Ripples 5 by KimB

[Editor's Note: Ripples is a serial story.
The author makes no guarantees as to completing the serial.
Publication dates are located in the left side menu.]

05 Opening Move

She put the emptied chipped mug, in the tiny sink.

A quick turn of the tap, a quick swish and the mug was set on a towel to dry.

Washing the mug was easy.
Finding the owner of the phone still eluded her.

Returning to the table, she picked up the phone and examined it again. A rubbery protective cover enclosed most of the phone. She looked carefully at the cover and began to pull at a corner. Pulling here and there along the edges, twisting the phone as she went, she worked at loosening it. She worried that she might damage the phone trying to get the cover off. Still, she thought, if the cover had been put on, then the cover could come off.

With nervous fingers she worked the cover over the edges of the phone. It seemed as if the cover resisted her attempts but like a reluctant jar lid, once the vacuum seal was broken, the cover slipped easily into one hand, the phone in the other.

Something fell on the table.

It was small. Tiny. The red and black color nearly lost on the surface of the worn table. Not even as big as a postage stamp.

She wondered, how many still remembered postal stamps.

Can't

Can't is a contraction of the words: can and not

Meaning: unable
Example:

The French can't count to twenty.

American Generals can't keep their mouths shut.

Ripples 4 by KimB

[Editor's Note: Ripples is a serial story.
The author makes no guarantees as to completing the serial.
Publication dates are located in the left side menu.]

04 By Any Other Name

Plastic bins, holding the fragments of what once was, were stacked along a wall. Remnants of the past. Harbingers of the future.

She got up and crossed the room and began to shift the stack of plastic bins. Rummaging through one of them she returned. An old pad of paper and stubby pencil placed on the table, she sat down, picked up the hot coffee and considered the phone.

It couldn't hurt to try to find the owner, she thought.

Brushing aside a small counterpoint of doubt, she placed the found phone on the paper and traced two outlines: one front and one back. She began to draw in all the features she could see. Buttons here and there. Plugs and connection points. She noted the colors that she could see but an enclosing protector covered the back and sides obscuring parts of the phone.

After labeling the outline drawings with what she could see, there still wasn't anything there to indicate the owner.

She frowned slightly.

She remembered long ago, losing her wallet while riding the municipal bus. She had gotten home with a small plastic bag of groceries only to find that the most important item she owned, the wallet, was missing. Her I.D. and a tiny amount of cash were in the wallet. Losing the money would mean a few extra dinners of peanut butter, but losing the I.D. was far worse.

Dread thoughts of having to stand in line after line at numerous offices waiting for bored and exhausted employees to help her fill out the required forms and obtain the official replacements, generated tears of frustration and anger at her own stupidity. Losing the wallet was just another step on the rung downward. No amount of peanut butter could fix that.

It was to her surprise that the door bell rang. Wiping her still damp face, she opened the door to see a person she did not know, standing there. Polite and well dressed, the person stood there and in broken English spoke her name. Yes, she nodded, puzzled as to what this person wanted of her. Then, as if in response to her expression, the person held out her wallet.

Almost like a dream, she reached for the wallet and opened it. There was all her money and her I.D too. A joy of profound relief flooded her. She stuttered her thanks and gestured for the person to remain. She hurried inside to find something suitable. Taking a small knitted lap robe from one of the plastic bins, she returned to the open door to give her thanks and the gift. Stepping outside to share her happiness, she looked around.

The person had gone.

The wallet, the only testimony that the person had ever been.

Valentines

The valentines I've received over the years has varied from Valentine cards from schoolmates, to boxes of chocolate and flowers from admirers to tokens of affection from husband and my children. In long ago lower grade school days, trading valentine cards with those in class was a ritual we always looked forward to. It was a sort of validation that we were liked by our class mates, and we took satisfaction in comparing the numbers of valentines we received.

I remember one particular valentine card I received when in high school. When I removed it from the envelope, I was surprised to see a fancier card than the type we usually bought at the dime store to give away. This valentine had a bit of paper lace and ribbon. It was signed, George.

Now, there was a boy that I has a secret crush on, whose name was George. He was a year ahead of me in high school, so we didn't share any classes, but he was one of a group that often met at my friend Caroline's house after supper to play games. My secret remained just that. Regardless of the fancy valentine, George never seemed to go out of his way to chat or sit with me during lunch.

Some time later, I discovered the valentine had come from Caroline's younger brother, George. It had never occurred to me that a boy in a lower grade would have sent me such a fancy valentine. Needless to say, we both survived our misplaced affections.

Ripples 3 by KimB

[Editor's Note: Ripples is a serial story.
The author makes no guarantees as to completing the serial.
Publication dates are located in the left side menu.]

03 Finders Keepers?

The phone was like a lost dog.

It had a home, it had an owner. It had been costly to acquire. It would be costly to replace. It had been wanted, at least at some point.

What do you do with a found phone, she thought.

Her first thought was that she would it would be easy to find the owner, just turn it on and Phone Home. As she considered this, something about the phone made her pause, something about it made her question, something made her uneasy.

Maybe Phoning Home wasn't such a good idea.

In the old days, if you found a lost dog, there was the Lost and Found section in the newspapers. The ads were generally free to place and people knew where to look.

• Found Fancy Dog. Near Corner Park. Call to identify
• Lost Fancy Dog. Near Corner Park. Please Call. Reward.

Now, there really wasn't anywhere to look or rather, there were too many places to look. There were millions of people looking in these on-line places but not necessarily the one you needed to find.

There were always plenty of people willing to claim a fancy dog that wasn't really theirs. The dog would always expose the fake owners.

Can't call the dog? Not your dog.

There would be a lot of people willing to claim a fancy phone.

A lot.

Too many.

For all of it being a "smartphone", it wasn't near as smart as a dog ....
A dog would have tried to find its own way home.

Then again, there were some who didn't want their dog back.

Saving Animals

After I learned about saving wild mustangs on the web pages of the Bureau of Land Management, I surfed other Bureaus of the Department of the Interior, which in turn led to browsing web sites of various foundations and conservancies dedicated to saving wild life.

While wars rage across the planet, one is hard pressed to think of saving wild life when rivers of refugees stream from country to country, seeking safety from falling bombs.

As a child growing up in a small river town in the middle of the country's agricultural area, the only time we saw exotic animals like elephants, giraffes, monkeys, lions and tigers was when the circus came to town and in later years, visits to zoos and aquariums. In those long ago days, the thought that giraffes might become extinct was as absurd as believing in Buck Roger's space adventures.

In the high school class room where we studied biology, the walls were lined with shelves holding stuffed birds of all description. The room was also used by college students and it was assumed that college students studied them, but in those days, birds were the least of my concerns; Robbins were just a familiar sight as they hunted for earthworms in the lawns we passed on our way to school.

It wasn't until I browsed the American Bird Conservancy web site that I learned about bird safe glass. The N. Y. Audubon group has been monitoring the base of a dozen buildings, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Warner Center, for bird kills since 1990. Its estimated that 90,000 birds die each year after flying into glass facades. The solution is bird safe glass.

There are several approaches to creating bird safe glass, silkscreen coating and ultraviolet patterns birds can see, but humans can't. A German company created ultraviolet patterns inspired by the reflective silk strands of spider webs. regardless of techniques used in making the glass, research shows that spacing is even more important. If patterns are placed 2" apart horizontally, and 4" apart vertically, birds will not fly into the glass. Birds will not fly through spaces that are less than 2" high, or 4" wide.

There are hundreds of web sites dedicated to saving birds and more than an equal number dedicated to saving all manner of wild life. Knowing that species come and go, we may not prevent the demise of some. If humans continue to kill humans, AND, continue to search for ways to do so, maybe our species will be the first to go.



ORNILUX
bird safety glass

Mustangs

A few days ago I pressed a wrong number on the TV remote and chanced upon a program showing horses prancing thru dressage movements and working cattle. It was a demonstration-competition of wild mustangs that would be auctioned at the end of the performances. Every year the mustang heritage foundation offers horsemen and women, who have the knowledge and experience and facilities, the chance to gentle and train a wild mustang for public auction. After reading more about the event and checking out the Bureau of Land Management web pages, I learned the following:

Approximately 100 days before the competition is held, wild mustangs are randomly paired with a trainer who has applied and been approved by the Bureau of Land Management, (BLM). Each trainer and a wild mustang spend 100 days working together, preparing to compete in a handling and conditioning class, a pattern class and a leading and riding class. The top 10 competitors will then compete in a free style performance. At the conclusion of the event, all horses will be auctioned.

Mustangs have protected as National Treasures since 1971 when school children across the country wrote letters to congress, but due to declining resources and over population, horses are forced into government holding facilities where taxpayers spend millions of dollars on their care every year. According to the information on the Bureau of Land Management's web site, 42,000 horses in short-term and long-term corrals and pastures are in need of adoption.

Wild horses still roam on public lands, but BLM culls wild horses from the range in order to sustain natural resources, grass and water, necessary for horses and other wild life to continue living on public lands. Every time a horse is adopted and moved from BLM holding facilities, taxpayers are saved $10,000 per animal.

The mission of the mustang heritage foundation is to increase successful adoptions of the wild horses in these facilities. While transforming a wild horse into a sensitive equine partner, adoptions help protect wild herds for future generations.

The events for 2017 have been named Extreme Mustang Makeover. The 6 cities scheduled for this years events are:

• Jacksonville, FL May 18-20
• West Springfield, Mass, June 15-17
• Reno, NV. June 23-24
• Lexington, KY. July 6-8
• Monroe, WA. Aug 17-19
• Ft, Worth, TX Sept 14-16.

These events will feature wild mares, geldings, 4 to 7 years that have been living in BLM off range corrals.

Horse and trainer information, photos and videos of horses along with schedules can be found on:

Extreme Mustang Makeover

Ripples 2 by KimB

[Editor's Note: Ripples is a serial story.
The author makes no guarantees as to completing the serial.
Publication dates are located in the left side menu.]

02 Cowboy Coffee

The twisted wet wood tossed into the slim walkway for drying, she entered the house.

Not really a house. Not really a place. Not really much of anything at all. Just a somewhere that provided partial shelter from the elements. The roof leaked; a stack of plastic catchalls awaited in a nearby corner. The gap under the doors, providing icy drafts in winter and humid hot draws in summer, had lumps of old towels pushed aside from the nights usage.

A worn kitchen table with two mismatched wobbly chairs, the highlights of the kitchen, held various cooking implements and on one chair, a stack of important papers. The kind of papers that never get sorted or put away, the kind one needs to have at hand but are rarely looked at once they are dropped on top of other equally important at hand papers. A listing pile in constant threat of slipping on to the worn flooring.

She placed the found phone on the table.

She turned to the cabinets, the paint worn from use, and began to prepare a cup of coffee. She smiled at the thought about how she would make the steaming liquid.

Long times past, percolators were the rage, with their boiled and brewed results. Later came drip coffee makers were the hot water was poured into a paper or sometimes gold filter holding the ground coffee. But before that was Cowboy Coffee. Boiling hot water poured directly over coarsely ground coffee. Using a tea strainer made it possible to sip of the dark brew without getting a mouthful of grounds.

She placed a glass measuring cup of water into the secondhand microwave then spooned the coffee grounds into another measuring cup. Glancing at the phone on the table, she waited for the water to bubble. Once bubbles formed along the glass sides, she poured it over the waiting grounds.

Setting her favorite, slightly chipped, mug on the table, she waited for the liquid to darkened and then she poured it through the tea strainer into the mug. She tapped the grounds from the tea strainer into a compost bucket at the sink and sat down.

Hot coffee in hand, she considered the phone on the table.

It was an expensive phone. It looked new.

Whoever had lost the phone didn't drink Cowboy Coffee from a chipped mug.

Ripples 1 by KimB

[Editor's Note: Ripples is a serial story.
The author makes no guarantees as to completing the serial.
Publication dates are located in the left side menu.]

01 The Beachcomber

The sun was just over the horizon.

The morning breeze was still cool and damp from the long night but the morning sun would soon change that. The water was at low tide; the best time. The sand was smooth and unmarked; there would still be some hours before the beach became crowded.

Like many mornings, she walked along the smooth sand, the soft tide spilling over her feet with its cold chill only to retreat away for a moment's respite and then flow back again, the cold a reminder of the night's hegemony.

Her eyes wandering from side to side, she scanned the waterline. You never knew what you would find. Old bottles, sea shells, trash bags, broken hunks of wood from rotting piers or waterlogged branches washed down from far off mountains and streams into the swirling waters. Battered by wave and sand into smoothed shapes, that dried again, made interesting and sometimes sellable items. People would buy the half decayed branches if they came from the shore.

There wasn't a lot on the shore this day. Perhaps a bit farther on, she thought. Perhaps the next wavelets would reveal the day's treasure. The tide gave and took away again. A race in slow motion.

There. She spotted it. She moved quickly to the twist of wood peeking up from the sand just above the damp line. Reaching down, she pulled it free. A nice trophy for the morning's walk.

She spotted something else there too. No longer hidden by the wood, it glinted in the morning light. She new what it was; the shape man made, the metallic edges visible, she picked it up and brushed bits of clinging sand from the surface.

Someone had lost their phone; now she had found it.

She looked around; the beach was empty still.

Our Privacy Policy Update 2017 v2

[note: Editor's Post]

Privacy. Hmmm. What's that?

You might very well ask.

Privacy and The Right to Remain Anonymous are legal and social norms defined by people. Dogs don't have a right to privacy as anyone who has ever taken a dog out to "do his duty" can attest, but humans often "look away" just the same. Livestock have no choice about where they live or under what conditions; humans decide when, where and how they eat, sleep and reproduce. Even our "new zoos" use pervasive data acquisition in the pretense that they will learn something about the incarcerated animals they hold in various size pens, none of which are anywhere near the size of the animals' normal habitat.

Privacy is: What's in the eye of the beholder.

There are legal definitions that vary around the world and having to update our blog's "Privacy Policy" is just another tick in the box of "privacy compliance" requirements. Of course telling you about your privacy is rather "odd", as is our requirement to try to inform you about what is or isn't happening. By now, Mark Zuckerberg's infamous statement that "privacy is dead" appears to be a fait accompli. Just the same, we have to tell you about the ways in which your privacy has vanished.

There is no way we can tell you all, because we don't know "all". We know "some". We published our 2017 Privacy Policy Statement in December 2016 ¹. Within weeks, some new ways your privacy has been compromised were reported.

Data Harvesting was originally focused on the individual. Who you are, what you do, where you go and most important what you buy and why. After gathering much of that information, the Data Harvesters moved on to the people around you: family, children, friends, co-workers. They have gathered quite a bit about this aspect too. Now, they are moving towards harvesting data from people you do not know.

This may seem weird but what you don't know is actually more important that what you do know. One aspect of this is: "if you don't know" you might be more persuaded to Do X or Buy Y or Believe Z. Another phrase for this is:

There's a sucker born every minute...

The Data Harvested is combined by Data Aggregators into ginormous lumps which are sold to: Anyone Who Has Money.

• All roads lead to Rome
• All data leads to Money

Being able to combine data from various sources is one way to fill in the blanks or to show where the blanks are, like missing pieces of a jigsaw.

What DOES Alexa know?

• What does Alexa know?
• How DO you serve a warrant on an AI device?
• If it's AI where does the Artificial split from the Intelligence?

Reports of a homicide, detailed that an Alexa AI device, which is similar to the Siri AI device, was "in the vicinity" of the homicide. The police believe the AI device may have "heard something". This is because the device is "always on" and while it's supposed to be listening for a command word like: Alexa change the channel or Alexa play for me, it sometimes turns on "by accident". This accidental data is stored and forwarded.

There are 2 places that can store the captured audio data: a) it can be stored "in the cloud" and b) it can be stored in the audio buffer on the device. Think about this last part a bit. The device needs to store "some" part of your conversation in case you use Reverse Polish like Captain Jean-Luc Picard: Tea, Earl Grey, Hot. The so-called AI device cannot make tea until it knows the last part of the command. It has to store some quantity of speech until it gets enough "intelligence" to either make the tea or decides you don't what the tea at all.

• Tea, Earl Grey, Hot
• Tea, Earl Grey, Hot, Not

So questioning Alexa is of prime importance! If Alexa refuses to answer on the basis of being an Artificial entity, they can always strip her down to her bare chips and PEEK that way.

Another possible witness to the crime is "The Smart Meter" installed by the utility company. A large part of the population in urban areas have these "smart meters" installed. Their "smart" part is in making all the Human Meter Readers redundant while allowing the automation of utility billing systems. Since these meters provide precise data about your utility use, they can be very helpful. Were the lights on at 3AM? Did you wash the car or take a shower at 3AM? Or maybe, you were washing the victim's blood off the porch as noted by the large amount of water usage recorded by the Smart Meter at 3AM?

This line of questioning and rebuttal could become common.

• A red light camera captures and logs your image 300 miles away from the time in question (allowing for time zone differences) but only if you can find the right city, jurisdiction or tow truck service that holds images from their face recognition and ANPR (automatic number plate recognition) programs to prove it.
• Or, possibly, the red light camera captured and logged your image within 10 minutes of the locale in question; your cell phone's dictation and speech recognition system captured the evening's dialogue while live streaming the encounter and the nearby Alexa/Siri recorded and uploaded the damning details.

The perfect witnesses? Sounds good!!

Recently, while comparing conflicting local weather reports with friends, no two smartphones could agree on the next day's weather. It was either going to be raining (iPhone) or sunny (not iPhones)², a friend quipped:

"To each his own smartphone technology"

If a "smart" phone can't even report the weather which it retrieves from the cloud, when anyone with a IDIOT device can turn on your watering system from "way over yonder", when security is a NULL for every internet connection and database, plus there are legions of billing errors claimed by utilities and corporations as legitimate charges, and when even time is doubtful, it might not be such a good idea to equate the "intelligence" part of Artificial Intelligence with "reality".

As to your privacy.. you have none.

But you can start working on that...

Hyperface
Anti-Surveillance Textile Pattern
Photograph: Adam Harvey

1. Our Privacy Policy Update 2017: You Have None
2. The "not iPhones" were correct: it was sunny

What now?

I wonder what 17 is going to bring us.  The only thing we know for certain is, 17 follows 16.  When the president elect becomes president, we'll see if promises made in campaign speeches become reality, or disappear as campaign rhetoric. 

As for me, I'll make an effort to keep most of my new year's resolutions.  I cheat a little when I make them by listing things I want to actually do.  In any case, we all know there is no 'woulda, coulda, shoulda'.

I'm starting the new year with several new kindle books downloaded from the public library via Amazon.  I will also spend time 'coloring' in some adult coloring books I got for Christmas.  I've known about adult coloring books for several years, but never contemplated 'coloring' in one myself.  Surprise! Surprise!  I've discovered that its really a lot of fun.  The range of colors in gel pens, along with colored pencils and crayons, lets one exploit all the attributes of color.  I find myself experimenting with color while working the designs. 

Maybe coloring will be the new and different something I try to do every year.  Its certainly a new way of relaxing and spending worry free time  away from TV breaking news. 

goodbye 2016 hello 2017

 

....Old Year!  upon the stage of Time

You stand to bow your last adieu;

A moment, and the prompter's chime

Will ring the curtain down on you.

Your mien is sad, your step is slow;

You falter as a Sage in pain;

Yet turn, Old Year, before you go,

And face your audience again.

             Robert Service

 

    



Christmas

......Some say that ever, 'gainst that season comes

Wherein our Saviour's birth is celebrated, 

The bird of dawning singeth all night long;

And then, they say, no spirit dare stir abroad,

The nights are wholesome, then no planets strike,

No fairy takes, nor witch hath power to charm,

So hallow'd and so gracious is the time.

 

Shakespeare - Hamlet

 

 

Knights, Knaves and Trumps by KimB

Soon We The People will have another president, one unlike those from modern memory. Our country and the world will have yet another perspective on what Makes America Great. The question yet to be answered is: Great for Whom?

Our new President-Elect has been holding court in his New York skyscraper receiving all manner of visitors and suitors for various positions within the soon-to-be new government. Our President Elect is a very smart guy, by his own admission. He said he would get the smartest people he can find to run the country for him. One can guess that will leave him more time for golf.

So how does a Smart Guy, actually find other Smart Folks to run the country?

First you start with :

What qualifies one to be a Smart Person?

The answer is:

You find the richest person willing to take the job.

The 99% doesn't qualify by definition. The 99% are not rich by anyone's definition including their own.

The 1% doesn't qualify either. Most of these are "single digit millionaires" and are barely tolerated by the truly rich.

The truly rich are the .1%. They qualify as potential Smart Folks, because their wealth is in the billions and billions and billions.

Ability is a secondary or a non-existent concern. The theory being, that if you were clever enough to amass billions and billions and billions you are certainly clever enough to run the government.

So from among the many Smart Folks, as defined by their income statements or Forbes rankings, who are looking for government privileges (or advantages), how can you tell one from another? After all, a few billion here and a few billion there with a few billion stashed in Panama or the Turks and Caicos, there isn't much of a yardstick left.

LOGIC

Pure and simple.

LOGIC

Our President Elect must have an highly enhanced ability to use logic. Our first indication of his ability to use logic is his reaction to the now Not Daily Security Briefings. As he has said, he doesn't need to hear the same thing 7 days a week:

• Russia yadayadayada: check.
• China yadayadayada: check.
• NEXT!

The consternation this has caused in the halls of the mighty security services can be heard and explained from our old friend: General Michael Hayden. General Hayden laments at the loss of position/power that the security services have enjoyed for some years now.

A while back I wrote about the logic fallacy of the commonly held mantra used anyone wishing to justify anything they want to do, especially if those items are illegal or were illegal at the time they did them and now that they have the ability to do them legally, they still want to be able to use the same old mantra ad nauseam. While it takes several posts to step through the entire logic flaw sequence it appears our new President Elect has Got it in One.

There were no WMDs. None. There never were.

So we have two important indicators that our incoming President has superb logic and can tell a knight from a knave. Which brings us back to how to tell one wise person from another? It's a logic puzzle called The King's Wise Men.

The story goes as follows:

The King has to pick a new wise person to be his advisor.

He has called the 3 wisest people to his court. He places a hat on each of their heads. The King tells the three wise candidates that the hats are either White or Blue. Each of the candidates can only see the other 2 candidates hats and but they cannot their own hat.

The King tells the wise candidates that at least 1 hat is blue. The King also states that the contest will be fair to all three of them.

The King says that the first person to stand up and correctly state the color of their own hat, will be the new advisor.

After a while, one of the candidates stands up and correctly declares the color of their own hat.

I believe our new President takes groups of billionaire candidates into one of the sumptuous rooms of his skyscraper, sits them down, and places a sorting hat on their heads. If one of the candidates is as smart as our new President, they will know the answer straight off.

But just about anyone can learn how to solve a logic puzzle and should one of the 99% get invited to the Presidential sorting process here is the answer.


The King's Wise Men

Rule 1: It is fair to all
Rule 2: There is a at least 1 blue hat

There are 3 candidates and 3 hats. You can see 2 of the 3 hats but not your own.

There are 4 scenarios.

Case 1.
There are 3 white hats.

This violates Rule 2: at least 1 hat is blue.

Case 2.
There are 2 white hats and 1 blue hat.

If you saw 2 white hats, you would know yours is the blue one (Rule 2) and you would stand up right away. But since no one stands up right away then no one sees 2 white hats.

Since no one sees 2 whites hats and stands up, that means there are at least 2 blue hats.

Case 3.
There is 1 white hat and 2 blue hats.

Each candidate wearing a blue hat would see the other competitors as wearing a 1 white hat and 1 blue hat. The candidate wearing a white hat would see 2 blue hats. But again, no one stands up.

The candidate who sees 2 blue hats cannot determine the color of the hat s/he is wearing, a violation of Rule 1: that the selection is fair. Additionally, provided they have figured out there are at least 2 blue hats from Case 2, those members seeing 1 white and 1 blue hat would stand up right away knowing their own hat is blue. They don't because this is not what they see.

Case 4.
There are 3 blue hats and no white hats.

Each person is wearing a blue hat. They each see the other two with blue hats. Because Case 2 and Case 3 already fail, it can be induced that everyone is wearing a blue hat.

The solution is:

One of our wiser candidates starts working the puzzle with the possibility that s/he is wearing a white hat and sees the other 2 candidates wearing blue hats. If so, one of the other candidates would see 1 white + 1 blue hat and knowing that there are at least 2 blue hats, they would stand up right away, claiming victory.

Because no other candidate stands up right away, the solution is: everyone has a blue hat and our wiser candidate stands up to win.

It should be noted that the rules can change so pay close attention to rules as they are given or alternatively have the NSA/FBI/CIA send you a silent text message with the answer.

References:

1. Michael Hayden and the One Question by KimB
2. The Answer Is.... by KimB
3. Michael Hayden's Dictionary by KimB
4. The OH SHYTE Presidential moment by KimB

Seed garden

I've started a new avocado seed garden.  Avocadoes were on sale at the market for one dollar a bag, with 8 or 9 avocadoes in each.  Now I have enough guacamole to feed Cox's army, and enough seeds to start a small forest.  By spring the seeds should be rooted and I'll put them outdoors.  After trimming the stem back from time to time, they branch out into very pretty house plants.  I never know how many will root, but its a fun gardening project in the middle of winter.

My Christmas cactus is beginning to bloom.  The flowers are double with a second one shooting out from the center of the first.  Its a beautiful addition the holiday decorations.  One of the orchid plants that has been outdoors most of the year started to bloom and I brought it indoors to enjoy during the holidays.  It has a spray of 8 flowers in the shape of an exquisitely colored half-insect-half-butterfly that would fit in the palm of my hand.

Its such a busy time of the year, its nice to take a moment to experience the pleasure plants give us.  No wonder people started decorating trees with poems, and eventually, decorating them with holiday ornaments.   

December 7, 2016

December 7, 2016
the 75th anniversary of the Pearl Harbor attacks



National WWII Museum
the 75th anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor

Our Privacy Policy Update 2017: You Have None

[note: Editor's Post]

It's time, once again, to update our privacy policy. In short: Nothing has changed on our end. Unfortunately that doesn't mean things haven't changed in the Surveillance Capitalism ¹ market.

So here are some of the ways in which you get tracked, harvested, packaged and resold.

note: References at the bottom of the post.

Smartphones: Trackers on steroids

By now, nearly everyone will have recognized that their smartphones do two things:

1. It tracks and stores unlimited amounts of data about what you do, when you do it, where you go and it gathers unlimited amounts of data about the people you go with or hang around and gives that data it to people you don't know and that you have no idea what those people are doing with it.
    
   Of course the apps all say that the ever trustworthy Google or Apple will protect you ... yeah, right ... exactly.
    
2. It's an advertising delivery device. Sure it looks like it's making phone calls to your nearest and dearest but it primarily shovels up ads about stuff it thinks you would like to purchase. Whether you actually purchase the items touted or not, that information goes into that never ending squirrel cage of data about you.
    
   More of Number 1 recycled back into Number 2: Infinite Loop. ²

Biometrics: Gathering the sheep...

Finger Print Readers: Press for Success

Many new smartphones and other devices are chiming on about all their "new security" features like fingerprint readers that will unlock your phone with a well, your finger print. In the old days, it took warrants to get a person to put their fingerprint On File but today lots of places would really like you to put it on your record (see Number 1) by simply asking you to "press here".

Face Recognition: We see you now...

These programs are now "the rage" and your phone and friends are most helpful with all those selfies and group shots where you tag (ID) your friends for the ginormous mug shot databases (see Number 1). Partial Face Recognition systems claim they can spot you in the background or while wearing that kewl Halloween mask. Are you faced away from the camera? No problemo there - they can shovel up the ad of what you are looking at just fine.

Emotional Face Printing: We feel what you feel..

Are you POed at something? Maybe you just won the lottery or Super Bowl office pool? Well, don't bother tying to blend in with the masses, the Emotional Face Printing ³ folks are looking at your face and determining your emotional and stress levels by ... looking at your face. There are a ways of categorizing your expression ⁴ into pigeon holes that allow systems to define your emotional response to things. If you are looking in a shop window and see something you like, your face lights up like "It's a Nimbus 2000!!!". If you see something you don't like, disgust creeps right in there for the shop cameras to capture and analyze.

ID Chips: Not just for pets anymore

RFID chips ⁵ are great for tagging stuff. They help stores track inventory. Helps them watch when you pick up an item. They can track when you put it in your shopping cart and when you either hit the checkout stand (WIN) or drop it off in another part of the store (LOSE).

They are great at helping find lost pets. A quick scan at a Vets and if the chip is registered a loved pet is returned or an abandoned one can find a new home.

Now you too can have your very own Microchip Implant! ⁶ With a simple swipe of your hand you can open doors and verify who you are to ... well, those who want to know who you are.

Web Beacons: Crashing on the rocks

Web beacons ⁷ are now, oh so, passé, but they are everywhere. These are tiny "spots" inserted into the background of every web page, email, eBook and document. A given page may have A LOT of them. They have a simple trigger mechanism that shoots off a data message: Kilroy Was Here ⁸, to the people who put them on the page. ⁹ By using that dirty word: MATH, the placers of these beacons can tell how much of the page you read, how long it took you to read it and if you spent more time looking at .. oh... THE AD!!!

There are variations on the theme but this is the mechanism that lets Amazon know how much of a book you read and how long it will take for you to finish it. They also use it to determine if you stopped reading the eBook and if you picked it up again later. Some clever authors of eBooks selling under a scheme at Amazon ¹⁰ used this to their advantage. If the reader made it to The End, the author got more money, so the authors put their Table of Contents at the end of the book... Et Voilà!!

Remote Activation: On Camera!

While it may not seem to be the nice thing to do, smartphones, web cameras, microphones and speakers that have connections to each other can be turned on and off ... not just by you though. If you think your phone is Off.. maybe.. but likely it isn't. The phone may appear to be dormant but it may in fact continue to track and record your activities without any indications that the systems are in use. The little LED lights that normally indicate something is happening are just a convenience for you but not to others, so they don't turn them on. Your phone has the ability to cross connect these, like using the speaker/ear buds as a microphone. Off doesn't mean Off.

In many cases, the owner has granted this permission to an app for personal reasons but other people may not really appreciate being filmed and live streamed in the internet equivalent of Smile! You're on Candid Camera! ¹¹

Moving Forward ... maybe

So now, you get the picture or the web beacon has triggered, that there are a lot of ways that you can be tracked.. Oh Ho Hum... There are some newer things coming your way and some are here now.

Internet of Things (IoT): aka IDIOT devices.

Just when you thought you had your surveillance options under control here comes IoT ¹² to make sure you don't. In theory, IoTs will link all your desired items into one ginormous network controllable from your smartphone or computer. If there's an App for It, you probably got an IDIOT device. Handy for turning on/off the lights from across town. Opening garage doors from miles away. Turning up the heat when no one is home so that it will be warmer when you walk in and the utility company will get to collect extra loot for heating an empty house. Those pennies all add up, just ask a bank if they will share a few...

So, IoTs have ... how can one describe this politely...

NO .... SECRUITY

OK, whew.. so what?

So, just about anyone and his dog, can open your garage door, or turn on/off your lights. Turn up/down the thermostat. Water your lawn for hours and hours. The basic security for the vast majority of IoTs consist of the most common passwords like:

• 0000
• 1234
• Password
• Admin
• Administrator

There are about 51+ variations of these and it turns out human beings just suck at making up passwords, but you already knew that.

We also use the same password over and over, but you knew that too.

Well IoTs are designed by the same sort of smart human beings; hence, less than 10 seconds after you plug in your IoT device a bad-dudette from the internet is going to take control of it and use to ... access YOUR internet connections.

What they do with it can be interesting. They may not be interested in you directly but the power of lots of these devices linked together can make a big dent in things.

In 2016, a botnet ¹³ linkage of IoTs using Mirai malware ¹⁴ was used to impact a large portion ¹⁵ of the internet. While initial reports claimed millions of devices were linked together for the attack ¹⁶ , in fact, only a few hundred thousand were needed in relayed attacks. IDIOTS are SMART

Oh.. did I mention? If you have an IDIOT device and you didn't change the password before you installed it, well... the only thing you can do is unplug it because there is no way to remove the malware(s) installed.

So, now consider how such a IoT botnet might be directed internally at you. As all these devices want access to the internet via your cable/Wi-Fi router. Once they have a linkage, the data feeding frenzy can happen at any time.

SIRI ¹⁷: So sorry we listened

IPA (aka Intelligent personal assistant) ¹⁸ is just another word for eavesdropping. Except mostly you agree to it or think it's a great deal. There are several aspects of this that may not be what you intended to happen. Voice capture has been around since dictation ¹⁹ and Dictaphones ²⁰. Essentially we want to capture what was said and do something with it like: place an order... oh, oh, those ads again!

New electronic versions of this can be in your smartphone or sitting on your living room table to control your TV/Cable channels.

They basically LISTEN.
They listen to EVERYTHING.
They listen to everything ALL THE TIME.

Sometimes they pretend to answer you ²¹ or do what you request like change the channel. Sometimes we pretend that they are just dumb machines when there are really people listening for command words and who then remotely punch the channel changer for you. Sometimes there really isn't anyone there at all, it's just a computer chat bot programmed to reply in a generalized fashion ²².

So the latest ones sit in your home listening to everything going on. They are connected to your IDIOT devices and your smartphones and in a way travel with you everywhere you go.

And where is all that information going?
Why back to Number 1 and flowing into Number 2.

There are two basic aspects of voice control devices:

1. IDing the Command ²³
2. IDing the Speaker ²⁴

The more expensive listening bugs you buy and install yourself can do both. They know what you say and they know who is saying it. They need, or rather want, to know both of these because, well it tells them a lot about what you do and when you do it. They know who in the house wants to watch the sport channel and which members watch the morning cartoons. They want to know where you are in the room, so they listen to your heartbeat. As nearly everyone has a slight difference in heartbeats, the device can know where you are by listening to your heartbeat in relation to other sounds. The devices can do pretty good job of triangulation ²⁵. If you have guests, you can "introduce" them to the eavesdropping device and then your guests' voice and other biometrics can be uploaded too. Just another free hop on the gravy train for the ad agencies: Google/Apple/Facebook et al.

Don't burn the bacon!

Ultrasound: It's not a medical procedure

So far, some of these things don't appear to be linked like: your smartphone, your TV habits and your thermostat however, things are going to get more interesting and it's already happening.

Inside your smartphone are 3 types of communication systems; there are actually a LOT more ²⁶ but to simplify we can use just 3:

• Cellular Connection
• Wifi Connection
• Bluetooth Connection

So, while you think your phone is sleeping all these systems are active. They have various mechanisms for connecting to other devices but generically your smartphone is shouting: HI!!! I'm a BIG MOUTH FROG ²⁷ waiting for something to answer.

And guess what? Yeah not too hard to guess... LOTS of things answer and not everything is what you really would want to answer.

The Ad Dudettes, have figured ways to capture all of these as you move around ²⁸: you can be in an open space or in a mall, in your living room or bathroom, garage or sports arena. It's easier to find you in some areas than others but the Ad Chappies want to know what you are doing and they will do just about anything to locate you to find out. They use your phone's Hi!!! I'm a BIG MOUTH FROG beacons to know within a very short distance where you are. If you also help them out with one of the fitness tracker wrist bands beaconing your heartbeat, health and precise GPS coordinates, they can find where you are pretty darn fast.

But it's not enough to just locate you, they want to:

Know You Better Than You Know Yourself ²⁹

Remember it's about Number 1 and Number 2.

The major consumer benefit of indoor positioning is the expansion of location-aware mobile computing indoors. As mobile devices become ubiquitous, contextual awareness for applications has become a priority for developers.

Wikipedia Indoor Positioning System ³⁰

One can safely say: no developer ever gave a R-A unless there was money involved. Money comes from ... well... SURPRISE! The Big Dog Ad Agencies. So finding you is a PRIORITY FOR ADVERTISING. CONTEXTUAL AWARENESS is EAVESDROPPING; they want to know what you are doing every minute and every second of the day.

It's not like there's a lot of variation though. Most folks are pretty regular in their habits.

• You wake up; go to the bathroom.
• You eat breakfast; go to the bathroom
• You go to work; go to the bathroom
• You eat lunch; go to the bathroom
• You work more; go to the bathroom
• You go home; go to the bathroom
• You eat dinner; go to the bathroom
• You watch TV; go to the bathroom
• You go to sleep; go to the bathroom as needed during the night
• REPEAT

Once in a while there is some variation in the list. You might go on vacation. You might go visit relatives or friends. You might go to the park. The variations you select say a lot about you and help the Addie Chappies select what to pitch to you. The latest attempt to reduce your privacy to NONE is Ultrasonic Cross Device Tracking. ³¹

... enables tracking of users across multiple devices, such as televisions, smartphones, and personal computers. Tracking users across multiple devices is made possible using inaudible sounds made by one device and picked up by the microphone of another device; these inaudible sounds are called "audio beacons".

Wikipedia Cross Device Tracking ³¹

Here's how it works....

1. Everyone (except you) has to be ON the bandwagon. Phone makers, Hardware makers, OS makers, App makers, TV makers, IoT makers... basically EVERYONE who wants to SELL YOU SOMETHING
2. These chaps will embed 2 types of systems in EVERYTHING.
1. a listening system and
2. a recording/reply system.
3. They then embed a signal that triggers EVERY DEVICE in range to shout their I'M A BIG MOUTH FROG reply or to respond with a customized I'M A BIGGER MOUTH FROG reply.

• Oh did the part about INAUDIBLE get missed?
  Yeah, YOU CANNOT HEAR IT.
• Oh did the part about PRE-INSTALLED get missed?
  Yeah, YOU CANNOT OPT OUT.
• Oh did the part about getting A RESPONSE from ANYTHING in the area get missed?
  Oh Yeah, it gets EVERYTHING.

Watching TV at home? All your IDIOT devices, pcs, smartphones, routers, water timers, thermostats, garage door openers, lights and your door locks will barf up their BIG MOUTH FROG details.

Watching TV at the sports bar? All the patrons of the bar will have their devices barf up their BIG MOUTH FROG details.

Taking a stroll around the block? If you pass by a storefront, street light, stop signal or even a waste bin, your device(s) will barf up their details to all those UN-HEARABLE sounds broadcasting on the Twilight Zone Channel. ³²

These audio beacons can be embedded in nearly anything ³³ that runs computer code: web pages, videos, newspapers, eBooks and lots more. The horizon is endless where information can be plucked from the air ³⁴ not just about you but plucked from all those around you and plucked from all those things around you too.

Still planning on buying that App Controlled Personal Massage Device? Hmmm....

So, while the options for data harvesting are nearly endless, there are some mitigations. You will have to dig to find them but there are many things you can do to slow it down. Here are 2 ezpz things you can do to start:

1. Change your passwords to be unique ³⁵
2. Leave your smart phone at home or in the trunk of your car.³⁶

In summary:

WE DO NOT TRACK YOU.
THEY DO.



Kilroy was here
WWII Memorial in Washington, D.C.

References

1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surveillance
2 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infinite_loop
3 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emotion#Basic_emotions
4 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contrasting_and_categorization_of_emotions
5 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_Frequency_Identification
6 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microchip_implant_(human)
7 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_beacon
8 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kilroy_was_here
9 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebook_Beacon
10 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kindle_Direct_Publishing
11 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Candid_Camera
12 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_of_things
13 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Botnet
14 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirai_(malware)
15 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dyn_(company)
16 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_Dyn_cyberattack
17 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siri
18 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligent_personal_assistant
19 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dictation_(exercise)
20 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dictaphone
21 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chatterbot
22 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ELIZA
23 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speech_recognition
24 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speaker_recognition
25 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triangulation
26 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_smartphones#Networks_and_connectivity
27 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Types_of_beacons
28 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wireless_personal_area_network
29 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultrasound_Identification
30 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indoor_positioning_system
31 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cross-device_tracking
32 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Twilight_Zone
33 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SilverPush
34 http://boingboing.net/2016/10/30/sneaky-ultrasonic-adware-makes.html
35 https://theintercept.com/2015/03/26/passphrases-can-memorize-attackers-cant-guess/
36 https://theintercept.com/2016/11/12/surveillance-self-defense-against-the-trump-administration/

Happy Thanksgiving

I have many happy memories of Thanksgiving, dating from my childhood days to the years when I took delight in planning and serving the family's Thanksgiving dinner at my house.  The menu always consisted of roast turkey with all the trimmings, mashed potatoes and gravy, two kinds of cranberries, relish and sauce, candied yams with red-hots and marshmallows, a choice of pie, pumpkin, apple or berry. There were vegetables galore along with numerous condiments and sparkling cider to wash it all down. 

Back in the days , when we lived on the asparagus farm, dinner was cooked on a big cast iron stove with water reservoirs on each side, a huge oven and a warming tray along the top.  There were four lids that could be opened when we added either coal or wood fuel, and there was a large flat grill for baking pancakes.  The oven was large enough to bake three cake layers at once or several loaves of bread plus a pan of cinnamon rolls.  The aroma of baking bread is one of life's pleasures and as children, we enjoyed the aroma several time a week when Mom made bread. 

As the years passed, the family spread across the country, but I was fortunate in having many members near enough to attend my turkey dinners.  I spent more time setting the table than I did baking the turkey and preparing the rest of the dinner.  I had a table with leaves that could turn it into a banquet table.  I liked to decorate it with a white cloth with matching napkins, my best set of dishes, sterling silverware and novel centerpieces. 

For the last several years I've shared the day with my son who lives nearby.  We have a traditional meal with choices of desserts and watch TV parades and games.  I look forward to the day and count my blessings.  I hope those reading this blog, will have a great day too.  Happy Thanksgiving!           

Melting Glaciers

A few days ago, while surfing TV stations, I chose to watch a National Geographic documentary released in 2012 called Chasing Ice. It was filmed by James Balog, and directed by Jeff Orloski. Its a multi-year, time-lapsed evidence of glaciers calving at an astonishing rate.

Difficulties encountered while filming this project were so enormous, they almost prevented the achievement of simultaneously recording frozen water of the glacier turning into a slushy tsunami, and landscapes that no longer exist, except on film. The difficulty of setting numerous cameras in dangerous areas that required the exertion of mountain climbers with gear to scale ice mountains. A season of filming was lost because high-tech cameras failed and had to be replaced with those of a simpler circuitry. James Balog, who had filmed glaciers around the world, had knee surgery during the multi-year project in order to continue his dedicated work.

Watching the time compressed calving of a glacier is a mesmerizing experience. As the glacier collapses, ice mountains crumble and cascade into a roiling, churning mass. As the camera pans the thousands of cracks and holes made by melting ice, to focus on the tsunami pouring over and around jagged points of glacier, one suddenly realizes what is actually taking place. Watching an area the size of Manhattan collapse is so shocking, it makes one stop and think.

I've heard about global warming; it was even mentioned in the presidential campaigns, but I must confess, combating global warming didn't really register with me. I thought of it being something politicians would eventually get around to. After watching Chasing Ice, I have a better understanding of what global warming means.

While we concern ourselves with things that won't make a difference a hundred years from now, our planet is changing. The glacial balance of melting, freezing, melting and refreezing is rapidly becoming unbalanced. Perhaps before the point of no return is reached, we can take measures to prevent it.

About the video:

This rare footage has gone on record as the largest glacier calving event ever captured on film, by the 2016 Guiness Book of World Records.

On May 28, 2008, Adam LeWinter and Director Jeff Orlowski filmed a historic breakup at the Ilulissat Glacier in Western Greenland. The calving event lasted for 75 minutes and the glacier retreated a full mile across a calving face three miles wide. The height of the ice is about 3,000 feet, 300-400 feet above water and the rest below water.

Footage produced by James Balog and the Extreme Ice Survey

Talking Heads

The talking heads are at it again.  As a species unto themselves, they are in shock.  Throughout the presidential campaign, the 24/7 parroting of each other, the collective and continuous touting of Hillary for president, which was disguised as analysis, they kept singing.....

"she'll be driving six white horses when she comes".....
"we'll all have chicken and dumplings when she comes"....

Now the talking heads are trying to figure out what happened.  They just forgot....

"The best laid plans of mice and men oft go awry".