duel after a masked ball, helper robots have emotional flaws

Duel after a Masked Ball by Jean-Leon Gerome (11 May 1824 – 10 January 1904). Oil on canvas, 1857).

 

Helper Robots Are Steered, Tentatively, to Care for the Aging

Researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology have developed Cody, a robotic nurse the university says is “gentle enough to bathe elderly patients.” There is also HERB, which is short for Home Exploring Robot Butler. Made by researchers at Carnegie Mellon, it is designed to fetch household objects like cups and can even clean a kitchen. Hector, a robot that is being developed by the University of Reading in England, can remind patients to take their medicine, keep track of their eyeglasses and assist in the event of a fall.

That sounds like what I am hoping for. Progress towards an agile, artificially intelligent robot to help me in my old age. Though there are already ethical issues. People with neuro-degenerative diseases are using robots and are talking to them in the frequent absence of human care takers. That might look like tragic-comedy in a movie or novel, but real life is another matter. These people think the robots can understand and sympathize with what they are saying.

“I felt like this isn’t amazing; this is sad. We have been reduced to spectators of a conversation that has no meaning,” she said. “Giving old people robots to talk to is a dystopian view that is being classified as utopian.” Professor Turkle said robots did not have a capacity to listen or understand something personal, and tricking patients to think they can is unethical.

That’s the catch. Leaving the questions of ethics aside for a moment, building robots is not simply about creating smart machines; it is about making something that is not human still appear, somehow, trustworthy.

Even if the robot is trustworthy i terms of not hurting the person or damaging property, it will be a while before there are C-3PO, emotionally aware robots who understand the story about your grand children and shows something like genuine empathy. Otherwise we are just tricking the naive or sick that they have a real companion that can listen.

Monet in front of his paintings (The Waterlilies) in his studios. 1920. Gelatin silver print by Henri Manuel (1874-1947).

A Right-Wing Mole at ABC News Jonathan Karl and the success of the conservative media movement

After a stint at the New York Post, Karl soon found his way to CNN, but he was still connected to ideological pursuits; he was a board member at the right-leaning youth-oriented Third Millennium group and at the Madison Center for Educational Affairs—which, like the Collegiate Network, seeks to strengthen young conservative journalism. After moving to ABC in 2003, Karl contributed several pieces to the neo-con Weekly Standard, such as his April 4, 2005 article praising Bush Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice as out to “make her mark with the vigorous pursuit of the president’s freedom and democracy agenda.

Recently Karl and ABC News pushed that fake e-mail that suggested some kind of White House cover-up of Benghazi. Maybe not a coincidence that Karl did not do much in the way of verification before passing along a fake e-mail to the public as “news.”

car ferry in winter, how fox news betrayed america

Car ferry, winter. Detroit River, c1900. This picture brings up an unusual aspect of some photography. Some of the smoke is just steam from the mix of hot air and cold air creating condensation. The other part is pollution from the coal fired steam engine. Part of the beauty of the picture is created by something ugly and harmful.

What is the difference between being a true whistle-blower and a reporter leaking classified national security information. Books have been written on this complex subject so I will not attempt to define all the differences and every situation. Though in general a whistle-blower is someone that does reveal classified information, but that information is in regards to illegal activity by the government/government officials. A leaker is someone who reveals national security information for whatever reason – the ego of the reporter, maliciousness, or ignorance – the list is as long as the reasons that can motivate someone to do something. Some may remember the biggest whistle-blower story of the modern era, the revelation by two NYT reporters that the Bush administration had skipped the courts and the warrant process ( demanded under the 4th amendment) to allow the NSA to spy at will on U.S. citizens, December 16, 2005 – Bush Lets U.S. Spy on Callers Without Courts

Months after the Sept. 11 attacks, President Bush secretly authorized the National Security Agency to eavesdrop on Americans and others inside the United States to search for evidence of terrorist activity without the court-approved warrants ordinarily required for domestic spying, according to government officials.

Under a presidential order signed in 2002, the intelligence agency has monitored the international telephone calls and international e-mail messages of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people inside the United States without warrants over the past three years in an effort to track possible “dirty numbers” linked to Al Qaeda, the officials said. The agency, they said, still seeks warrants to monitor entirely domestic communications.

The previously undisclosed decision to permit some eavesdropping inside the country without court approval was a major shift in American intelligence-gathering practices, particularly for the National Security Agency, whose mission is to spy on communications abroad. As a result, some officials familiar with the continuing operation have questioned whether the surveillance has stretched, if not crossed, constitutional limits on legal searches.

“This is really a sea change,” said a former senior official who specializes in national security law. “It’s almost a mainstay of this country that the N.S.A. only does foreign searches.”

Nearly a dozen current and former officials, who were granted anonymity because of the classified nature of the program, discussed it with reporters for The New York Times because of their concerns about the operation’s legality and oversight.

The NSA or National Security Agency is a department of the Pentagon. They are barred from domestic spying based on the law and legal precedent. The NYT did what a free press is supposed to do, act as the people’s watchdogs against abuse by the government, industry or individuals. In the case of leakers that another matter. The NYT among other news services has at times acquired classified information, the government has become aware of it and explained to those news services that leaking said information may damage national security. Conservatives claimed that what the NYT did in the case of exposing clearly illegal activity (Federal Judge Finds N.S.A. Wiretaps Were Illegal) by a Republican administration, was treason. Which like their claims about Benghazi lack anything like legal justification, or rational thought. Then Bush appointee to the CIA , Porter Goss, also seemed to lack any guidance from clear headed thought, Why Are Republicans So Riled Up About Obama’s Justice Department Reading a Reporter’s E-mails When They Cheered the Bush Administration For Doing the Same Thing?  

In mid-March, after Attorney General Gonzales raised publicly the possibility of prosecuting journalists, the Director of the CIA, Porter Goss, suggested that it was his “hope” and “aim” that the leak investigations would lead to subpoenas requiring me to testify about the identity of my confidential source(s). Only two months into the investigation, Goss explained: “It is my aim and it is my hope that we will witness a grand jury investigation with reporters present being asked to reveal who is leaking this information.”

Very irresponsible and politically motivated assertion by an administration crony to claim that reporters who exposed illegal activity by the government, just be held accountable to a grand jury investigation. Grand juries can be nasty instruments of the law. The rules that apply in normal courts, the ones we see in court room dramas all the time do not apply to grand juries. From that same article  Kurt Eichenwald also notes that in the current controversy over the DOJ investigation of Fox News reporter (To call anyone who works at Fox a reporter is a stretch of reality) he notes that James Rosen and his source did not expose some illegal activity by the Obama administration, but exposed a national security secret about North Korea.

The Fox case involved a report by Rosen in June 2009 that American intelligence officials had issued warnings that, should the United Nations adopt sanctions that were under consideration, North Korea would begin conducting new nuclear tests. According to the F.B.I. affidavit in the case, the information was top secret and was contained in an intelligence document disseminated to a small number of government officials that same morning. The report was marked top secret.

Fox news and James Rosen are not whistle-blowers. They exposed national security secrets to a foreign power, for whatever reason. They broke the law and compromised national security. The Obama administration, or rather the DOJ and FBI may have been too zealous, but they did follow the law and obtain warrants. America seems to be having difficulty hearing the story of how Fox News, who is for all practical purposes the communications office of the Republican Party,  probably committed treason.

when drugs do not work – the new brain stimulation, the immoral inquisitors are back

Glacier streams at Mt. Cook New Zealand.

 

Deep brain stimulation: a fix when the drugs don’t work

Artificial cardiac pacemakers are typically associated with controlling and resynchronising heartbeats by electrical stimulation of the heart muscle.

In a similar manner, DBS sends electrical impulses to specific parts of the brain that control discrete functions. This stimulation evokes control over the neural activity within these regions.

Prior to switching on the electrical stimulation, electrodes are surgically implanted within precise brain regions to control a specific function.

The neurosurgery is conducted under local anaesthetic to maintain consciousness in the patient. This ensures that the electrode does not damage critical brain regions.

The brain itself has no pain receptors so does not require anaesthetic.

…Drug therapy for Parkinson’s disease involves the use of levodopa (L-DOPA), a form of dopamine that can cross the blood brain barrier and then be synthesised into dopamine.

The administration of L-DOPA temporarily reduces the motor symptoms by increasing dopamine concentrations in the brain. However, side effects of this treatment include nausea and disordered movement.

DBS has been shown to provide relief from the motoric symptoms of Parkinson’s disease and essential tremors.

For the treatment of Parkinson’s disease electrodes are implanted into regions of the basal ganglia – the subthalamic nucleus or globus pallidus, to restore control of movement.

I practically grew up on One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and Suddenly, Last Summer. So I have a built in anxiety about anyone messing around with the brain. While some level of wariness is reasonable when considering brain altering treatment, modern medicine seems to be leaving the nightmarish Nurse Ratcheds behind.

I’m posting this in it’s entirety so you’ll have the background, What’s Next For Kaitlyn Hunt, The Teen Charged With A Felony For Same-Sex Relationship With Classmate.

On Friday night, 18-year-old Kaitlyn Hunt and her family went public with their story: Kaitlyn was charged with a felony stemming from a relationship she had with a 15-year-old girl at her high school. The response in the 48-hours that followed, Kaitlyn’s father Steven Hunt told ThinkProgress in an interview, was “extraordinary.”

Already, nearly 40,000 people have signed a petition calling on the Assistant State Attorney, Brian Workman, to drop the case. On Facebook, more than 13,000 people have joined a group — Free Kate — in support of the family.

Last week, her father said, Workman offered Kaitlyn a plea bargain. She could plead guilty to child abuse, a felony, and spend two years under house arrest. The judge would determine if she would have to register as a sex offender. They were given a deadline of May 24th to accept the offer or face trial.

Kaitlyn’s father suggests his daughters arrest — and the substantial sentence sought by the prosecutor — are motivated by anti-gay bias. He told ThinkProgress that the younger girl’s parents have told teachers at the high school that “their daughter will NOT be gay.”

So what’s next for Kaitlyn?

The family is hoping that public pressure will improve the offer from the State Attorney. Her father said Kaitlyn would be willing to plead to a misdemeanor, but not a felony. If the position of the State Attorney does not change, Kaitlyn and her family are prepared to go to trial.

The family’s attorney, Julia Graves, has assembled a table of experienced defense lawyers that will convene next week to discuss Kaitlyn’s legal options. Meanwhile, Kaitlyn is scheduled to appear in court again on June 20. At that time, if a plea agreement is not reached, the judge could set a date for trial.

We dangerously close to returning to the worse of American historical traditions, with attitudes that resemble those of those Salem witch-hunters. Two teens having a relationships. Oh the horror. That has never happened before, someone must be punished. Criminal laws are supposed to be about protecting victims from abusive and violent behavior, negligence by individuals and corporations, not enforcing the twisted 17th century moral sensibilities of local inquisitors.

fury of the french at antwerp, poltical scandals and shamless hypocrisy

Fury of the French in Antwerp by Ferdinand de Braekeleer. Oil on canvas. Belgium, Between 1827 and 1846. I’m not an expert on Antwerp history, but I am fairly certain this is a depiction of one night in the Belgian Revolution. Many in North America should be able to relate to this frustration by an early liberal movement for freedom to worship as one wished, and freedom of the press, among other issues. The Netherlands are still a stellar world examples of liberalism to this day.

Double standards. That might be part of what is fueling the foaming at the mouth hysteria of the radical Right over two non-scandals, the current IRS screw-ups (IRS Audited Democratic Groups Under Bush, No Outrage from Conservatives) and the tragedy of Benghazi. Though since conservatives have an infamously low regard for ethics and genuineness, their shrill cries are mostly theater. A public display feigned outrage more in need of smelling salts and cold compresses than yet more expensive congressional kabuki. Why Obama Is Not Nixon

In order to stoke the conspiracy theories, Republican congressional aides leaked false versions of the interagency emails and ABC ran with them without checking. Republicans focused the controversy on Hillary Clinton rather than David Petraeus, the CIA director at the time, though Petraeus also agreed to the talking points and was responsible for hiring the local defenders who melted away at the first shot, and the misinformed intelligence on what happened that night was a failure by the CIA. (But Petraeus was most unlikely to run for president in 2016.) That the US presence in Benghazi was essentially a CIA operation was kept quiet. The inability to adequately protect our foreign missions has been a bipartisan failure and Congress’s stinginess with funds for the protection of our assets in foreign countries also bears some responsibility. In any case, the Republicans might be well advised to tread carefully on the matter of ignored warnings. So far, the George W. Bush administration has got by amazingly with their obvious failure to act on indications months before September 11, 2001, that a major terrorist plot was in the works.

Not just Bush, but the arrogance and incompetence of the conservative mindset was responsible for one of the biggest national security failures in our history. Then told a pack of lies connecting Iraq to 9-11, are now engaged in a deranged campaign to turn a tragedy, that they are also partly responsible for, into a scandal. The shamelessness of conservative hypocrisy alone is blinding. Maybe instead of Obama’s preschool initiative we have a national educational initiative to educate the conservative movement on ethics.

Science humor, Cells must use their brakes moderately for effective speed control

All living cells have a regulatory system similar to what can be found in today’s smartphones. Just like our phones process a large amount of information that we feed them, cells continuously process information about their outer and inner environment. Inside the cells, information is sent and processed via a large network of interactions between signalling molecules.

In electronic circuits it is common with negative feedback, inhibiting functions, to make signals clearer and to reduce noise that can obscure important information. Cells also use this technique for reducing unwanted noise. Almost half of all signalling molecules that regulate which genes should be on or off, regulate their own genetic expression through biochemical reactions acting as inhibitors.

“If the number of signalling molecules is more than necessary, they shut down their own production for a short while, to later resume it. The difference between feedback in electronic systems and biological systems is that biological systems are much more imprecise and slow”, explains Andreas Grönlund, lead author, currently active at Umeå University.

Together with professors Per Lötstedt and Johan Elf, both at Uppsala University, he has used new data and mathematical models to calculate how long the molecules must remain in their binding sites to make the feedback exactly strong enough to reduce noise as much as possible.

I have always been amazed at the billions of reactions the body carries out without conscience input from the thinking part of the brain. If life seems complicated now – work, family, bills, plans, relationships – imagine having to think through every biochemical reaction required to stay alive.

china rivers sunset wallpaper, depression linked to out of sync biological clock

china rivers sunset wallpaper. China’s river system, at least those that have not dried up or been drained are a nightmare. Up towards their mountain origins things are not as bad.

 

Depressed people’s body clocks ‘out of sync’

Every cell in our bodies runs on a 24-hour clock, tuned to the night-day, light-dark cycles that have ruled us since the dawn of humanity. The brain acts as timekeeper, keeping the cellular clock in sync with the outside world so that it can govern our appetites, sleep, moods, and much more.

But new research shows that the clock may be broken in the brains of people with depression—even at the level of the gene activity inside their brain cells.

This discovery may mean there are distinct biomarkers for chronic depression. That knowledge may lead to better medications and the ability to fine tune them for the individual. While most people probably already realize this, depression and mood disorders are not a sign of personal failing. These findings are another proof that most depression, is the result of biological processes. That is not to say that therapy does not help. Therapy is a way to sort emotions. Emotions have biological consequences in a kind of feedback loop. That is why the combination of psychological therapy and medication has been the most effective treatment.

What is the difference between conservatives in America and the Taliban in Afghanistan? As far as I know conservatives have not started cutting off hands for stealing a loaf of bread. I’m still figuring out the others, Virginia GOP Nominee For Attorney General Would Force Women To Report Their Miscarriages To Police.

If a woman in Virginia has a miscarriage without a doctor present, they must report it within 24 hours to the police or risk going to jail for a full year. At least, that’s what would have happened if a bill introduced by Virginia state Sen. Mark Obenshain (R) had become law.

And yet, the Virginia Republican Party wants to make Obenshain into the state’s top prosecutor. This weekend, Virginia Republicans selected Obenshain as their nominee to replace tea party stalwart Ken Cuccinelli (R) as the state’s attorney general.

This obsessive need to control others bodies, humiliate people during a tragedy and get government deeply involved into one’s personal life is some kind of value. A value out of a dystopian hallucination.

sculpture and weeping williow, joshua tree

 Reading Chaucer. Bronze sculpture by Philip Jackson.

lonely joshua tree

Much of the media is creating a narrative. Not that most of the media needs much taunting to pick up a simplistic narrative and run with it, but the media seems all too ready to genuflect to  conservative taunts. They are both creating a framing. They do not believe the American people can or should do that for themselves, The scandals are falling apart

On Tuesday, it looked like we had three possible political scandals brewing. Two days later, with much more evidence available, it doesn’t look like any of them will pan out.

…If new information emerges showing a connection between the (IRS) Determination Unit’s decisions and the Obama campaign, or the Obama administration, it would crack this White House wide open. That would be a genuine scandal. But the IG report says that there’s no evidence of that. And so it’s hard to see where this one goes from here.

… Benghazi: We’re long past the point where it’s obvious what the Benghazi scandal is supposed to be about. The inquiry has moved on from the events in Benghazi proper, tragic as they were, to the talking points about the events in Benghazi.

…AP/Justice Department:. This is the weirdest of the three. There’s no evidence that the DoJ did anything illegal. Most people, in fact, think it was well within its rights to seize the phone records of Associated Press reporters. And if the Obama administration has been overzealous in prosecuting leakers, well, the GOP has been arguing that the White House hasn’t taken national security leaks seriously enough.

The AP escapes are the only thing approaching a real scandal, and then only as a long standing constitutional issue in which the government overreached on an alleged national security issue. And on that scandal conservatives are hypocrites. Some conservative bloggers called the AP, the Associated With Terrorists Agency during the Bush administration because AP did not just parrot Bush talking points. Cons have made hatred of freedom of the press part of their political movement.

an obsession with color, banks still stealing homes

Notes on painting from Oscar Bluemner’s Theory Diary, 1920 Jan. 12. Bluemner’s notes in German regarding color theory, supplemented with watercolor samples. Oscar Bluemner papers, Archives of American Art.

 Bluemner’s notes in German regarding color theory, supplemented with watercolor samples. These papers are interesting in the context of obsessions. We’re told not to have them. The daily news is filled with the tragic results of unhealthy obsessions. Which may leave the impressions that there are no healthy ones. Bluemner’s obsession was  being the Proust of color. Nothing wrong with that. Though since I wasn’t there it wouldn’t surprise me if he drove his friends crazy on occasion.

 Turns out much-hyped settlement still allows banks to steal homes

The absolute least Americans can hope for from a major government settlement with a large industry over well-documented crimes is that the industry wouldn’t, after signing the settlement, just continue to commit the same crimes day after day. After all, following the tobacco industry settlement, cigarette makers did manage to stop advertising to teenagers that their product had no medical side effects.

But new evidence reveals the nation’s largest banks have apparently continued to fabricate documents, rip off customers and illegally kick people out of their homes, even after inking a series of settlements over the same abuses. And the worst part of it all is that the main settlement over foreclosure fraud was so weakly written that it actually allows such criminal conduct to occur, at least up to a certain threshold. Potentially hundreds of thousands of homes could be effectively stolen by the big banks without any sanctions.

One of the things state and federal officials agreed to was an error level below five percent. And they would not go storming in for another round of legal sanctions, with more fines. Now, with the benefit of 20/20 hindsight officials and public interest groups who are keeping an eye on the banks have noted that even under five percent that could add up, and probably is, to hundreds of thousands of people being forced out of their homes with fraudulent paperwork. Homeowners themselves could sue, but despite all we hear about how easy it is to sue someone, it can take years and a lot of expense before a homeowners gets a settlement.