Recently, while unlocking the secrets of mock turtle soup, it occurred to me that I have no idea what real turtles are made of.
The question isn't as silly as it might sound, after all--most animals seem to be made of meat. Chickens in particular, are made of poultry, cows are made of beef, and many varieties of fish are made of seafood.
After much grueling research (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turtle), I am pleased to report that turtles are made of a substance known as crema de tortuga, which is used in countries with flexible legal systems as a primary ingredient in cosmetics.
Saturday, March 26, 2011
Misinformation Overload
We never thought to appreciate encyclopedias enough; they were simple, concise, and indisputable in their unwavering authority.
In 6th grade, I wrote a report on Chaos Theory--from start to finish, all of the information I needed (or would ever be able to unearth) could be found in the hallowed pages of The Encyclopedia Britannica.
Now you can do it all from home, with or without the steep investment in encyclopedias which will ultimately be uselessly out of date. It's supposed to be simpler now--a few practiced keystrokes and you're connected with the sum total of human knowledge. Here's the catch:
The vast majority of human knowledge isn't knowledge at all, but ill conceived assumption and hearsay. Fact-checking sites like http://www.snopes.com/ can help to weed out the riffraff, but snopes can't cover everything, or even a significant fraction of everything.
As I see it, there really isn't any such thing as information overload--information is good us, and if there is so much of it that it becomes dizzying, that's good for us too. Stimulus improves cognitive capacity. But misinformation overload is another matter.
Utilizing the information bananza of the internet, I can ostensibly find a digital representation of the Pakistani Constitution in 3 seconds flat (http://www.pakistani.org/pakistan/constitution/), but what I can't do is know if that representation bares any resemblance to any authentic Pakistani constitution, past or present. Believe it or not--the issue is money.
Neither I, nor a friend, nor a local library paid for that copy of Pakistan's constitution, it was free. Free things are nice, they provide me with access to stuff for which I would otherwise have to pay. But free things also take something away--our standing as satisfied or dissatisfied consumers, or more to the point: our right to complain.
Britannica depends upon sales for its existence, and those sales depend upon costumer satisfaction. If the information one finds in her $800 dollar encyclopidea-set proves to be inaccurate, she may demand a refund, and she will certainly not be buying another set as her niece's birthday present. If customer dissatisfaction with a product reaches a consistent and critical point, competing companies will exploit that fact and offer a superior product in an attempt secure the disillusioned market-share.
Incentive is the name of the game. There are certainly people offering accurate information out of the good of their hearts, but in a commodity-free market, those people are unfortunately indistinguishable from others who offer misinformation out of genuine ignorance or ulterior agenda. There isn't any incentive to devote resources to sorting it all out, because there is no profit in doing so.
The Russian people were the first to find this out the hard way when Socialist theory was misapplied to an economy that was not ready for it. When per capita income was institutionalized, specialized domestic services and products unilaterally declined in quality. The rest of us are finding out now--at least, those of us who can't afford to pay for quality.
In 6th grade, I wrote a report on Chaos Theory--from start to finish, all of the information I needed (or would ever be able to unearth) could be found in the hallowed pages of The Encyclopedia Britannica.
Now you can do it all from home, with or without the steep investment in encyclopedias which will ultimately be uselessly out of date. It's supposed to be simpler now--a few practiced keystrokes and you're connected with the sum total of human knowledge. Here's the catch:
The vast majority of human knowledge isn't knowledge at all, but ill conceived assumption and hearsay. Fact-checking sites like http://www.snopes.com/ can help to weed out the riffraff, but snopes can't cover everything, or even a significant fraction of everything.
As I see it, there really isn't any such thing as information overload--information is good us, and if there is so much of it that it becomes dizzying, that's good for us too. Stimulus improves cognitive capacity. But misinformation overload is another matter.
Utilizing the information bananza of the internet, I can ostensibly find a digital representation of the Pakistani Constitution in 3 seconds flat (http://www.pakistani.org/pakistan/constitution/), but what I can't do is know if that representation bares any resemblance to any authentic Pakistani constitution, past or present. Believe it or not--the issue is money.
Neither I, nor a friend, nor a local library paid for that copy of Pakistan's constitution, it was free. Free things are nice, they provide me with access to stuff for which I would otherwise have to pay. But free things also take something away--our standing as satisfied or dissatisfied consumers, or more to the point: our right to complain.
Britannica depends upon sales for its existence, and those sales depend upon costumer satisfaction. If the information one finds in her $800 dollar encyclopidea-set proves to be inaccurate, she may demand a refund, and she will certainly not be buying another set as her niece's birthday present. If customer dissatisfaction with a product reaches a consistent and critical point, competing companies will exploit that fact and offer a superior product in an attempt secure the disillusioned market-share.
Incentive is the name of the game. There are certainly people offering accurate information out of the good of their hearts, but in a commodity-free market, those people are unfortunately indistinguishable from others who offer misinformation out of genuine ignorance or ulterior agenda. There isn't any incentive to devote resources to sorting it all out, because there is no profit in doing so.
The Russian people were the first to find this out the hard way when Socialist theory was misapplied to an economy that was not ready for it. When per capita income was institutionalized, specialized domestic services and products unilaterally declined in quality. The rest of us are finding out now--at least, those of us who can't afford to pay for quality.
Saturday, March 5, 2011
What Was The Question?
You know that you've gotten old when you suddenly realize that Meatloaf song you always loved was actually performed by The Who. There isn't room here to recount all of the reasons my boyfriend is lucky to have me, but nestled comfortably among the top 5 is the abysmal incompetence of my functional short term memory.
I can recite every term and definition from the vocabulary section of my 4th grade CTBS test, I can quote the movie "Heathers" verbatim, and (for god knows what reason) I can tell you that blanding's painted turtle embryos undergo a natural developmental process similar to the metastasis of cancerous cells which renders them immune to the effects of senescence and effectively immortal--but I can't for the life of me remember what I ate for lunch, if I ate lunch at all, or what pigheaded thing my boyfriend might have said before distracting me with something sparkly.
It makes me wonder: was it all of the bully-related head trauma in the 80s? The copious quantities of LSD in the 90s? The alcohol that saturated both of those decades and the better part of the next? Or do most people my age experience a reduced capacity for memory?
Using "When does memory start to decline" as my Google search parameter, I found this interesting article (http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2001/08/010814063231.htm) which purports that my memory has been continuously in decline for 10 years or more.
Of course, in the search for that article I encountered unrelated studies which claimed that sleep is essential for memory performance (I haven't gotten any since starting school in 09), which could just as well account for my cognitive malfunction as anything else.
I can recite every term and definition from the vocabulary section of my 4th grade CTBS test, I can quote the movie "Heathers" verbatim, and (for god knows what reason) I can tell you that blanding's painted turtle embryos undergo a natural developmental process similar to the metastasis of cancerous cells which renders them immune to the effects of senescence and effectively immortal--but I can't for the life of me remember what I ate for lunch, if I ate lunch at all, or what pigheaded thing my boyfriend might have said before distracting me with something sparkly.
It makes me wonder: was it all of the bully-related head trauma in the 80s? The copious quantities of LSD in the 90s? The alcohol that saturated both of those decades and the better part of the next? Or do most people my age experience a reduced capacity for memory?
Using "When does memory start to decline" as my Google search parameter, I found this interesting article (http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2001/08/010814063231.htm) which purports that my memory has been continuously in decline for 10 years or more.
Of course, in the search for that article I encountered unrelated studies which claimed that sleep is essential for memory performance (I haven't gotten any since starting school in 09), which could just as well account for my cognitive malfunction as anything else.
Things you can tell, just by looking
Here is a fun fact: The right to privacy does not appear anywhere in the United States constitution nor has it ever been guaranteed by law. America's laws are based primarily on autonomy and property--what this means (among other things) is that if I can see it, hear it, or smell it from public property, than it belongs as much to me (or anyone else) as it does to you. This principle of ownership extends to everything from distributing fliers with your name, telephone number, and address on them to handing out photographs taken from the sidewalk of you changing clothes in front of your bedroom window. Spooky, no?
You might say something like:
"But even the government isn't allowed to spy on us without a warrant, this surely implies a right to privacy."
To which I would respond, "The government is certainly allowed to spy on you without a warrant, spying on citizens from park-benches, cars, and through video surveillance is the fundamental basis of police-work."
At this point you might choose to refine your statement, "The government cannot unduly invade our privacy, it cannot tap our telephones or sift through our computer files/emails without a warrant."
And I would answer thus, "Though the government was once constrained as you describe, it was always based upon constitutional protections from illegal search and seizure, and not a matter of privacy. Furthermore, the 4th Amendment from which such protections stemmed was creatively maimed in the supreme court throughout Reagan's presidency (after which in most cases a refusal of consent to be searched legally constituted 'probable cause' to be searched) and then completely annihilated by George W. Bush's Homeland Security Act, which granted the government virtually unlimited power to read private emails, eavesdrop on private messaging/telephone conversations, and to conduct blanket sweeps monitoring all electronic communications in the country. You have no right to privacy."
With the advent of the internet, this already complicated and poorly understood issue of privacy became increasingly muddled--if I can see it from my own property, from my own living-room, the law must doubly support my right to possess, reproduce, and distribute it--so long as it isn't copyrighted material; I don't mean to harp on this point, but context is everything and one's understanding of this issue and the world at large will benefit from bearing in mind that unlike the civil liberties of the past, property rights are alive and well.
It is worth noting that the government is not so gung-ho in its position (or lack thereof)when private citizens are doing the snooping and it is being targeted. A brief overview of what happens when the Federales are forced to swallow their own bitter medicine can be found here: http://reticentinformation.blogspot.com/2011/02/loose-lips-and-sunken-ships.html
Now anybody can stream nearly unlimited information about anyone from anywhere in the world. Even so, many people believe that their personal information is secure, that worrying about hackers is the sole province of conspiracy theorists and paranoid malcontents. They might be right about the paranoia, but consider that I am the opposite of a hacker (A.K.A., the most computer illiterate person I know)and in 5 minutes of online blundering, I can garner my Library Orientation instructor's:
Middle initial (http://www.mylife.com/caitlinbagley)
Email address, work number, work address, photograph (http://libguides.murraystate.edu/profile.php?uid=28597),
Links to various family members/friends facebook profiles/personal information, which in turn lead to more such links with widely varying levels of security (http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100000726390810#!/caitbagley)
Academic contacts in both Murray and Bloomington Indiana (http://www.mendeley.com/profiles/caitlin-bagley/contacts/)
Tenure as Indiana University's student chapter president of the American Library Association (http://iuala.org/contact-us/36-executives/5-caitlin.html)
As I'm simply a student making a point and not an identity thief, hacker, government agent, or fixated psycho, I didn't take this exercise any further than the first page of Google results and a simple Facebook search. But imagine if you will, someone with more technical know-how, motivation, and/or sinister leanings devoting much more than 5 minutes to a similar project, and you might begin to understand the anxiety that some people feel about their digital information.
Let's get down to brass tacks: The only sure way to protect your digital information is to refrain from having any.
Believe it or not, there's no rule that says you have to have an account with Facebook or any other social network. If you do have a Facebook account or email address, there is nothing that can force you to register with your real name, post accurate personal information, or upload photographs of yourself. If (like myself) you do upload accurate personal information/photos to Facebook/email accounts, there are generally privacy settings which serve to make information more difficult to access.
Here is a much better blog than mine on the subject: http://news.cnet.com/2010-1071-947327.html
You might say something like:
"But even the government isn't allowed to spy on us without a warrant, this surely implies a right to privacy."
To which I would respond, "The government is certainly allowed to spy on you without a warrant, spying on citizens from park-benches, cars, and through video surveillance is the fundamental basis of police-work."
At this point you might choose to refine your statement, "The government cannot unduly invade our privacy, it cannot tap our telephones or sift through our computer files/emails without a warrant."
And I would answer thus, "Though the government was once constrained as you describe, it was always based upon constitutional protections from illegal search and seizure, and not a matter of privacy. Furthermore, the 4th Amendment from which such protections stemmed was creatively maimed in the supreme court throughout Reagan's presidency (after which in most cases a refusal of consent to be searched legally constituted 'probable cause' to be searched) and then completely annihilated by George W. Bush's Homeland Security Act, which granted the government virtually unlimited power to read private emails, eavesdrop on private messaging/telephone conversations, and to conduct blanket sweeps monitoring all electronic communications in the country. You have no right to privacy."
With the advent of the internet, this already complicated and poorly understood issue of privacy became increasingly muddled--if I can see it from my own property, from my own living-room, the law must doubly support my right to possess, reproduce, and distribute it--so long as it isn't copyrighted material; I don't mean to harp on this point, but context is everything and one's understanding of this issue and the world at large will benefit from bearing in mind that unlike the civil liberties of the past, property rights are alive and well.
It is worth noting that the government is not so gung-ho in its position (or lack thereof)when private citizens are doing the snooping and it is being targeted. A brief overview of what happens when the Federales are forced to swallow their own bitter medicine can be found here: http://reticentinformation.blogspot.com/2011/02/loose-lips-and-sunken-ships.html
Now anybody can stream nearly unlimited information about anyone from anywhere in the world. Even so, many people believe that their personal information is secure, that worrying about hackers is the sole province of conspiracy theorists and paranoid malcontents. They might be right about the paranoia, but consider that I am the opposite of a hacker (A.K.A., the most computer illiterate person I know)and in 5 minutes of online blundering, I can garner my Library Orientation instructor's:
Middle initial (http://www.mylife.com/caitlinbagley)
Email address, work number, work address, photograph (http://libguides.murraystate.edu/profile.php?uid=28597),
Links to various family members/friends facebook profiles/personal information, which in turn lead to more such links with widely varying levels of security (http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100000726390810#!/caitbagley)
Academic contacts in both Murray and Bloomington Indiana (http://www.mendeley.com/profiles/caitlin-bagley/contacts/)
Tenure as Indiana University's student chapter president of the American Library Association (http://iuala.org/contact-us/36-executives/5-caitlin.html)
As I'm simply a student making a point and not an identity thief, hacker, government agent, or fixated psycho, I didn't take this exercise any further than the first page of Google results and a simple Facebook search. But imagine if you will, someone with more technical know-how, motivation, and/or sinister leanings devoting much more than 5 minutes to a similar project, and you might begin to understand the anxiety that some people feel about their digital information.
Let's get down to brass tacks: The only sure way to protect your digital information is to refrain from having any.
Believe it or not, there's no rule that says you have to have an account with Facebook or any other social network. If you do have a Facebook account or email address, there is nothing that can force you to register with your real name, post accurate personal information, or upload photographs of yourself. If (like myself) you do upload accurate personal information/photos to Facebook/email accounts, there are generally privacy settings which serve to make information more difficult to access.
Here is a much better blog than mine on the subject: http://news.cnet.com/2010-1071-947327.html
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