as per his discussion earlier on capes, masks, helmets, and gauntlets - the type of costume varies with the power level of the hero.)

torture TV

Via AS, Scott Horton at Harpers notes that when he says "torture" in an interview segment, it doesn't air in the US:

I discovered that when I gave interviews to major media on this subject, any time I used the word “torture” with reference to these techniques, the interview passage would not be used. At one point I was informed by a cable news network that “we put this on international, because we can’t use that word on the domestic feed.” “That word” was torture.

I was coached or told that the words “coercive interrogation technique” were fine, but “torture” was a red light. Why? The Administration objected vehemently to the use of this word. After all, President Bush has gone before the cameras and stated more than three dozen times “We do not torture.” By using the T-word, I was told, I was challenging the honesty of the president. You just couldn’t do that. [...]

He then talks about how Surnow created "24" to enable torture, and how Cheney ruthlessly forced the acceptance of "dark side" techniques on the country:

We should start with a frank question: has “24” been created with an overtly political agenda, namely, to create a more receptive public audience for the Bush Administration’s torture policies? I think the answer to that question is now very clear. The answer is “yes.” In “Whatever It Takes,” Jane Mayer has waded through the sheaf of contacts between the show’s producer, Joel Surnow, and Vice President Cheney and figures right around him. There is little ambiguity about this point, namely, if the torture system introduced after 9/11 can be traced back to a single person, it is Vice President Cheney.

Scary as usual. Even scarier is how few people care.

The Horton story itself is fantastic: a full history of the media's relationship with torture, a graph of depictions of torture on network tv (peaks in 2003), echoes of the Algerian war, etc. Great.

FISA history

Link from Glen about the FISA court and its history. (source: Electronic Privacy Information Center - EPIC! No, not that one.) Before 2003 it had NEVER denied the application. As Glen notes, it's crazy that the leftmost position in this debate is the defense of an institution even conservatives suspected as a danger to democracy. It

was considered to be one of the great threats to civil liberties, the very antithesis of how an open, democratic system of government ought to function. The FISA court was long the symbol of how severe are the incursions we've allowed into basic civil liberties and open government.

Glen goes on to describe the series of newspapers and public figures to cast doubt on it over the years. Good piece with broad context of current debate.

Pantload: not just horribly wrong, but boring too

More from Dave -- roundup of some more reviews savaging the Doughy One. ("Tedious and inane")