iCloud may have been hacked by ancient trick

According to reports A simple brute force attack seems the likely culprit at this point in the investigation. That'is simply inexcusable. The basics of a brute force attack are repeated password guessing until the attacking program and computer hit upon the correct password. It's really only a matter of time if no lock-outs are issued after say..three tries. That's a pretty standard number of attempts before an account lock-out is issued. The iCloud HAD no such measure in place.

I remember discussing this kind of simple attack 15 years ago with a then 13 year old programmer from across the country. 15 YEARS AGO! He wanted me to write a password generator for him to break into a single not for profit website of no real substance. Of course I did not even give him a hint as to where to start, but he ultimately hacked the forums of the site. The lad was so proud. Kids..Sheesh!

BTW, I have no idea who Dam Kaminsky--chief scientist for Whiteops.com--is, but whatever he is smoking, I would give it a trial.

The iCloud hole was an airplane hangar door. The simplest answer is most often the correct one. No desktop compromise was needed. None is indicated. Ockham's Razor applied to computer forensics. Hackers being hacked? Nahhhh!

If it turns out that this Kaminsky bloke is correct, I will eat my hat, your hat, and anyone else that wants a hat consumed.

In humorous and related news Apple stock was actually up a bit last I checked. Oh what delicious irony.

"Man, those are some frigid bitches"

On the lighter side* it is being reported that famous Russian geckos sent into orbit to do "the nasty" have all returned freeze-dried. Some headlines are, or course, better than others. My favorite bit of journalistic hooliganism is this: Russia in Mourning over the Death of Its Space Love Geckos. Unsurprisingly to me, fruit flies..you know it just has to be Drosophila melanogaster...on the same flight did not expire. I had to breed those little bio-markers of evolution many a time, and the only time I was able to extinguish them was when I knocked them out with ether prior to sorting for traits and forgot about my brood over a weekend. Other than that, even my sorting damaged nary a one.

Fear not gentle reader, I still got top marks(98%?) in that biology class. I do not recall what I told the teacher about my fruit fly disaster, but it must have been a sound lie.

* I adore all forms of life. Okay, a lot fewer ticks and brain eating amoebae. I could also do without ebola virus which really is not alive on its own--so the side is only lighter as to being less dire than most of my posts as of late. I trust that this honest disclosure will restore my nearly universal adoration and awe of all things natural.

Yes. We suck at science, but money is not the fix Plus more on ebola and social issues

While this piece makes one of basic claims about science--that the US needs to invest in basic research--it also will not likely get basic research re-funded. Why? Because our lawmakers are largely scientifically illiterate, and cannot seem to simply fund basic research for they are in constant re-election mode, and have no sense of awe and wonder it instills to those that choose career paths in basic research.

Behind saving the habitabilty of the planet for future generations of H. sapiens, this is my number two issue.

We are not raising kids on the whole with anything remotely like the scientific and mathematic abilities to even have a real shot at a science major at even the undergrad level at a really fine school. No, political science does not count as science.

It does start at home. Parents cannot tell a child why the sky appears blue, so unless a child goes in search of real answers to these kinds of questions, they are given false answers at best, and at worst 'blown off' by their parents. I grew up in a household where one parent rejoiced in my constant questioning, whilst the other only appreciated manual labor and other provincial pursuits. Yes. I was a precocious pain in the ass. But I keep asking questions 50 years later.

Today's ebola message..

Okay, so it is not aboout ebola per se, but concerns itself with West African countries suffering food shortages due to panic buying and other factors. In some of the poorest countries on earth, supply and demand still reign supreme. At this point it looks much like other price spikes wherein the costs increase in advance of unknown future supplies. *sigh*

I could put more down about health workers stricken with ebola--as well as their families--but you can find these things out for yourselves.

Opinions and data...on ebola.

I found two Op-Ed pieces today. One is spot-on accurate, and illustatrates the sociology involved in a thoughtful, lucid manner. An excellent read.

The other Op-Ed is penned by two 'infectious disease physicians,' and is somewhat more speculative, whilst illuminating a real disconnect between "Western Medicine" and that which is being dispensed in the ebola epidemic today.

I confirmed the CFR for Marburg in sub-Saharan Africa. Data here.

It is claimed by some(not by this author) than H. sapiens is an intelligent species. If we grant that, then we must also grant that altruistic behavior is most certainly not a universal given in the species. Sad, but I think that statement will stand up to close scrutiny.

Upload nude pics., and you're 'exposing' yourself...Der.

If you upload risque photos of yourself you may get burned. Sure, Apple has some explaining to do regarding iCloud security, but if people had less ego issues, this would not be an issue. Even if the paaswords to all these 'exposed' people were gleaned from different websites..and this is specious, Apple should use a combination of hardware authentication, as well as at least double authentication protocols. Making things simple for users also makes things simple for those that would like access to your data.

I do not like to promote software as I am developer, but using LastPass and having your passwords automatically changed every two weeks--or less frequently if you visit the site less frequently--is not a bad idea.

I am not terribly paranoid, but I now use the longest passwords a site will allow and if I lose my LastPass password, I would be pretty well screwed. Oh, my Lastpass password is updated on a 14 day schedule as well.

All public clouds are just that. Apple and others should use a three tries and lock the MAC address of the device attempting access out. There are lots of other ways to verify user credentials, but people want simplicity. This is not a good thing for security. The linked article does seem to excuse Apple, but that is foolishly premature. As of early this AM, Apple had yet to comment.

I do not know how the iCloud was compromised, and neither does the author of the article.

Remember kids, do not post nudies anywhere where they might be compromised.

On Edit: According to this ZDNet piece, Apple has patched a security flaw in the too aptly named "Find My iPhone" service. Henceforth to be known as "Find Anything About Me Via My iPhone" service.

I should offer full disclosure: I have an Android phone running KitKat, but I have everything Google related set to "Ask Me" or NFW. My Google Drive acct. has three utterly useless docs enclosed, and I don't take photos with a cell phone. I have a DSLR and two CMOS pocket cams with which to take pictures....Picasa has no privileges. I KNOW Google knows lots about me, but for now I can tolerate their draconian terms of service agreement. 'Tis a sad day when Microsoft has by far the best ToS agreement.

Oh great..an open atheist is running for US Congress

I long for the good old days when being an atheist automatically excluded excluded one from even bothering to seek a high office in the US. In all seriousness it has always bothered me that a person that suffers from harboring one less god-belief than others was excluded from holding office in many states. As a demogrsaphic, atheists have exceedingly low rates of the kinds of social ailments that plague theists. Not believing in anything that does not pass muster in the realm of scientific scrutiny should be lauded. Thankfully, there are less theocratic societies where this is indeed the case.

I fail to see the need to label one a non-believer in any realm where science has said: "Well mebbe, but there ain't no evidence for such a belief."

All labels do is divide us at an absolutely critical time in history when we must be united in order to move forward on leaving the planet habitable for future generations of humans.

One will see that I squarely place science deniers into the 'magical thinking' camp. I have yet to meet a denier of scientific findings that is not biased by fore-determined conclusions. I always ask them the quantify their unbeleif in the findings of science, and I have never gotten even one equation out of any of them--and their numbers are not small. Living in New Hampshire with out 'first in the nation presidential primary' gives me terrific opportunities every four years to grill candidates and their surrogates regarding science literacy. In the past it was worse than I could imagine, but now I have resigned science literacy to the level of simply awful.

It really is nonsense that people that likely hold less magical thinking are pretty much excluded from being elected to high office. Oh well.

Even more ebola...

Now that Senegal has had its first confirmed ebola patient, that brings the number of the West African countries that have had at least one confirmed case to five. I should note that the Senegalese patient likely was infected in Guinea whist attending a funeral there and in assisted in taking care of two relatives with ebola.

Things are really getting out of control in many places as rioting in Guinea erupted after a rumor had spread that "we had sprayed the market[with Ebola virus] in order to transmit the virus to locals."

In The Gambia--where there have no confirmed cases of ebola as of this moment-- the WHO has sent material support to aid in suveillance of suspected ebola cases. The news is quite sparse at this juncture, but given The Gambia's size, a thorough examination of persons entering and leaving via roads and waterways does not seem unlikely. Well, ask and sometimes you get confirmation of your suspicions. The Gambia seems pretty well locked down. This is a very positive thing that was done prior to the WHO's new commitment to The Gambia.*

*I use "The Gambia" as that is the true name of the country. "Gambia" is probably acceptable--and when I was there in 1995 the natives did call it simply "Gambia," but I will go with current naming conventions.

One More Before I Call It..

"Poli-Sci"? Really, it only gets a mention due to funding by people that are largely unaware of science. *Heavy sigh* Oh, I am listening to Pink Floyd's terrific album "Meddle" as I type this, but am in no other way under the influence of psychedelic drugs. Other drugs may apply. By the way "Fearless" is my favorite Floyd song that rarely gets air play.
Moving right along....I had better finish this before I am swept away. My GF claims that my twice per year 'indulgences' are very cleansing. Perhaps.

The EU needs good science policy. But does that mean it needs a Chief Scientific Adviser? Bollocks!

What every group needs is an incorruptible being that has nothing more to prove. Since politicians everywhere seem to need harsh language--or a 10 meter cattle prod--in order to get off their duffs and actually do something, "listen the fuck up" does not appear to be too strong a way of phrasing. Insrall a Nobel Laureate with the requisite 170+ I.Q. and be done with it!

Okay, now I am really off.

I am totally off-base here, but....

...much like the equities markets, the low hanging fruit in the Real Estate(RE) market has been picked in most markets. People with a vested interest in the Northeast US continue to bang the drum that the market has not topped. This is not true in the Boston, MA market where the deals were to had in 2008-2009. Yes, yes, I am a real estate investor--as opposed to a speculator--and perfectly decent homes that sold for(I am using a unique situation here as I may buy the property) slightly over 200K in 2010 are not getting nibbles at 165K. There is NO easy 35K to be made here. The only reason I am posting this in my sci-rech blog is that Marketwatch is not playing well with any of my three installed browsers. Marketwatch has most of the story correct.

I just wanted to add my $0.01 to the comments section, but no dice.

Okay, I am done venting.

It continues to be an off day. Who would have thought that a card carrying materialist would be so bowled over by the loss of a feline friend? Not I. And yet, here we are. I hope to be back in the science game tomorrow. As for now, I fear that I can only inflict damage so I am off.

Peace be with you and yours,

Todd

I lost a dear friend last night, and other observations

My Cat Jed died last night. No, that's not an excessive use of caps. It is how I have referred to him over the past 16 years. My Cat Jed was stolid until the very end. I will miss him dearly.

In My Cat Jed's honor I planted six balloonflower(Platycodon grandiflorus) today after burying him in the family's pet cemetery. *Heavy Sigh*

In crass consumerism the Internet is awash with rumors concerning the iPhone6. It is a phone, people. The phrase "imagined appetite" immediately leaps to mind. Full disclosure: I have owned one Apple product. It was an iPod that was given to me by client. Being in technology, shiny and new is only impressive when it does something either 10x less expensive and/or 10x better than that which it is replacing. Otherwise, it is simple evolution and that is hardly reason for excitement in any but the biological sense.

I know that I accuse most everyone(hey, that's only 50.1%!) of the populace as being functionally illiterate when it comes to science and technology when science and technology have never been more important in our lives, but at least Canadians are interested in science. Calling the Canadian populace 'scientifically literate' is stretching that thread too thin.

Ironically, in a sidebar on the webpage containing the glowing report on Canadians and their relative scientific literacy, there is this: Canada’s math, science lag bad for economy, report says.

So, Canadians seem greatly interested in science, but they largely cannot do the maths.(nod to my British audience)

At any rate, Canada is helluva lot better off than we here in the US.

Science denial is worlds simpler than developing the tools to proffer quantifiable commentary on scientific issues.

Unfortunately, those least able to deny the findings of science are the quickest to deny that which they have no toolkit to deny via quantification. This anti-intellectualism without validation is one of the scariest things confronting all of us. Okay, enough about that..now onto the follies of science.

There are scientists that are so wedded to either a pet theory and/or what amounts to scientific dogmatism that they are as bad for progress as the science deniers. Thankfully, the scientific method ultimately prevails and new paradigms and deeper understandings are arrived upon. In science, showing that your peers are wrong is lauded. It is unfortunate that this adulation may come too late for an individual scientist.

I could keep flooding the Internet with nonsense about this topic, but I will simply give an illustration.

How Oswald Avery: Discoverer of DNA as genetic information carrier was never awarded a Nobel. Almost everyone thought genetic information had to be carried by some protein structure. Avery discovered otherwise. But his discovery was not immediately heralded. Oswald T. Avery, died in 1955. No posthumous Nobels are awarded. That is a shitty thing.

Fish teaches itself to "walk"...with disclaimers :)

This is really cool. I saw this yesterday, but didn't hit upon the correct article. Bichir fish have always been fascinating. I would put mudskippers in the same tent(it is a big tent!). I thought that this was going to be a simple Tiktaalik redux. Was I ever wrong.

Fish raised out of water develop steady walking gait, Canadian researcher finds . The most fascinating thing to me is that the fry forced into a terrestrial existence lost the ability to swim. Astonishingly, the terrestrial birchirs modify body posture AND some features of their anatomy in order to better locomote. In reading one finds that the fish used in the experiment were not raised generation after generation so that selection does not come into play. The fish have the capacity sans any breeding program. Bichirs of normal environmental rearing have the ability to "walk," but not nearly as well as the terrestrially raised brood in the experiment.

LaMarckian nonsense is not going on here. The abilities and structure changes are obviously available in the current fish's genome.

If this sort of thing interests you in even a wee amount, open the link, read more, and watch video of "walking" fish.

Oh, and I am not "dissin'" Neil Shubin et al's discovery of Tiktaalik. That discovery was monumental. The transition from fishes to tetrapods is one of the greatest moments* in the history of evolution. Tiktaalik also definitively demonstrated the predictive power of evolutionary theory.

Hey, a happy entry!

*Yes. I know it was more than a moment when measured against the timescale of a human life. In geological terms, it happened pretty fast.

You know you have issues when.....

....brain-eating amoebae have taken up residence in the municipal water supply.

Things really are linked. Just the other day I was going to post this similar story as a tie-in to global climate change.

Louisiana just can't catch a break.

Is it only a coincidence that incidence of N. fowleri seems to be closely matched to the Mississippi River system? Surely I cannot be the only person to have made this observation. No. I am not speculating that "Old Man River" is a natural reservoir for brain-eating amobae. I shall remain mute on the subject until further evidence sways me one way or the other. Minnesota is the anomalous state where one wouldn't expect cases of a warm water amoeba...and yet.

I truly hope that the situation in LA is taken care of post-haste.

And now for something completely different.. Mosquito vector illnesses!

No Lyme and no ebola..this time.

I live in central New Hampshire, USA and vector-borne pathogens we got.

Eastern Equine Encephalitis(EEE) has been found in New Hampshire mosquitoes. Again. Oh, we still have our old friend West Nile Virus(WNV) about, and whilst it can be a really nasty infection, EEE is far worse.

It looks like both of these vector-borne pathogens are here to stay.

Just yesterday aerosol insecticides were again sprayed as people will no doubt be out and about this weekend--it is a US national holiday weekend.

To the best of my knowledge no 2014 confirmed cases of either WNV or EEE infecting humans. In fact, I am unaware as to any WNV having been found in 2014 in the state via the usual sampling methods.

Since I live a hundred meters from a large, slow moving river I do not even bother with DEET repellant. I treat my boots and clothing with a very weak permethrin solution. Permethrin is good protection against mosquitoes, and is really effective against those small arachnids which shall not be named in this entry.

Enjoy the outdoors!

More Ebola!

As I suspected(see most of my any entries concerning the West African ebola outbreak), things are likely far, far worse than the official reports that have simply implanted numbers in lieu of confirmation of additional cases. Now the WHO is reporting that the West African ebola outbreak could exceed 20,000 cases before it is extinguished. The dope:

The World Health Organisation said Thursday it aimed to reverse the spread of Ebola within three months, but warned that the caseload in West Africa's epidemic could eventually top 20,000.

In a new anti-Ebola plan, the UN health agency said it aimed to reverse the trend within three months, with the final aim of stopping "all residual transmission within 6-9 months".

It said the current case-count -- 3,062, with 1,552 deaths -- was likely several times lower than the actual number, and that the number of infections "could exceed 20,000 over the course of this emergency".

"This Roadmap assumes that in many areas of intense transmission the actual number of cases may be 2-4 fold higher than that currently reported," it said.

"It acknowledges that the aggregate case load of (Ebola) could exceed 20,000 over the course of this emergency," it added.

The plan called for a massive ramping up of efforts to contain and defeat the epidemic.

It put a price tag of $490 million on a six-month campaign, saying the money would need to come from WHO coffers as well as other aid agencies and governments.

Now that is sobering. The "final aim of stopping '"all residual transmission within 6-9 months"' is really eye opening as that time frame is to begin once the new influx of monies and personnel are in place and working.

I think that it can safely be said at this juncture that no one really knows just what the fuck is going on with this new strain of ebola and just how large of an issue this epidemic is becoming.

Since lots of my speculations do come to pass(anyone buy an Amazon Fire phone?) I will allow myself a bit of speculation here. This strain of ebola--with its nearly 400 mutations--has become more easily transmissible in human-to-human contact. I make no claim as to which route this transmission takes, but if one looks at the clues, one can see that it really does strongly appear different this time.

New strain. Staggering amounts of health workers infected, and once the mutations were published in Science, countries started pulling medical personnel out the embattled area. Now none of this is evidence of a new mode off transmission, but I must speculate every week or so about something.

So far I think that my observations concerning the West African Ebola Outbreak of 2014 have been quite accurate.

Oh, a couple of things.

Yesterday, I used the acronym "CFR" without an explanation. In that instance CFR stood in for "Case Fatality Rate."

I should add that my speculations are only that. I certainly hope that this new strain of ebola has not made the species jump into easy human-to-human transmission. That would be really bad. I only offer an easier mode as pure speculation backed up by no facts. I really, really hope that my speculation proves false.

More Ebola.

Yes. It is a new strain. Lots of mutations vs other strains.

he Ebola strains responsible for the current outbreak are likely to have a common ancestor, dating back to the very first recorded outbreak in 1976.

The researchers revealed the lineage responsible for the current outbreak diverged from the Middle African version of the virus within the last decade and spread from Guinea to Sierra Leone by 12 people who had attended the same funeral.

The team's catalog of 395 mutations (over 340 that distinguish the current outbreak from previous ones and over 50 within the West African outbreak) may serve as a starting point for other research groups.

"We've uncovered more than 300 genetic clues about what sets this outbreak apart from previous outbreaks," said researcher Stephen Gire.

"Although we don't know whether these differences are related to the severity of the current outbreak, by sharing these data with the research community, we hope to speed up our understanding of this epidemic and support global efforts to contain it."

This was reported in the journal Science, so it had to be vetted by true experts in the field. 395 mutations. Perhaps the transmissibility of this strain of ebola differs from those for which more is known.

No more ebola today. I promise.

No. I am not anti-gun. I am anti-stupid.

9 year old girl kills 'instructor' with Uzi on full auto. The now deceased 'instructor,' a Mr. Charles Vacca is hereby nominated for a Darwin.

Lest anyone think I am an anti-gun crusader, the evidence is not there. I held my Federal Firearms License(FFL) for 9 years. I had my own little shop as well. I was hardly Wal-Mart. I would not sell any firearm to perhaps 30% of my potential customers. Sure, it took time to fully explain The Second Amendment to the US Constitution to people that I did not believe neither trained well enough, nor sufficiently in control of their faculties to responsibly handle and care for a firearm, but I slept well every night.

I took--and take--the "well regulated" phrase of the Second Amendment in its proper context. Insufficient training and/or discipline were the two properties that I used to judge a person worthy or not to purchase any firearm.

I was fortunate enough to never have a real incident with a potential customer that even escalated to the raised voices degree. I handed out a lot of supporting documents.

I shuttered the store in 1998.

More Ebola.... From Guinea to the DRC

Things are seemingly very fluid on the ground in efforts to contain the West African ebola outbreak as people quarantined in Liberia trying to escape are reportedly being fired on using live rounds by that country's military. Simultaneously, foreign aid workers are being pulled, with Canada pulling a team out being but the latest extraction.

One of two ebola testing facilities in Sierra Leone has been shut down due to a Senegalese epidemiologist becoming infected at the lab.

Yes, I am now getting into the sociology of the epidemic. From all news reports it is maddeningly difficult to get a sense as to what the state of things really are in West Africa. The WHO has stated that health workers are becoming ill and subsequently dying at an "unprecedented rate."

One reads things like 'we're hopeful,' and 'it appears that the worst may be behind the outbreak,' and yet the situation on the ground is anything remotely like stable as of the time of this entry. One has to think that the WHO is putting the best face on public statements. Just what the reality is remains well guarded sets of data.

Meanwhile, in the Democratic Republic of Congo(DRC), it is still being claimed that the Congolese outbreak is a different strain of ebola. This is entirely reasonable given that--according to the WHO-- the two strains of ebola in previous outbreaks of ebola in DRC have been the devastatingly lethal Zaire strain(up to 90% motality rate) and the Bundibugyo strain(50% motality rate). Given the distance between the ongoing West African outbreak and DRC unless someone(s) made it across hundreds of miles of west and central Africa, this really does look like a separate event. Believe me, it was not easy to come to that conclusion given all the issues that Africa has had over the past 50 years. I would not put money on it either way. I still don't yet know for certain that "Ebola Guinea" is a new strain. How could I know?

I just got a distillation of news stuffs about the new DRC outbreak. Features:

13 Probable Ebola Deaths & 565 Suspect In DR Congo

Recombinomics Commentary 18:15
August 26, 23:00

· Declaration of the epidemic by the Minister of Public Health August 24, 2014
· 13 people died of the disease (CFR 54%), including five health workers, about 24 cases suspects (16 women and 8 men)
· 11 people segregated
· 24 cases (16 women and 8 men) of Ebola virus disease outbreak in the area of health Boende, from July 28 to August 18, 2014 · 80 contacts identified for monitoring
· 4 positive samples from eight after a second analysis INRB
· 565 suspected cases investigated with gastroenteritis, diarrhea and vomiting.
· Index case identified Ikanamongo (100 km Boende): a woman who died on August 11 after consuming bushmeat hunted by her husband and that has contaminated your doctor and husband.
· yet unidentified strain between Zaire and Sudan. Awaiting the results from the laboratory in Franceville (Gabon).

Pieces d' origine: If my French is bad, it is because my French IS bad.

I think that the data is mostly good as I just got the following headline: Ebola epidemic declared in Congo


I do not believe that I have ever posted that I have been to West Africa. I went on a multiple country trip in 1995. I went to Gambia(official language is English), Guinea, Senegal, and Mali. It was a combination of business and pleasure. It is not unclear to me just how spending time in Africa has colored my impressions of the ebola outbreak. I do know that I have always been fascinated in the natural world. If I had a clue as to what I wanted to do before committing to my academic training, I would not have chosen engineering. My working career has been a lot of fun, and highly rewarding financially, but I do not find it especially self-actualizing. While solving a vexing problem is not without its charms, I have rarely gotten ecstatic in my work. I feel metamotivated much of the time, just not while pursuing my vocation.

I do love me some applied botany!

'Tis a good day when it begins with an hour plus of applied botany. Today is that kind of day. With the forecast to potentially hit 90 F today, an hour early and an hour late of applied botany will be good. The UVI is only reported as "5," but there is nary a cloud in sight, and things are bright and heating up quite rapidly.

Any science news?

Since we have a plant theme going....an analysis suggests that out blue rock can potentially handle a lot more floral bio-mass than previously thought. Of course the facts on the ground are sobering. Heck, even I have to fight with invasive species; two are only largely kept at bay. Evil Bittersweet Vine and the awfuller Japanese Knotweed. If you read the linked article, you will see why I did not even make an attempt at anything like a segue into my floral nemeses.

I know that I am stupid so I do not see why attempting to keep the earth's population at 7+ billions of humans is a good thing. Stuff is gonna breakdown real fast, real soon.

I will go with that theme. I read The Population Bomb, and while things have not worked out in the book's timeline, the underlying premises are--if anything--even more relevant today.

The book was not a simple Malthusian redux, but a warning. Sure, some of the criticism of the book's scenarios are spot-on, but that seems almost entirely relegated to the timeline, not the central issues. Yes, it was alarmist. But the book did much to raise awareness on a large--and popular--scale. Unfettered reproduction has not been the same since to those with both a working memory and no rose colored spectacles. I have lived with the knowledge for roughly 45 years.

The have-nots are becoming the have-some, and will surely claim that they have every right to live as many currently do in the Western World. So, what to do with a small planet that simply cannot provide bounty for all?

Negative population growth(NPG) seems the reasonable--and achievable answer. I, for one, am not holding my breath.

I think I will go water some plants...using self-captured rainwater, in a vessel made of woven local reeds, of course :)

On Edit: I read about the 63 trillion gallons of water lost to (mostly) irrigate the desert in the US southwest days ago, but didn't read this bit:

Rampant dependency on water has become a more focal point of environmental advocacy groups more so than ever in recent years as drought has threatened water supplies in even developed countries such as the U.S. Americans use nearly 400 billion gallons of water every day as a whole, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. In Europe, the average household uses nearly half of the amount as Americans. On average, American households use around 100,000 gallons per year — meaning the 63 trillion gallon loss amounts to nearly half a year of total water use and multiple years worth of household use.

Is it really any surprise that--assuming the statement is accurate--people in the US use--on average-twice as much water per capita as out counterparts in Europe?

I just thought that the water resource issue hooked in really well with my dire post of earlier today. Bottoms up!

Good thing we have all that unused bio-mass just-a-waitin' to be exploited.

More Confirmation of The Standard Model..it's a QM universe, baby!

Quantum mechanics is truly weird.However, nearly all of the predictions of The Standard Model have proven accurate to our ability to measure the phenomena. The things that physicists haven't yet found are still yet to be discovered.

It appears that at least one of The Model's "heavy" baronsmay have experimental support.

For what it is worth, the Physics Hypertextbook referenced in link #1 is a very, very cool reference. If you take that fine work, and use Stephen Wolfram's fabulous Wolfram Alpha for solution assistance, the world will turn. I find it odd that wolfram Alpha is a pay for app...it is however, more than worth the 3 bucks if you really need it even once. I am really frugal, and I bought the app. It makes lots of things too easy. I'd opt for Alpha Pro if I didn't have Mathematica at the ready. Mathematica knows everything :)

Oh, yes. This is a good day for particle physics!

Ebola - New outbreak, and updated graph

New ebola outbreak in DRC(Democratic Republic of Congo) confirmed. It is very new, so it is unclear which strain this is; given that it is in the DRC, both Ebola Zaire and Ebola Sudan are likely suspects. Other reports claim that as many as 13 have died in the DRC outbreak.

It should be noted that this outbreak is almost certainly unrelated to the West African ebola outbreak which "officials" claim is a different strain. I believe that much can be well stated.

In editorial commentary concerning the West African ebola outbreak this author claims that "ebola debates turn everyone into an expert." The author--perhaps correctly--pens that everyone with an opinion about what to do with experimental drug therapies is an instant expert on "clinical trials, drug pipelines, investigational medicines, and ethics." This may be spot on, but I don't follow the sociology behind the outbreak so I simply do not know. It is a good, quick read.

Meanwhile, I whipped up a graph that I have extended to 1 Sept. concerning the West African ebola outbreak.

I have taken a tiny liberty in extending the figures to 1 Sept., but given what is likely to be the true numbers of cases and deaths, I think that--if anything--an upward revision will be required at some point. It's pretty crude as I did it on my phone at breakfast.

I hope that I am wrong.

Daily Ebola Update!

The WHO has reported that the number of confirmed deaths due the West African ebola outbreak is now at 1,350.

In other ebola news a hospital patient in Sacramento, CA is being tested for ebola. Just why the media keeps reporting that "ebola doesn't spread through airborne....methods" when ebola has been definitively shown to capable of spreading via this very method under unusual circumstances. A flat out denial is false. People in Africa need the truth. Sure, it would be uncommon, but not out of the bounds of the possible. The True Story of Ebola in Reston, Virginia. See esp. the quote by Peter Jahrling.

It seems to this interested person that Africans need all the data.

Did you know that the contiguous 48 states have seen ebola(unrelated to the current outbreak) fully three times? Reston, Va was the site of two of these ebola zones, and the third was Alice, TX. All three contaminations were with the Reston strain of ebola which appears to be asymptomatic in at least healthy humans..immunocompromised individuals may be susceptible to ebola-type symptoms. I don't think that anyone really knows at this juncture.

Warning: Political post ahead!

Some things you just cannot make up. Oh-what-a-Rush Limbaugh blamed Robin Williams' suicide on some sort of leftist ideology. How does this opiate addict stay on the air? Has Rush succumbed again to the draw of the altered sap of Papaver somniferum? I have no idea. Since uttering this baseless blather, Rush has since taken the "I don't know" why Williams' committed suicide.

At least one more station has dropped Rush from their line-up, and it seems likely that he is in damage control mode.

Oy!

Your daily ebola update and a bit more..The Sciencey Olympics!

First, West African ebola death toll officially passes 1200. I will extend my little graphic found in this post at the end of August to reflect the new reality. Any reader can see that the slope is headed towards the vertical in the y axis. Things are so bad that no news source is reporting that the worst is past, and the WHO--according to this report is only admitting to some 'encouraging signs.'

Oh, that remainds me, if you use a news aggregator to follow things, news.google, bing news, and Yahoo! news, all pale in comparison to newsnow.co.uk. More sources, and NewsNow's feed setup--presumably an AJAX function--is fresher than fresh. NewsNow gets you the story before it hits the 'Net.

I think I'll call this one "The Sport of Science"

I know just how big a part a some people's lives the viewing of sports is..sports viewing, along with religion and politics are the three things that most people seem to care about as it is these areas where they have the deepest knowledge bases. Of course most of what people think that they really know about both politics and religion can easily be disassembled via facts and/or reason. Not so with sports.

In the end none of what they believe sans data to back it up is worth anything at all. That's why I get a wee bit excited when scientific disciplines get sportsy labels. These events have been going on since 1959--in mathematics, at least--yet who knows about the International Science Olympiad?

In the USA, where almost everything is dependent on science and technology, almost no one knows anything substantive about science and technology. Lest you think I jest, ask a fellow citizen for a working description of radio. A technology that has been with us for more than a century. It may as well be magic to most. I know that I am not going to make any difference, as I don't believe anyone reads this blog, but it is good to read that in some parts of the world science and technology indeed have their superstars.

I have intellectual heroes. Two living Americans that I admire greatly for their intellectual agility are Stephen Wolfram and Alan Guth. I met Alan Guth and Noam Chomsky while I did summer work at MIT. Chomsky is certainly no intellectual lightweight, but mathematicians are a special kind of genius. Murray Gell-Mann has to receive a word as well.

I am not often thought a blockhead, but intelligence is a sliding scale. These people are giants.

Stupid 911 tricks, and Ebola Outbreak confirmed as worser and worser

Dammitalltahell! I am receiving a new shiny new street address due to some weird 911 non-compliance issue. I have had this address for thirty years. 911 has been mistakenly called from my humble abode, and the local constabulary was here in perhaps two minutes. The error was due to a one-time calling issue wherein the party being caleed had "911" within the sequence of her phone number. So, I have to notify everyone on the planet that our fair municipality has left me with this albatross. Much profanity has been issued from my mouth, and no doubt ore will be forthcoming.

In real sciency news the West African ebola outbreak is far worse than expected. I have posted about this very likelihood a few times. Time for another blockquote!

"Staff at the outbreak sites see evidence that the numbers of reported cases and deaths vastly underestimate the magnitude of the outbreak."

Canada offers up to 1,000 Ebola vaccines Husband: Ebola victim 'getting stronger' How Ebola got out of control Ebola claimed many lives in this family Dr. Gupta: Why we shouldn't fear Ebola Though the United Nations agency did not provide an estimate of unreported cases, it said it's teaming up with the affected countries to gather more intelligence from the ground.

"WHO is mapping the outbreak, in great detail, to pinpoint areas of ongoing transmission and locate treatment facilities and supplies," the statement said.

It's also working with other agencies, including the World Food Program, to feed about 1 million people quarantined in villages in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone.

"Our team are not in direct contact with Ebola quarantine and treatment centers," said Fabienne Pompey, spokeswoman for World Food Program. "We deliver food to the medical staff and they are in charge of the distribution."

As experts scramble to contain the outbreak, health officials are considering the use of experimental treatments and vaccines, since no proven ones exist.

The Wall Street Journal is reporting that the outbreak could last another six months. Leave it to the business press to not sugar coat issues. I think that WSJ stinks as a source for editorial comment, but the entire business press is the least likely to don the rose colored glasses before penning an article.

Beware of statements made by non-ebola experts. I have read everything I can about ebola since circa 1980, and I only trust a few sources for straight talk about ebola. United States Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases(USAMRIID)has been at the forefront of ebola research, and some members of the CDC have like experience. Although it is likely that there a members of the World Health Organization(WHO) that have expertise in ebola, I don't use the WHO as a source for ebola data save for counting numbers.

One odd thing is that during the US ebola episode involving crab eating monkeys imported from Asia it was confirmed that "Ebola Reston" was transmissible via the aerosol route. This is NOT the same as airborne transmission.

Here's the latest dope. The situation in Reston, VA was admittedly odd as large numbers of simians were packed together in cages, but when a health worker and/or family member is caring for a person stricken with ebola similar proximities are established.

I will wrap this up as I need to go for a run.

What really needs to be established--and this has been explored since 1976 with only limited success--is finding and controlling the host species in nature in which ebola circulates. The natural reservoirs need to be fleshed out so that humans are at least alerted to the possibility that this or that critter in the forset could be a vector.

Here is an interesting look at a possible means for the current devastating outbreak. Dead it. It is speculative, but raises really important questions.

Off to abuse my cardiovascular system.

Changing the theme of the blog is intellectually satisfying, but pols are much easier to write about..Of Mice and Men

I see that Gov. Rick Perry(R-Tekksus) had been indicted on felony charges. Oh how the one-time presidential candidate has fallen.

Enough about pols and their dandy ways.

As my gentle reader knows, I am all about surviving. I am not really keen on passing on my bit of the human genome into an unknown future, so I had better make this life a damned good one. I have written some about antibiotic stockpiling for an unforeseen event. I have also never taken any ABX that were not prescribed to me. Two AB exposures in my life to this point is all. Be prepared, but don't be stupid. If anyone thinks that ABX are like vitamins, the following should give them cause to eat them like "One-A-Days."

Early antibiotic exposure leads to lifelong metabolic disturbances in mice. Another good reason to only use antibiotics(ABX) when they are really needed. Of course mice and humans don't share ALL metabolic processes, but why take unnecessary risks?

This really needs a blockquote.

...The new study by NYU Langone Medical Center researchers reveals that mice given lifelong low doses of penicillin starting in the last week of pregnancy or during nursing were more susceptible to obesity and metabolic abnormalities than mice exposed to the antibiotic later in life.

Most intriguing, in a complementary group of experiments, mice given low doses of penicillin only during late pregnancy through nursing gained just as much weight as mice exposed to the antibiotic throughout their lives.

"We found that when you perturb gut microbes early in life among mice and then stop the antibiotics, the microbes normalize but the effects on host metabolism are permanent," says senior author Martin Blaser, MD, the Muriel G. and George W. Singer Professor of Translational Medicine, director of the NYU Human Microbiome Program, and professor of microbiology at NYU School of Medicine. "This supports the idea of a developmental window in which microbes participate. It's a novel concept, and we're providing direct evidence for it."

The researchers stress that more evidence is needed before it can be determined whether antibiotics lead to obesity in humans, and the present study should not deter doctors from prescribing antibiotics to children when they are necessary. "The antibiotic doses used in this study don't mirror what children get," says Laura M. Cox, PhD, a postdoctoral fellow in Dr. Blaser's laboratory and the lead author of the study. "But it has identified an early window in which microbes can influence metabolism, and so further studies are clearly warranted."...

Fascinating. The gut bacteria return to normal species and quantities post-AB withdrawal, but the metabolic changes seem permanently altered. The bacterial species seems to be the important bit.

The researchers are looking for the mechanistic clues. Here, I will not speculate as my knowledgebase on the topic is not full enough to venture anything like a thoughtful guess.

However, one might wonder if the trace amounts of ABX that are found in meats just might be a contributing factor to obesity in the general populace. Of course our generally sedentary lifestyles are the main component, but it seems to beg the question. Humankind certainly creates the future for humans. Our collective history screams that we do an awful job in this regard.

If I am the only one that makes this admittedly specious link, so be it. I have to speculate something in nearly every entry. It is science after all, and questions need be raised!

Sometimes Home Ownership Is Just Work...and Other Observances.

As the title suggests, home ownership isn't all fun. On days like today, it is simply drudgery. My neighbors do not care about their landscapes. Due to their lack of caring I have to almost continually hack and slash at non-native invasive species of flora. Today's exercise in futility included Japanese Knotweed(Fallopia japonica) treatment; which anyone that knows about this evil thing, knows it is a many year struggle to eradicate. I also did battle with the nearly as nasty Japanese honeysuckle(Lonicera japonica). As much as am loathe to use glyphosate herbicide, both of these species require it for effective control. I also got rid of some Virginia creeper(Parthenocissus quinquefolia), which is a native species here, but there seem no natural controls that hinder its growth.

It all seems a thankless job, but the 0.75 acres that I have staked out for weed control look better every year. I have nine gardens in this area, so I need to protect my precious plants that I have nurtured as well. Enough about that..

I did find a very odd bit about a member of the pant kingdom. Somehow I can usually segue a personal anecdote into something a lot more interesting. This may be unique in the kingdom of flora. There is a parasitic vine that not only performs the more typical 'behaviors' to its host--wrapping round it, and scoring nutrients and water from its host, but Strangleweed(Cuscuta pentagona) tranfers mRNA with its various host species.

Of course my gentle reader knows that no proteins are formed--in eukaryotes at any rate--without messenger RNA(mRNA). Sure genes code for proteins--and perform other neat tricks--but genes do not make proteins. Here is good summary of how one goes from a gene sequence to actually building the protein for which the gene is coded.

I find it fascinating that a parasitic plant has a sort of symbiotic relationship with its host at the sub-cellular level.

Now why has C. pentagona adapted do this?

Well, it is certainly not via process of thought. It is my blog so I will speculate. (Here's where I spill out some bullshit)

My opinion is that the exchange process turns off the host's defenses. Since most plants aren't really mobile, the defenses are typically chemical weapons. Yes, yes, I know that some plants have insect protectors as well, but these are unusual examples. By co-opting, and transferring mRNA with the host, it seems likely that the host would not recognize the parasite as an alternate form of life. The host reads the mRNA being transferred and there is no state of emergency declared as it 'believes' it to be its very own. I know that my speculation is at odds with what researcher James Westwood(study co-author) told Live Science, but message interception to gather data about the "host plant's growth and development" seems too anthropomorphic to me. Of course we could both be right, and/or wrong.

This really seems like a case of evolutionary convergence, as bacteria swap genetic genetic material across species, and viruses are dormant until they enter a host's cell. Curiouser and curiouser.

That's all I have that is both new and unusual. Plus, it has brevity in its favor :)

It's summer, so wear sunblock!

This entry isn't about tanning. Well, it is and it isn't. I should note that tans are the body's way to attempt to halt further damage to the dermis due to UV-A, and UV-B exposure. Tanning itself--which involves changes in melanin production--is really the body's flaregun signaling dermal distress. Beautiful? Maybe, but too much can age a person in many, many different ways. Don't tan is always good advice.

Now onto today's UV stuff..

Record surface UV-B levels found in Andes. Some people might think that one of the various ozone holes would would certainly claim top honors on surface UV irradiance, but Sol doesn't provide the arctic zones with much energy compared to equatorial regions.

Add in less atmosphere due to elevation, clear skies due to lack of suspended aerosols, and naturally mountainous equatorial regions would seem likely places to find UV records.

In this part of the world, we might see a UV Index of 8 or 9 on a midsummer day. I try and stay indoors on those days. The research team at SETI/NASA recorded a UV Index of 43.3! For reference, a UV Index of 11 is considered extreme. Things may get worse before they get better. Current models predict further ozone thinning in the near-intermediate term(scale of a human lifetime) time scale. While this event resulted in perhaps an almost perfect confluence of several events, the events themselves are anything but rare. No doubt teams of number crunchers are scouring data looking for even higher UV spikes.

I have thought quite a lot about the worldwide collapse of amphibian populations, and while the jury is still out as to the 'whys,' excessive UV radiation does harm the eggs of amphibians. Among other detrimental effects of UV radiation are DNA damage, altering of the photosynthetic process, and changes to larvae...particularly those of an aquatic nature. The outlook is really quite grim.

Weed OD?

Unlike most marijuana evangelists, I make no claim that smoking and/or ingesting delta-9-THC is harmless. There are a couple of interesting studies that illustrate some commonalities between the brains of young, frequent pot smokers and schizophrenics. It's a memory issue. I must have missed having memory and/or cognitive issues from smoking MJ, due only to lack of frequency of use.

Enough about that. This is about the lawsuit against the a pot dispensary over a marijuana/THC overdose.

The plaintiff claims hat he was repeatedly told that there was no MJ/THC in the chocolate he consumed. I have no reason to doubt his claim. He claims he was "projectile vomiting" and "hallucinating" among other things. Being 'slipped a mickey' like that could have had far more dire consequences.

I know this from a single experience of marijuana intake via the oral route. I once ate roughly 7 gm of moderately good quality pot. In roughly 90 mins. I was blitzed, and just getting higher. The really heavy effects lasted perhaps 2 hours. The whole experience lasted perhaps 6 hours. If I did not know that I was likely in for a pretty rough ride, I would have been pretty freaked out.

Dosing someone with any intoxicant is plainly irresponsible, and potentially very dangerous. At this early stage I am inclined to side firmly with the plaintiff, as unknown "free theater tickets" are a recipe for disaster. It will happen at some point. Unsecured edible marijuana products are going to result in deaths by negligence. I strongly suspect that these deaths will be due to 'accidents,' and that makes it all seem worse. Potent pot unknowingly given to the uninitiated can be pretty scary indeed.
I hope that Coloradans get better control on what could be a real crisis. Stoned people aren't generally the most responsible with their stash; and that was before it was legal. One can easily see heads getting very loose with their weed. Someone will pay. No drug is without consequences. Cannabis is likely the most likely to cause harm when used responsibly. Colorado and Coloradans need a good dose of responsibility. Then they should be able to better dispense cannabis products.

When it comes to what you or me wish to put into our own bodies, I am very liberally minded. The WoD(War on drugs) continues to be an abject failure. However, if even cannabis users cannot abide by simple rules, that doesn't peak well of the larger sphere of intoxicant users. You alcohol and tobacco users know what I am talking about.

Another "Supermoon?"

One would think that full moon being a "Super" should denote something wondrous. Oh, it will be really Super tomorrow night(08.10.2014). But it really won't be that super. Any full moon that occurs during the top ten percent of perigee(closest to earth in this case). The gag is on the media. This full moon is barely outside the 90th percentile. Why label something when you do not possess enough knowledge to use the label?

Of course humans have to catalog everything. I will not be watching..although we are predicted to have a very good sky for viewing. Go and read the space.com article. It is good for elucidation and a few chuckles.

We will likely never see a real Supermoon--unless the earth-moon system destabilizes due to some cosmic impactor, or at least a close call--but the Supermoons I would find wondrous would be those early moon passes of, say, 4 billions years ago. The earth-moon system was at pretty roughly 0.5 its current mean distance.

Now we can get sort of sciencey. According to Newton's Law of Gravitation(inverse square of the distance between mass centers) the earth-moon system should be stable, but there is another factor in play. Tidal forces. Both of the terrestrial and oceanic types. This generates friction between the two masses. Why? Because the earth is not precisely elastic, and that transfers angular momentum from the earth to the moon, resulting in both the moon's recession over time and the slowing of its speed relative to the earth..which is slowing down as well. Those full moons would have been something to see.

The moon will be biggish, but let us not call it "Super" as it does not technically meet the criteria.

I should note here that the above explanation of the history of the earth-moon system is really lacking in detail. I think that anymore detail would result in seizures and irritable bowels.

Tick Vector Meat Allergies and Ebola

Hey, it is Happy Friday!

The first bit I have known about for some time. The link between some tick bites and an allergic reaction to red meats is not new, but the mechanism now seems understood. Read on, gentle reader:

Few patients seem aware of the risk, and even doctors are slow to recognize it. As one allergist who has seen 200 cases on New York's Long Island said, "Why would someone think they're allergic to meat when they've been eating it their whole life?"

The culprit is the Lone Star tick, named for Texas, a state famous for meaty barbecues. The tick is now found throughout the South and the eastern half of the United States.

Researchers think some other types of ticks also might cause meat allergies; cases have been reported in Australia, France, Germany, Sweden, Spain, Japan and Korea.

Here's how it happens: The bugs harbor a sugar that humans don't have, called alpha-gal. The sugar is also is found in red meat - beef, pork, venison, rabbit - and even some dairy products. It's usually fine when people encounter it through food that gets digested.

But a tick bite triggers an immune system response, and in that high-alert state, the body perceives the sugar the tick transmitted to the victim's bloodstream and skin as a foreign substance, and makes antibodies to it. That sets the stage for an allergic reaction the next time the person eats red meat and encounters the sugar.

The mote that the medical community finds out about ticks, the worse the prognosis if one gets bitten. Here is where the Lone Star Tick is found in the US.

There is so little that is really known about tick-vector illnesses, that--as in NH--anyone bitten should get at least a big loading dose of doxycycline. I fully understand that it will not help the alpha-gal allergic reaction, but it does provide prophylaxis against most other bacterial and parasitic illnesses.

Now on to ebola..

Current ebola outbreak possibly far worse than we know. This hardly qualifies as news. Underreporting of ebola is likely the norm. That the official figures could be 50% lower than actual cases is eyebrow raising, but not entirely unexpected.

Read the reader comments by the armchair scientific and/or medical experts. I fear for the present of my country. Fear, uncertainty and doubt, reign supreme in the USofA. We are so fearful, we cannot--as a populace--ever get anything done on the really big issues. Yes, Virginia, fear of job loss is indeed a fear.

I see the only true hope for humanity is far less humans inhabiting this tiny blue slightly oblate sphere. No, I am not advocating any draconian measures to wipe out a few billions of people. But we could start by not replacing the fallen. Nah. That's far too reasonable to be considered. We are almost certainly doomed as 'functioning' societies. We are burning things up at many levels.

See! I told you it is Happy Friday! Have fun, and play safe!

Tom Petty

Okay, this is neither news, nor sciencey. I bought TP and The Heartbreakers newest, Hypnotic Eye. I see(no pun intended) that it is Tom and the boys' first No. 1 album. That's hard to believe. I would have thought that Damn the Torpedoes was a No. 1 album.

Initial thoughts on Hypnotic Eye...

It is not my favorite TP offering. Wildflowers snags that honor. Of course The Heartbreakers played on Wildflowers but aren't mentioned in the liner notes..if memory serves.

Damn The Torpedoes is perhaps my favorite TP effort that acknowledges The Heartbreakers. This is a very close race. There are lots of albums in the running here. 1989's Full Moon Fever and 1991's Into The Great Wide Open are perennial favorites as well.

Where does Hypnotic Eye stand? Too early to tell. I like it very much. I listened to an interview with Tom about the upcoming album..he called it "a straight-up rocker." It does have some heavier stuff, but it is more bluesy overall; and dare I say jazz influenced? I do.

One last thing..the track Forgotten Man pays huge homage to American Girl. That is a very good thing.

I am certain to give this one a lot of time, but it didn't give me the instant chills that Wildflowers did.

Anyone that commonly works with Dylan, and is a member of Traveling Wilbury's just has to make special music. This one will not disappoint.

A prediction: there will be four singles issued from Hypnotic Eye.

Ebola! It just keeps getting worse

See the latest CDC info here.

With case deaths approaching one thousand, this is the worst ebola outbreak to effect humans known to this date.

The CDC has now raised its response level to 'Level One', the highest alert status.

I am trying to find a graph that is as current as today, but cannot find one. If this graph is accurate--and I strongly suspect that it is, as the current outbreak was believed contained in May--then the curve has yet to flatten. Given the somewhat long(up to roughly 22 days) incubation period, it looks like things will get worse before they get better.

Maybe far worse.

As I reported sometime earlier, this ebola strain was first reported to be "Ebola Zaire." Then it was reported to be 97% equivalent to Ebola Zaire. Now I will go on record as stating that this ebola strain indeed seems a newly discovered strain. In addition, it now appears likely that this strain has been cycling in nature in a host or hosts in West Africa until the massive outbreak this year. Of course the likelihood that we will ever determine "patient zero" is quite nearly zero.

One has to wonder about transmissibility of this new strain. Is there an aerosol component in this strain that has been lacking up till now? Or have other natural reservoirs been co-opted by the strain that humans are much more likely to come into contact with? Some of both? Something entirely unexpected? No doubt researchers are working on these--and other--questions even as I type.

This outbreak is certainly different from those since 1976. One would think that in the intervening decades that containment would--all other things being equal--far better today. That is why I have speculated that something about this strain is different. I hope that the answers are fast in coming.

Antibiotic resistant bacteria, and why I stockpile but do not use

This is a year old piece about an AB resistant bacterial strain. Oddly, it is referred to as an opinion piece.

There are more current reports that simply verify and expand the findings a bit.

Here in tick-vector-illness-central the medical community had to be dragged kicking and screaming to write scripts for agents effective against Lyme and other bacteria transmitted via tick bites. This has proven to be very unwise. Now, all tick bites are treated with a one day course of doxycycline as prophylaxis. If a person goes on to present with Lyme--or other bacterial illness--the standard course is a 21 day treatment.

This CRE issue is evolution in overdrive. The selective pressure being resistance to common and uncommon antibiotics.

This is why I have ABX on hand, but have never given myself a course of any antibiotic. In my 53 years of life, I have been on two courses of ABX. The first was back in 1980 when I was given erythromycin for a non-specific urinary tract infection(yes, I know how disturbing that reads), and the last was doxycycline to treat Lyme. I am very cautious about laissez-faire use of ABX. If only the bovine and chicken husbandry industries would follow suit. Don't expect change anytime soon. These are powerful industries, and 'Mericans want their cheap animal products. It is a matter of 'having choices' after all. No one dare do anything that is scientifically sound if it interferes with individual choices. *huge eyeroll*

It is likely the case in other New World countries with the possible exception of Canada.

If highly therapy resistant bacterial strains become the norm, then going to a hospital could be a dangerous thing to do.

One needs to be cognizant that evolution does not work on time scales, but generational scales. Fast growing bacteria can multiply in as little as 20 minutes. Let us perform a worst case thought experiment for humankind, and a best case scenario for out bacterial foes.

Let us use 1948 as a starting point. Penicillin was--by then--widely available and used. The possible doublings--and hence chances for errors in replication which could lead to resistance--is roughly 174,155,117 generations. The entire genome of a fast growing bacterial species could be replaced several times over given the geometric progression under ideal circumstances. That is really quite sobering.

Some researchers are predicting a 'post-antibiotic' future. Almost surely some microbes will defeat current medicine while others will not.

Even now, lack of exposures is by far the best weapon. Sure bacteria are ubiquitous, but thankfully, most are not pathogenic to humans.

Hand washing beats hand wringing every time.

Be informed, but don't succumb to irrational fears. Yes, I know how odd that may seem coming from me, but I do not fear pathogens--in fact, I rarely fear things which might ACTUALLY kill me--but I do believe in being prepared.

I am fully aware of my awfully clipped sentence structure that pervades this post. This post is also lacking proper linkages and segues between topics. I am simply too fatigued to care. It has been a hell of a weekend, and my brain is full. I would like to be excused now. I have the Sword of Damocles still over my head. It is not yet known if and what manner my eye issues are going to take. I have a mere eight days to get my ocular pressures into an acceptable area. One eye is really close, the other not nearly so. I'm coming to terms with the whole mess, but it still troubles.

Spacely Space Sprockets..and other tricks

NASA finds unusual effect.

If you read the article it strikes me as odd that the writer claims that "a microwave thruster system that requires no propellant does indeed generate a small amount of thrust" and then goes on to state that "solar power can be used to produce the microwaves"(which ostensibly provide propulsion). Solar energy is the initiating propellant. At any rate, it all seems very odd indeed as all things involving quantum mechanics are.

A truly geeky quote:

"Test results indicate that the RF [radio frequency] resonant cavity thruster design, which is unique as an electric propulsion device, is producing a force that is not attributable to any classical electromagnetic phenomenon and, therefore, is potentially demonstrating an interaction with the quantum vacuum virtual plasma..."

Those darned virtual particles, now you can measure something about them, now you cannot. I need a multiverse expert to chime in and expain to me just where that virtual stuff comes from and where it goes. I suspect that it is another dimension or universe that we cannot hope to enter save for mathematically.

The measured effects are still really small. Two separate teams are off by a factor of ten. But, as proof of concept, it seems to pass muster. One has to wonder just how to scale things up to power spacecraft. Will it be simple scaling? Will it be process refinement? Will it be some of both? I would wager that the answer--if it is going to be forthcoming--will involve both scale and process.

It never ceases to amaze me that applications of quantum mechanics are thought impossible when the various predictions of quantum mechanics have been experimentally confirmed to the absolute limit of our current means to test those predictions.

I would be really impressed if we could actually warp space-time or open up wormholes on a scale large enough to be useful for something. Only really massive objects can appreciably warp space-time..might some form of virtual gravity also be able to illicit such an effect? Wormholes--at least as I am familiar with the concept--potentially take far too much energy in this universe to be technologically feasible. Might some variation of quantum mechanics be able to exploit the virtual particle/energy(vacuum fluctuation) or multiverse theory overcome what might not be a true law of nature, and more of a local ordinance?

I do not profess to even know enough about such matters as to venture a guess. The universe we all claim to know is weirder than we know. Other universes are almost certainly going to seem weirder still to those that do not inhabit them. Of course the last sentence is pure speculation. The sentence preceding that one is proving a much tougher nut to crack. This is why I live for science. We live in a wonderfully weird place. A place where out simian brains are not especially well equipped to handle problems very far above that of surviving on the savannah.

I am still fascinated that Newton's work preceded that of Darwin's and Wallace's by a couple of hundred years. Humanity must have had blinders on. I fear that we do still.

Life'll Kill Ya.*

*(Apologies to Warren Zevon..I was fortunate to talk to The Excitable Boy after a concert he played in Concord, NH.)

Okay gentle reader, I am not going to wade into the deep end of the pool today, for danger lurks in the warm shallows, and that is where our story comes from today.

Bacteria rarely get their due. Flesh eating bacteria, now that is news! I am not excited over necrotizing bacteria lurking in warm, shallow brackish and/or salt water.
However, here is another case where the broad spectrum antibiotic doxycycline(combined with a second AB is a first line treatment)

I recently finished a 21 day course of doxycycline for Lyme(Borreliosis). I would never advocate prophylactic use of ANY drug. However, given that I am sometimes away from the realistic possibility of proper medical treatment I think it prudent to have two different agents on hand before wandering way off the grid. My insurance paid a princely sum for my course of doxycycline. There are simple ways to obtain a good broad spectrum topical AB--say chlorhexidine hyclate, for instance--and easy ways to obtain doxycycline and perhaps ampicillin and/or amoxycillin WITH clavulanic acid to increase potency against treatment resistant bacterial strains.

Of course these things would be the last things to add to your 'end of the world' first-aid kit.

I asked my favorite pharmacist about different combinations of meds for going way off the grid, and she said that these might all prove useful.

The reason for two--or even three--broad spectrum antibiotics(ABX) is due to modes of action. If you do not know why this is an important consideration, you should not search out any ABX. Honestly. Although these particular ABX are chosen for wide effectiveness against both gram-positive and gram-negative bacteria, without knowing modes of action--and the various types of microbial targets--you are likely to do the wrong thing.

There is no way that I would ever attempt to procure anti-virals. The only AV class that I am even remotely familiar with are acyclovir and its derivatives. Palliative care and POSSIBLE prophylactic use of ABX are the limit of my knowledgebase concerning how to treat viral conditions in the middle of nowhere.

This post does not specify what to use for any bacterial or parasitic infection. You have to do your own research on what you are likely to confront in your area of the wild world. I am most likely a lot less ready than I think I am. Let us hope that I will never have to put any of my remedial first-aid skills to the test...again. I did save a fellow that concussed himself while riding a motocrosser way off the track. That was an easy one. Happy Thursday all! Be safe, and be prepared!

On edit: The reasons for this odd post can be found here, where I blather on about vector-borne illness, here, where I get downright evangelical about vector illnesses, and finally here, where I was tick bitten, but Lyme(borreliosis) had not yet been confirmed. All of those things comprise the impetus for today's ramble. Sorry to put you through that again.

Tech Talk, and something made news that I have been angered about for 3 decades.

Okay, gentle reader. Today I found out that Facebook is the new king of the valley.

I have been on facebook, but have never clicked on any ads..of course having AdBlockPlus with facebook silliness settings set on kill means I don't see many ads. FB now has a larger market cap than IBM. That's laughable. Facebook remains the shallowest of big things on the 'Net. That will likely only get worse. Google+ would be cool if Sergey and Larry didn't want your soul, but whilst I have an account, I only use it to make pretentious comments about Youtube vids.

Can we talk about Twitter? I still do not get it. Sure, it has morphed some since the days of your-world-in-140-characters-or-less, but Twitter remains startlingly inane.

In non-news, The sixth mass extinction event has made a headline. I have been on this since I was an undergrad in the early years of the 1980s. "Anthropocene defaunation" is the latest label, but is hardly inclusive. What about flora? Photosynthetic plants are the most vital bigger things that aide in the biosphere's ability to maintain homeostasis. I haven't forgotten about algae.. you guys are plants too. Hopefully, this issue gets big play. Given humankind's long and sordid record of sweeping the really important stuff under immovable carpets, I will not be holding my breath.

Theplanet is still warming at an accelerating rate. Warmest quarter in history just came to an end, and July is shaping up to be a scorcher as well. El Nino's biggest effect may be next year, but given record highs of sea surface temps., this year is not going to be a picnic. I have a lot more that ittitates me, but my Dr. tells to rest my eyes, and "keep taking those drops." Next appt. is for 08.12.2014. I am hoping for good news. I have done all that I can do.

Mars? Really?

Mars or Bust! NASA wants to go to Mars.

I suppose that's a lovely thing to wish for, but we should really start undoing the damage to Terra before we--as humans--go afield and screw up another planet.I support nearly all scientific endeavors, but this seems really small.Okay, let us put aside the absolute wisdom regarding sending a manned mission to the red planet. I really do not like sociology, even when it concerns science. What kind of technical issues are there? There are really only two. Adequate propulsion and life support.I am not a rocket scientist..and rocket scientists aren't particle physicists ;)

It appears that NASA is eyeing Solar Electric Propulsion to move masses to the red planet. Strangely, Wikipedia has a much better treatment on the subject.

My big issue with this technology is the cost/benefit ratio. It will not be cheap to do. The reason for this is quite basic. Ion engines don't give you escape velocity energy levels. So, at present we are looking at bog standard chemically propelled initial stages, and then a transition to more advanced forms of propulsion. Not cheap. That will not get funded in the current(pardon the obvious pun) climate(another zing!).

What about life support?

This isn't your standard technical set of issues. It is more a managing humans over long periods issue where technology will be brought to bear. Will gaming be part of the equation? How about sex? I am certain NASA will want their astronauts to arrive in fine fettle. Just how does one insure mental stability as well as physical fitness over great times and distances?

We simply do not know. Are nootropic chemicals part of the answer? What about psychedelics? There are lots of unknowns, and no animal models with which to guide us. People put in isolation over much shorter time frames have not fared very well. Although the Russians claimed to have had success in attempting to model a likely environment. I would go batty.

No Mars, please. Let us clean up this rock first.

*Sigh* U.S. "lawmakers" claim that the U.S. is too dependent on Russkiean rockets.

This is mind-warpingly stupid. Experts tell science and technology illiterates that US is too dependent on Russian rockets

Ya think? Now why could that possible be?...hmmm.

Since we mothballed Apollo we haven't had a real rocket development in the US. Why? Becuase short-sighted politicians from Reagan--whom Edward Teller infamously got him and his administration to to back the stooopid Space Defense Initiative(SDI)--to Obama there has been zero leadership on hard science initiatives.

Reagan was perhaps the most scientifically illiterate president ever; until GW Bush perhaps wrested the title away.

Why are lawmakers believing these all sceinced out geeks now? For the only reason they EVER listen to reason..it is less politically palatable to do otherwise. These Washington hacks that couldn't tell a meson from a double-decker bus terrorizing the streets of Boise, Idaho by running against traffic on Interstate 84, are now ready to listen to people that they cannot understand because it scores easy political points.

These are the same people that refuse to do anything substantive about the greatest threat to our existence; global climate change, yet when it comes to ceding rocketry to the Russians, are only all too happy to listen to another set of sciency geeky types to score easy political layups. This is--in a nutshell--what is really wrong with this country.

Global climate change? "The science is still out." (Duh-fuh?)

Big giant threat from Russian rocket superiority..a problem which was directly caused by those now tasked to bridge the gap. No wonder I have glaucatomous eyes. I think that my eyes are the relief valves that keep my head from exploding over obvious hypocrisies.

I firmly believe that there should be a basic level of scientific literacy that anyone running for any office where these matters are to be entrusted. Call it the SSATs(Scientific Scholastic Aptitude Test(s)) for aspiring politicos.

I take no joy in pointing out the lack of scientific literacy among our elected officials. It gives me great pains to expose them. Let's take William Jefferson(can you imagine the nerve?) Clinton's level of scientific literacy. I don't know what kind of creds you need to be a Rhodes Scholar, but apparently skills in mathematics and a high level of scientific literacy aren't part of that program. Clinton was so scientifically challenged that he had to get advisors to explain to him the likelihood of Richard Preston's pretty awful book "The Cobra Event" becoming manifest. I will give Clinton credit. He knew that he didn't know shit about science, and took the advice of real scientists to move a tiny chunk of his policy. "It's the economy, stupid" nothwithstanding. Politically savvy, maybe, but Clinton might have had a legacy if he had ascted on global climate change. His eight years of doing nothing of importance remain a terrible waste.

There are smart people in this country. Alas, very, very few of the best minds ever run for public office.

Bing and Firefox 30

Here's another tech. post. Sorry.

I have now switched to Bing as my search provider of choice. Why?

Google wants to know everything about me, you, and the other 7 billions of humans inhabiting this grossly overpopulated rock.

Firefox 30 now gets the nod as my default web browser. Why?

Google Chrome still doesn't really offer a way to set the cache at 5MB. That's where I have Firefox set. I would state that FF 30 loads pages faster as well, but I'm not currently well enough sighted to run the requisite tests to make that call. Yes, FF still uses egregious amounts of system RAM whilst running, but faithfully releases all those MB to the pool with the closure of the browser.

Google's newest version of their terms of use is appalling.

It's beginning to shape up as Google Services vs. Microsoft Bing Services for the soul of true computing.

I don't know what Apple is doing, as I still don't understand the appeal of tablets, and as for the iPhone, when it's $30 sans contact, I may give it a look. MP3 players are not worth more than 25USD. That's why I have two Sandisk Sansa Clip+s that I paid less than a combined 50USD. I picked up some 32GB micro-SD cards for 8USD ea., and I'm beholden to no xTunes bloatware and insane prices.

I am de-Amazoning as well. I buy less and less there, as other etailers commonly offer the products and services that I need and/or want for less cost.

The Mozilla Foundation is a great group of geeks. Microsoft now seems the lesser of all evils, and the earth still isn't round. A circle is round. The earth is perhaps best described as a slightly oblate spheroid...without getting all geometry happy.

The best thing that all this competition has done is offer you, me, us, wider choices of quality products from which to choose--and many are now, or will soon be--ostensibly free. Read those Privacy/Terms Of Use Statements.

Why am I still using Blogger? Now that, is a good question. I have written some decent blog scripts in Perl, but I can't see hosing a blog, and if I was to publish on my Comcast/Xfinity pages, my blog would have even less visibility than it does even now. That does seem more than a bit of a dodge. In fact, I do believe that it is. I can't fix all of my privacy ills in a day. There is no true anonymity on the 'Net. I really dislike this personality quirk. *shrugs*

That is all from the consumer end of my cave.

Hacking Tesla Motor car..

Yawn. Link to frivolity. This is a controlled event..or rather, non-event.

I think it would be fairly easy given enough time to hack into a true motor car. But Tesla has made all the rules, and most certainly made getting the 10K USD prize a most unlikely event against an opponent that has had time to harden itself against the particular type of hack that will bring home the 10K.

Tesla Motors should give the prize to any team that downs the vehicle's communication. It would be fun to see if Tesla's comm. could thwart a seriously intense DDoS(Distributed Denial of Service) attack. That would be much harder to defend against, esp. if a talented group could--I'd offer "would" here--take down Tesla's nascent version of SkyNet. There is no doubt that anything plugged into a network that is connected to an external source will be hacked. It is just a matter of time and technique. Remember when Macs "didn't get viruses?" I do not, but then security is quite important when working on enterprise level systems. Macs have been, will be, now, and forever, be hacked.

I know better, and I was once, while not hacked, taken over by ransomware that took me a day to totally clean out.

Tesla, you will be hacked, but not likely while you are watching. One possible way to defeat what is certain to be a hardened target is from the inside. Too easy.

DARPA is going to take a hot on their "Hack-Proof" drone software and hardware. If it flies, it is open to various forms of attack. Simple signal disruption, to a brute force EMP may not technically be hacking, but it'll kill a drone, or anything else with even a mild form of electronics. Enigma wasn't hackable, until it was. Every time one of these schemes is launched, sooner or later, they are compromised. Of course if DARPA finds the hacker, they'll really have only two choices: 1) Hire the hacker(s), or 2) Make them disappear.

I am pretty certain that I could build a decent EMP generator that would knock out a whole field of drones on the tarmac. Building a non-directional EMP generator is absurdly easy. One can envision that with proper shielding that the device could be made directional. Generating intense RF signals is hardly a secret. While I was at Uni. as an undergrad, we had BS sessions about building such things..and this circa 1980-81. In lieu of building powerful RF generators, we decided to toss together a whole series of cast off traffic lights and variably strobe them using plans that I sketched out in perhaps 15 minutes, and yes, I used the school's lithography equipment to make up a few boards to neaten up the wiring.

The EE undergrads were the hit of keg party light show spectaculars.

In the truest spirit of all-good-things-must-come-to-an-end, there was a dorm fire, and all our lighting gear was seized, never to be seen again. Many inquiries were made, but I suspect that some faculty member thought that our clever little experiment was just too cool to be given back. Traffic lights are much larger than they appear. All of ours were nearly a meter in height.

Of course we made other devices. I had just turned 18 when I entered Uni. In my six years there, I think I left some sort of mark.

I still cannot see well.

I

Still can't see, but retinal Specialist may get all Luke Skywalker on my eyes.

Alas, my IOP isn't as low as it needs to be. After 16 days of drug therapy, my IOP is still too elevated. Not by too awfully much, but a few mm Hg too high. My new bad eye is @ 23mm Hg, when my RS wnats it to be around 20. I am trying everything to get it down to permissible levels.

40 mins. of hard aerobic activity each day, more fish oil, nuts, proper hydration, eye pressure specific lowering exercise, and a host of other things.I go back in a month's time. If no progress has been made, it's laser time to the trabecular meshwork.

I need some new bits as well, but they are available, and should restore my vision in my better eye.

Aging can suck. It is utterly baffling. My internal medicine is that of a fit teenager, but my eyes are those of a centenarian..well, not really. I don't have AMD as yet. I am having a hard time getting my BP over 120 Systolic directly after aerobic work. My pulse gets into the 120PBM range, so the cardio system works.

Is there a reason for today's post? I'm certain that there is, but I am still sort of freaked out over my eye docs. appt., and my attention span has suffered...where was I?

Tommy Ramone died yesterday. Bummer.

I really have drawn a blank. Now, in Scrabble that would be good thing indeed, but not when trying to construct a blog post. Sorry about that.

My eye is still wonky, but the US might get haggis!

No news on the eyeball front. Since it is now beyond 1:30 PM EDT, I feel that a reading of my eyeball angiographs must not require immediate surgical intervention. Yay for small things. I was much more worried than my last post indicated.

In other exiting news, the US is considering lifting the ban on haggis! How exciting is that? Of course it's only a wee bit of a omnibus trade deal between the US and the UK-EU empire of evil. Just kidding to the three Americans clamoring for genuine Scottish haggis.

I cannot really read the news as yet. However, from Fox News Science comes Ancient Asteroid Destroyer Finally Found and it's a new kind of meteorite. Can Fox shit out a headline or what? At any rate, the reason I picked Fox News to provide my gentle reader with a sciency story is because of all the the great headlines found in the right sidebar...courtesy of Live Science.

Danger! Falling Rocks: Meteorites and Asteroids (Infographic)

Fallen Stars: A Gallery of Famous Meteorites

and

When Space Attacks: The 6 Craziest Meteor Impacts

Yes, gentle reader, those are the actual headlines from Live Science. Sigh.

These are four reasons why I don't use Fox News as a source..don't most of their science denying audience believe in a 6000 year old creation myth?

Live Science is pandering to the truly uninformed. Sure, the last article is a very geo-centric bit of provincialism, but to not at least give a passing nod to Shoemaker-Levy 9 and its really spectacular series of impacts on that Jovian planet seems like a "swing and a miss" to this astro-geek.

That's all for today as I am on eye rest, and DNS(Dragon Naturally Speaking) is giving me fits!