Second Worst Interview on NPR

Michel Martin's interview with former U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales was the second worst interview I've heard in the 31 years I've been listening to NPR.  (The worst interview was Daniel Zwerdling's interview with Stokely Carmichael/Kwame Ture.)

Martin should have asked Gonzales how it was that he could recall events now when he couldn't even remember if he was wearing underwear when he appeared before the Senate Judiciary Committee 9 years ago.  At the hearing Gonzales said ""I cannot recall..." or "I don't recall" over 70 times.

Absolutely appalling.

Covert hard Drive Noise

https://arxiv.org/abs/1608.03431

The quick an dirty: using malware and no speakers, researchers could force air-gapped computers - computers logically and physically disconnected from the Internet - to generate audio signals at "effective bit rate of 180 bits/minute (10,800 bits/hour) and a distance of up to two meters (six feet)."  The signal could be received by a computer, smartphone, etc.

That's nice, but at 180 bits/minute that works out to ~23 characters a minute, assuming ASCII encoding.  That might work for a password hack which may be all one needs.  

It might be just the push some organization will need to move to SSDs because the hack wprks by generating a specific audio frequencies by controlling the movements of the HDD's actuator arm. Digital Information can be modulated over the acoustic signals.  No actuator arm no signal.

Our security guy replied to my note about DiskFiltration by saying that a lot of this stuff was coming from last week's BlackHat conference. 

We Survive a Swarm of Teenagers or Give Me Girls Every Time

An adjunct instructor was contacted about creating a field trip for a summer camp for disadvantaged middle and high school students.  Before you could say, "Whoa!" I was up to my eyeballs recruiting faculty to participate and then introducing the faculty to the adjunct so they'd read her (the adjunct's email) or put a face to a voice.

My bit of business was a piece of cake: show them how to create a program in Alice to do the following:

.
Not terribly exciting, but it would be the first programming experience for a lot of the kids.  The program could be used to explain how making intelligent decisions concerning logic would enable the same code to work regardless of how the bunny was positioned relative to the chicken.

What could go wrong?  Well for starters, a power outage a few weeks before made about half the PCs unable to login.  The software wasn't working on half the remaining PCs.  And, ever the good sole I had the Computer Center create special single use accounts in the room I was going to use and the computer lab for another presenter.  (The special accounts allowed the students to login, access the web, but not create files on network drives.)

Two former students agreed to demonstrate resonant frequencies.  We were pretty sure that the kids had never heard of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge and they'd be impressed to learn that engineers had to design buildings so that the structures didn't shake apart.  One later had her work schedule changed so it was down to one student.

I tried to use a web cam to allow a whole room to see what was happening on a shaker table.  I needed a long video cable, but the cable sent over didn't have the right pinning, but we managed to survive.  I was told the students were impressed that their minders were impressed.

I did my due diligence: checking out PCs in my room and the room used by another presenter and filing more than 2 dozen help desk tickets.  Because it was summer and the usual tech guy was on vacation, the Computer Center was in some turmoil as the Center's least favorite director was canned earlier in the week, I was rescued by some daring-do not described here lest some unnamed forces react badly.  (Murky I know, but, trust me, it's better that way.)

On the day of I got a shock when I found an instructor reading his Wall Street Journal in the room where I expected to make a presentation to about 40 kids 3 times.   It went like this:

"Hey Mike, what are you doing here?"
"What do you mean what am I doing here?  This is where I teach my class."

Uh-oh!  Scheduling conflict.  I don't think it was my doing, but definitely now my problem.  After some consultation, pleading, and abasement.  Mike agreed to hold his class next door and I would be out of his usually scheduled room in time for his students to use the computers.

It was an interesting experience because the kids showed up late because they'd walked over instead of coming over by bus.

The girls were great.  The followed instructions, raised hands when they had questions, and responded to questions.  The guys?  The ability to make the chicken cackle seemed irresistible to many.

It was gratifying.  One young woman wanted to know if she could have me as her teacher if she came to my college.  I should have said, "I'd love to have you."  I'm not used to dealing with kids.  What I said instead was, "If you come here you'd have to register for my course."  Bureaucratic.  I should be ashamed of myself.

On the other hand, a couple, including one of their minders, asked how they could get the software.  I gave all the info to the adjunct who got me into this and let her pass it along.

All students survived.  All equipment remained intact and in place.  From my point of view: Success!

I imagine that it might become a yearly summer event.  If so I'd be boring the students if I reused the same demonstration.  It might be cool though to have students send a signal over the web to activate a a piston to push something over an edge.  Shouldn't that appeal to the nihilism of grade school kids?

Trump and the Jerk Pride Movement

Donald Trump, the gift that keeps on giving.

When David Letterman, the former host of the Late Night Show, heard that Donald Trump decided to enter the presidential race he moaned that he had retired too early.

Trump has truly been an inspiration for pundits to sharpen their wit.

Patricia Nelson Limerick, faculty director and chair of the Center of the American West at the University of Colorado, co author of "The Frontier in American Culture", called Trump the standard-bearer for the currently booming “Jerk Pride Movement”  (www.denverpost.com/2015/12/18/limerick-jerk-studies-101/).

Her research, dating back many years established that the consensus of people who dealt with the public (waiters, hotel clerks, cab drivers, etc) was that 15% of the public were jerks.

Quoting from the article,

Trump should be understood as the standard-bearer for the currently booming “Jerk Pride Movement,” in which the Fifteen Percent stride vigorously out of the closet and present themselves to the world, shouting out wildly over-generalized, destructive, and polarizing sentiments and then, still shouting, congratulating themselves for their impressive forthrightness.

Because Limerick claims that her “research” showed the percentage of jerks in the population is 15% she was surprised that a cab driver put the number at only 5%.   Five percent,” he repeated. “But they move around a lot.”

Thinking this could be the basis of a serious question in a research methods class (sociology, psychology, marketing, analytics, etc.)  I forwarded the information to several profs in those areas.

Yes, it’s part of a joke, but assuming that the cab driver were correct, that the true number is 5%, what other error other than exceptionally poor math skills, double counting, or really poor sampling technique would explain the discrepancy?

Flotsam from 2014

I discovered some mail and papers from 2014.  There were some medical bills, since paid, some phone numbers without associated names, some jokes which must have come from "Prairie Home Companion" on the back of an old final exam, and notes on the back of a quarterly statement from an annuity.

The annuity:

I remembered calling the annuity to find out what a "non-qualified annuity" was.  The guy I reached seemed delighted to enthusiastically explain everything in great detail.  I knew I had just become just-like-everyone-else because I couldn't follow him.

It is not supposed to be that way.  Maybe I was tired, It means that I should call again and this time record some definitive answers to some simple questions.  If I only knew what those simple questions might be.

The jokes:

"Cross-country skiing is easier in a small country."

"Go for the juggler."  (The punch line for a number of related jokes: "What should you if attacked by a mob of clowns?" and "How do you kill a circus?")

"What is all dressed up and no place to go?"  A Unitarian corpse.

A classic chemistry joke:

"I've lost an electron!"
"Are you sure?"
"I'm positive."

And this, a joke many women have found funny:

Q: What is the difference between a married man and a dead man?
A: When you're dead you don't wish you were married."

Stumbled Across Two Books About Wine and Drink

Adventures on the Wine Route: A Wine Buyer's Tour of France (2013) by Kermit Lynch.  I read a bit here and there.  Lynch is a charming writer to whom I'm now grateful for the Billat-Savarin description of the two features which distinguish man from beast: 1) Fear of the future and 2) Desire for fermented liquors 

Notes on a Cellar-Book ((2008) by George Saintsbury and Thomas Pinney  According to the notation, Saintsbury was a gifted and prolific writer.  I stumbled around online and found this quote from his critical introduction to Gibbons: ""There were some things—not many—which he did not and could not know; but almost everything that there was for him to know he knew."  That seems to be the type of praise every critic would want.

I saw Star Wars: The Force Awakens and Resent the Waste of Time

I saw Star Wars: The Force Awakens at a local library. It stirred memories:

• A friend and I paid $1 each to see Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves. As the movie played we'd whisper to each other: "99¢",  "98¢", until Sean Connery appeared to kick the value from 45¢ to 50¢
• Then there was my father's voice, "Who wrote this crap?"

The film brought to mind that old, snarky comment: "The dialog was so wooden as to constitute a fire hazard."  The dialog would have been right at home on title cards.

The First Order's got technology to destroy multiple planets with a super-duper weapon, but don't have video surveillance of their own installation.  Maybe it's a fixer-up film:  Hollywood makes the film and viewers can amuse themselves patching plot holes.   Sorry guys, I have stuff to do I real life.