‘Seeing’ Face

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Just as I figured: Computers are intolerant, racially discriminatory and just creepy.
Figuring out  African-Americans was a problem for HP’s newest face-recognition gear:

In the video, Wanda (Caucasian) and Desi (African American) — two employees at what appears to be a computer electronics store — expose a flaw in the webcam software.
As depicted, the software has no problem recognizing Wanda’s face, with the webcam following her face around as she moves up, down, in, out and around.
No such luck for Desi, however, as the camera remains completely static regardless of any movement.
The side-by-side portrayal is quite jarring and paints a strong case in favor of Desi’s conjecture: “I think my blackness is interfering with the computer’s ability to follow me,” and assertion that, “Hewlett-Packard computers are racist.”

HP quickly responded, knowing how these things can get out of PR control.
From HP’s Voodoo Blog:

Everything we do is focused on ensuring that we provide a high-quality experience for all our customers, who are ethnically diverse and live and work around the world. That’s why when issues surface, we take them seriously and work hard to understand the root causes.
…
The technology we use is built on standard algorithms that measure the difference in intensity of contrast between the eyes and the upper cheek and nose.
We believe that the camera might have difficulty “seeing” contrast in conditions where there is insufficient foreground lighting.

Eyes speak with forked-robotic tongue.

(Illustration found here).

Pass This On…

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Must-read on the twisted-horror of the US Senate health care bill at FireDogLake.

Politics and the human condition.

‘Why aren’t they turning?’

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In the midst of bad news from many quarters, this latest does make one feel better.
From Wired:

That asteroid is Apophis, a 900-foot asteroid. Calculations released on Christmas Eve 2004 appeared to show that there was a greater than 2 percent chance the asteroid would hit the Earth in 2029.
The asteroid appeared ready to give the Earth its closest shave since astronomers began looking for such things.
It was judged a 4 on the Torino Impact Hazard Scale for a short time, the highest rating any near-Earth object has received.
…
Even though the asteroid doesn’t look like it’s going to hit Earth, on April 13, 2029, it will come closer to Earth than any other near-Earth object that we know of.
It will pass just 18,300 miles above the planet’s surface.

A comfort, though slight, is the notion the event isn’t loosely-scheduled for another near-30 years.
And with a real-huge shitload of nefarious situations currently facing the planet, to paraphrase George Carlin’s “Hippy Dippy Weatherman,” don’t sweat that piece of space rock coming our way.

(Illustration found here).

Light-Up a Smoke

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Copenhagen: Tempers flared Monday at the United Nations climate summit as poor nations staged a walkout to protest what they called inadequate aid offers from rich countries, and the U.S. and China jockeyed for position.

The talks have become what one observer called a “farce,” as guidelines agreed on two years ago are not even obtainable because these clowns can’t even agree now on the basics — and it’s still about the money.
Developed countries vs those undeveloped — the rich are stalling the not-so-rich: “The disaster has already begun because we have not closed the gap an inch. We have not moved,” a senior Asian negotiator said. “We are just trying to paste over it with political rhetoric.”

(Illustration found here).

While delegates to the conference are playing grab-ass with a planet’s future, the need for some kind of killer agreement to curb/stop greenhouse gases or the days ahead will be a killer time.
Sadly, and mighty depressing is the actual reality — what needs to be done in time to stop/mitigate the horror coming just near-literally around the corner.
Environmental activist Bill McKibben posted a sobering view today at environment360 on the challenge of what’s at stake.
Some snippets:

But here’s the thing: The words don’t count.
None of them. If you want to understand what’s going on here, you need to shut out the words, the drama, the craziness, and just focus on numbers — and really just a few.
Outside the window, right now, the atmosphere contains 390 parts per million (ppm) of CO2.
That’s too much — as a result, sea ice is melting, glaciers retreating, deserts spreading.
Science has told us where we need to go: 350 ppm.
There’s really not much pushback against that number — the UN’s chief climate scientist Rajendra Pachauri has made it clear that it’s a necessary target.
…
So here’s the number at the moment.
Take every plan — the meager American one, the more aggressive European targets, the Chinese promises to use less carbon per yuan of output, the Brazilian pledges about forests, the Maldives hope of going carbon neutral inside a decade. Push the button.
In the year 2100, the atmosphere will contain 770 parts per million CO2.

And even with all this serious science shit, there are still some real-mean-ass, dumb-ass people, like a for instance, Sen. Jim Inhofe, a delusional-type A character who will reportedly travel to Copenhagen to show his US ass-ignorance, even demanding an investigation into “climate-gate” as global warming is a massive, way-complicated fraud: “They’re cooking the science,” Inhofe said. “The same things that came out on these e-mails is what I said four years ago.”
And to this comes a snap-back from US Sen. Barbara Boxer, chair of the Environment and Public Works Committee: “Well, my good friend Sen. Inhofe is entitled to his opinion, but he’s not entitled to his own facts.”

Words not numbers — a match waiting…

Anoxic Anxiety

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Nearly in a near-panic.

Wikipedia: Oceanic anoxic events or anoxic events occur when the Earth’s oceans become completely depleted of oxygen (O2) below the surface levels.
Although anoxic events have not happened for millions of years, the geological record shows that they happened many times in the past.
Anoxic events may have caused mass extinctions.
These mass extinctions were so characteristic they include some of those which geobiologists employ to serve as a time marker in biostratigraphic dating.
It is believed oceanic anoxic events are strongly linked to lapses in key oceanic current circulations, to climate warming and greenhouse gases.


(Illustration: ‘Manatee In The Sea Grass‘ by Joann Shular found here).

Meanwhile, in Copenhagen: The Associated Press reports that the protests — which attracted 40,000 to 100,000 people, depending on the source — were “mostly peaceful.”
Peoples from 194 nations are meeting under the UN’s Framework Convention on Climate Change and despite all the hub-bub outside on the streets, early reports indicate not much has been accomplished other than the rich are still being assholes.
Also reportedly this week the climate talks will become dramatic as more activists and a shitload of world leaders (President Obama is scheduled for Friday — closing day), US congress-people, journalists and all kinds of other types will be trying to take up space at the conference.
And drama kicked-off today — climate science is serious as a heart-attack.
From DeSmogBlog:

During a live primetime climate-debate broadcasted on Danish national TV one of the participators, climate-skeptic scientist Henrik Svensmark, had a heart attack.
Bjorn Lomborg was by his side in the tv-studio when the scientist mid-sentence fell ill.
THe 41 year old Henrik Svensmark made an awkward spasm/shudder and burst out a strange noise, sounding like a cough.
The other participants in the debate looked baffled and he mumbled:
“It’s my heart,” and fell to the ground and the pacemaker kicked in once more and you could hear him scream. Bjrøn Lomborg yelled “call an ambulance, call an ambulance” and the host and the other participants came over to help the man.

Svensmark is supposedly one of the “sunspots and cosmic rays, not humans, cause global warming” kind of guys — a point reportedly refuted by the science.
And along with global warming, the “evil twin of climate change” –  ocean acidification — is apparently getting worse as a report released to the conference implied, although the CO2-related phenomenon doesn’t get much press.
The study from the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) paints another bleak picture for the earth’s environment.
From the UK’s The Guardian on the report:

Ocean acidification — the facts says that acidity in the seas has increased 30% since the start of the industrial revolution.
Many of the effects of this acidification are already irreversible and are expected to accelerate, according to the scientists.
…
Although oceans have acidified naturally in the past, the current rate of acidification is so fast that it is becoming extremely difficult for species and habitats to adapt.
“We’re counting it in decades, and that’s the real take-home message,” said Dr John Baxter a senior scientist with Scottish Natural Heritage, and the report’s co-author. “This is happening fast.”
The report, published by the EU-funded European Project on Ocean Acidification, a consortium of 27 research institutes and environment agencies, states that the survival of a number of marine species is affected or threatened, in ways not recognised and understood until now.

And also from the UK and today’s timesonline:

Ocean acidification has been quite scandalously left out of the reckoning in the past few weeks.
I am not for a moment belittling the science behind man-made global warming. This still seems to me solid, despite the shenanigans at the University of East Anglia (“climategate”).
That levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere are rising is not disputed. We have known since the 19th century that carbon dioxide was a crucial greenhouse gas. Venus has a lot of it and is hot as hell. Mars has almost none and is cold as ice.
…
Since the beginning of the industrial revolution in about 1750, sea water acidity has increased by 30%.
The speed and degree of this change are faster than anything that had happened for 55m years.
The changes being observed are beginning to disrupt the ability of any organism to make shells out of calcium carbonate.
Organisms that do this include corals, crabs, lobsters, small creatures vital to the diet of fish and plankton of the kind that die and form chalk deposits such as the white cliffs of Dover.
Projections show that by 2060, given the current rate of fossil-fuel emissions, sea water acidity could have increased by 120%.
…
Such an effect could trigger a chain of reactions through entire ecosystems, from whales to fish and shellfish, with huge implications for economies and wildlife.
It could even stop the sea absorbing as much carbon dioxide as it does now, accelerating global warming.
It is pretty scary stuff.

Yes.
In a hearing Dec. 2, Dr. Jane Lubchenco, administrator of the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), testified before the Senate Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming about seawater acidity and it’s consequences, which is also pretty scary stuff.
Read a comprehensive look at the current state of ocean acidification here.

Time to do something appears to have been yesterday.

Intense Irony

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One really mind-boggling particular nowadays is the continual use of hypocritical-irony; creating a two-faced lie through the clenched-teeth of a smile.

Verbal irony is distinguished from situational irony and dramatic irony in that it is produced intentionally by speakers.
For instance, if a speaker exclaims, “I’m not upset!” but reveals an upset emotional state through their voice while truly trying to claim they’re not upset, it would not be verbal irony by virtue of its verbal manifestation (it would, however, be situational irony).
But if the same speaker said the same words and intended to communicate that they were upset by claiming they were not, the utterance would be verbal irony.
This distinction gets at an important aspect of verbal irony: speakers communicate implied propositions that are intentionally contradictory to the propositions contained in the words themselves.
There are examples of verbal irony that do not rely on saying the opposite of what one means, and there are cases where all the traditional criteria of irony exist and the utterance is not ironic.

We’re living and walking around in an age of horrifying and catastrophic irony.

A terrible case in point: Nimble-minded George Jr. arrogantly blubbered to a joint session of Congress on Sept. 20, 2001:

Our war on terror begins with al Qaeda, but it does not end there.
It will not end until every terrorist group of global reach has been found, stopped and defeated.

And the irony of it all:

Americans are asking “Why do they hate us?”
They hate what they see right here in this chamber: a democratically elected government. Their leaders are self-appointed. They hate our freedoms: our freedom of religion, our freedom of speech, our freedom to vote and assemble and disagree with each other.

(Illustration found here).

The then-spawned The Global War on Terror coupled with the creation of the huge, bungling Department of Homeland Security reproduced what it supposedly sought to eradicate — an example would best be described in the old reflective-adage of pouring JP4 jet fuel on a small, charcoal brazier in order to smother the fire.

This morning from Al Jazeera English:

Extremists held in a US-run detention centre in Iraq were allowed to teach fellow detainees how to use explosives and become suicide bombers, a former inmate has told Al Jazeera.
Adel Jasim Mohammed, a former detainee of Camp Bucca near Umm Qasr, said that US officials did nothing to stop radicals from indoctrinating young detainees at the camp.
“Extremists had freedom to educate the young detainees. I saw them giving courses using classroom boards on how to use explosives, weapons and how to become suicide bombers,” Mohammed said.
“For the Americans we felt it was normal. They did not stop them [the radicals].”
Adel, who was held for four years without charge at Camp Bucca, said that extremists were allowed to speak freely to fellow inmates.
“In 2005, an extremist was sent to our camp. At first, Sunnis and Shias rejected his teachings. But we were told that he was imposed by the prison authority,” he said.
“He stayed for a week and recruited 25 of the 34 detainees – they became extremists like him.”

And those five young, naive Americans arrested last week week in Pakistan has created a good scare about homegrown jihad, and the fabled wide, wide world-war on terror has doubled back on itself, feeding off its own entrails, as it were, to make matters far, far worse.
Those lost souls from Virginia were nabbed only after one of the guys’ daddy, Khalid Farooq, called authorities — and after his son and the others were arrested, and just to be on the safe-terror side: Police said they’d also detained Khalid Farooq as a precautionary measure.
One never knows the mystery of jihad.
Read a good view on the mythology of the US-led terror war here.

And this past week, the current US president, Barack Obama, reached far into the cosmic-ironic heavens to pluck a few words to whitewash the total-irony of  being both a Nobel peace-prize winner and a war escalator.


(Illustration found here).

Although Obama claimed he was “most surprised and deeply humbled” by the Nobel prize in October, he popped some hawkish-spin into the peace mix last week in Oslo, Norway:

We must begin by acknowledging the hard truth that we will not eradicate violent conflict in our lifetimes. There will be times when nations — acting individually or in concert — will find the use of force not only necessary but morally justified.
…
But as a head of state sworn to protect and defend my nation, I cannot be guided by their (Gandhi and King) examples alone.
I face the world as it is, and cannot stand idle in the face of threats to the American people.
For make no mistake: evil does exist in the world.
A non-violent movement could not have halted Hitler’s armies.
Negotiations cannot convince al Qaeda’s leaders to lay down their arms.
To say that force is sometimes necessary is not a call to cynicism — it is a recognition of history; the imperfections of man and the limits of reason.

But what about change?
And what about reality vs bullshit?

A situation stated best via a letter to the editor, published Friday in the New York Times: The Nobel Peace Prize only underscores the irony and sadness of President Obama’s Afghanistan policy. On that memorable night a year ago, in Grant Park in Chicago, before an impressed and stunned nation and world, Mr. Obama promised that change would come to America.

Obama, therefore, has produced verbal irony using both the situational and dramatic ironies — Pain is just weakness leaving the body!

Another Gone

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Highlights the desperate plight of news gathering: Editor&Publisher, an authentic cornerstone of journalism will cease publication at the end of this year.

The announcement was made Thursday on its online site.

An interview today with Greg Mitchell, E&P’s editor since 2002, on the demise of the newspaper-trade industry/journo-icon can be found at Columbia Journalism Review.
Read a brief Wikipedia-history of E&P here — the magazine was founded in 1901 and six years later merged with a magazine most-aptly called, The Journalist.
And for reaction from the media  here.

Sad state of affairs, that it be.