Isn’t bin Laden dead?

There are many references to the escape of Usama bin Laden from the mountainous Tora Bora region of Afghanistan in 2001. A Senate committee is currently reviewing this alleged escape and conveniently finding who to blame.

How much confidence do we really have that he escaped? Why has the world not seen him since? Why hasn’t there been more convincing communications from him save for the poor quality audio recordings?

The Healther movement

It appears that the anti-Obama crowd has morphed the so-called “Birther” movement into the “Healther” movement. The basic premise of this new approach is to deny the Obama administration the political power and influence that it could derive from passing national healthcare reform legislation. The primary strategy of this Healther cult, and this label simply replaces the more accurate label of “anti-Obama” cult, is to disrupt the effort to accurately understand the issues, constraints, and options surrounding healthcare in America.

At first, they attempt to terminate any debate or discussion of the topic; breaking up or disrupting efforts at public debate is a primary strategy. When forced to participate in any discussion, they shy away from reasonable contributions and rely on the wild and the whacky: for many of them, Obama is apparently the latest anti-Christ or a Hitler reborn. For some, the proposal to reform healthcare is the advent of socialism (which is apparently an evil thing even though a significant part of the national economy is dominated by socialistic enterprises like Social Security and Medicare/Medicaid). It appears they are willing to deny the nation any sort of healthcare reform until their fellow travelers win majorities in the national elections and can dictate their own solutions.

It remains to be seen if they fall by the wayside as the Birthers now seem to have done.

Red sox vs. Phillies

Friday night’s game was supposed to be a Red Sox loss: they just finished a three-game sweep of the Yankees at home and were starting a roadtrip without a day off. The Phillies are leading their division, leading in all sorts of statistics, and playing at home against a team designed for designated hitting. The more likely outcome should have been a loss. But no, they went thirteen innings to win, 5-2, even after allowing a momentum-crushing game-tieing home-run in the bottom of the ninth. Sox pitcher John Lester was excellent with a six-straight strike-out run and allowing only two hits in seven innings of work. He didn’t even earn the win, however.

Last night’s game was a strange one. The Sox got 5 runs in the first using three Philly errors (this from a team with only 19 errors in total so far this year). Then it rained for an hour and thirty-five minutes. After the Phils got 4 runs back, the Sox proceeded to dismantle the Philly pitching in several hunks. Sox pitcher Matsuzaka continued his mediocre performance and was lifted after four innings in what I consider a brilliant but unusual move by manager Francona. The final score was 11-6 and they played only the regulation nine innings.

The Red Sox have now played 11 consecutive games against major league baseball division leaders and have won 9 of them (Detroit (3-0), Texas (1-2), Yankees (3-0), Philadelphia (2-0)).

Global Cyber-warfare in process

This latest report, Vast Spy System Loots Computers in 103 Countries, from the NYT, provides an update on the progress of the next world war: a war that will focus on information.

Note that the information targeted includes email communications: the researchers documented systematic searching and pilfering of email contents. Note that the use of the stolen communications are applied to counteract other information or shape decision-making of allies or enemies.

Consider this:

“… after an e-mail invitation was sent by the Dalai Lama’s office to a foreign diplomat, the Chinese government made a call to the diplomat discouraging a visit. And a woman working for a group making Internet contacts between Tibetan exiles and Chinese citizens was stopped by Chinese intelligence officers on her way back to Tibet, shown transcripts of her online conversations and warned to stop her political activities.” [NYT, same article noted above]

It is interesting to see that the reporter and several persons quoted in the article, noting that this particular operation apparently originated in China, “cautioned against concluding that China’s government was involved.”

Who is kidding whom, here?

Is Google becoming the virtual Borg?

I perceive a growing resemblance between the Google franchise and that intriguing construct of the Star Trek TV and film archive, the BORG.

You know the Borg, the group of cyborgs (or entities with natural and machine originated features and components) originally introduced in the Star Trek TV series. Now commonly used as a metaphor for any large group or organization that dominates its environment and appears impervious to change, negotiation, or destruction.

A primary process of the Borg is its absorption, or assimilation, of any potentially valuable attribute or feature found in other creatures into its collective assets. The source creatures are also added to the Borg and enhanced with attributes and capabilities acquired from others; thus, the assimilated creatures become part of the collective and are controlled and directed for the good of the whole.

A significant focus of the Borg is the use of information technology to support real-time communications and data processing as it sucks up data from the environments of its millions of drone creatures and sensors and, conversely, communicates instructions and directions back to them; this process of collective intelligence enables the parts to act as a coordinated whole.

John Markoff’s article ( 29-Nov-2008 ) in The New York Times online, “You’re Leaving a Digital Trail. What About Privacy?” has distinct references to the growing use of information technologies that resemble a world of virtual Borgs, of which Google is the industry leader.  He notes that,

… a vast sea of digital information [is] being recorded by an ever thicker web of sensors, from phones to GPS units to the tags in office ID badges, that capture our movements and interactions. Coupled with information already gathered from sources like Web surfing and credit cards … [forms] the basis for an emerging field called collective intelligence. [italics are mine]

Markoff goes on to state:

“GOOGLE and its vast farm of more than a million search engine servers spread around the globe remain the best example of the power and wealth-building potential of collective intelligence.

Google recently developed a process that would identify flu outbreaks based on its data collections. Markoff’s article introduces an activist support organization called MobileActive which plans to utilize collective intelligence to direct individual activists to action in support of their causes. Will Google’s command of their hoard of data allow them to communicate and direct us drones to act as Google wants?  Can we trust Google to always act for the collective good? Is what is good for Google good for us?