Cop Car's Beat

Role model extraordinaire

All I can say is, "Wow!"

Video found at Bloomberg Business Week: Technology in an article, Declara Co-Founder Ramona Pierson's Comeback Odyssey, By Ashlee Vance September 26, 2013.

Where were we?

Much is written each 9/11 anniversary, about where we were and what we were doing when we observed/learned of the terrorist attack that killed thousands of people while demolishing the twin towers of the World Trade Center and a portion of the Pentagon building, and while witnesssing (mostly posthumously) the courage of some of the innocent passengers on an airplane flight over Pennsylvania. It got me to thinking of other internationally reported events that stand out in my own mind.

4/12/1945 - President Franklin Delano Roosevelt dies - The event is announced on the public address system while I am in my 2nd grade homeroom class.

11/22/1963 - President John Fitzgerald Kennedy is assassinated - A friend calls to see if I've heard the news (death yet to be announced) while I am baking and decorating cut-out sugar cookies.

2/7/1986 - Maria Corazon Sumulong Cojuangco-Aquino is elected President of the Philippines - A newscast on NPR informs me of the event as I lie in bed, having just awakened.

10/17/1989 - The Loma Prieta earthquake kills 63 people in the San Francisco, California area - I experience the event while driving from my worksite to my apartment in Sunnyvale, California. I am sitting at a red traffic signal, just across a freeway from the apartment complex - about equidistant from the site of a bridge collapse and the epicenter of the 6.9 on the Richter Scale (surface-wave magnitude 7.1) event. Nearly 4,000 people are injured and thousands left homeless.

11/9/1989 - The Berlin Wall "falls" - A newscast on NPR informs me of the event as I am driving from my worksite in Sunnyvale, California to the San Jose, California airport to enable me to spend a weekend at my home in Albuquerque, New Mexico. I slow down to compensate for my decreased vision due to the tears in my eyes. A tiny piece of the wall will be gifted to Hunky Husband, mounted on a photo of a rent in the wall taken by HH's brother-in-law for a news agency.

1/17/1991 - Operation Desert Storm is launched - A newscast on NPR informs me of the event as I am in the parking lot, leaving work for the day.

9/11/2001 - Terrorist attack against the USA takes place - Shortly after 3:00pm (local time) as Hunky Husband, Elder Brother, the late Expert Seamstress, and I am returning to our motel from a day of birding in the Tampa, Florida area when I note that flags are flying at half-mast. Elder Brother, who is driving our rental car, asks if I wish him to switch on the radio. When I affirmed the wish, we hear that the Pentagon has been attacked. It is only minutes later that we learn of the full extend of the tragedy that had occurred that day.

 

NCIS: Los Angeles technology

If you watched the season-opening episode of NCIS: Los Angeles, you will completely understand this posting from Slashdot.org.

Scientists Create "DNA Barcodes" To Thwart Counterfeiters41

Posted by samzenpuson Thursday September 26, 2013 @10:07PM
from the swab-it dept.

Zothecula writes "Earlier this year, we heard about a gun and a fogging system, both of which tag criminals with synthesized DNA. The idea is that when those people are apprehended later, they can be linked to the crime by analyzing the location- or event-specific DNA still on their skin or clothing. Now, scientists at the Technology Transfer Unit of Portugal's University of Aveiro are developing something similar – 'DNA barcodes' that can be applied to products, then subsequently read as a means of identification."

As as aside (another non-sequitur, if you will):

At the behest of a blog friend to whom I had emailed it, I'm posting a cartoon (below) that is used in Modern Nuclear Chemistry, W. Loveland, D.J. Morrissey, and G.T. Seaborg (Wiley, 2006). The authors of the book had permission to use the cartoon. I merely post it as an excerpt from the book. (We'll say that it's a part of my review of the book by which I try to entice you to buy/read it!)

"Why can't we all just get along" Rodney King

Good news from Phys.Org

'Eraser' law will let California kids scrub online past

Sep 25, 2013

....

The first-of-its-kind "eraser button" law, signed Monday by Governor Jerry Brown, will force social media titans such as Facebook, Twitter and Google let minors scrub their personal online history in the hopes that it might help them avoid personal and work-related problems.

The law will take effect on January 1, 2015.

"Kids so often self-reveal before they self-reflect," James Steyer, founder of Common Sense Media, a nonprofit group in San Francisco that pushed for the law, told the San Francisco Chronicle.

"Mistakes can stay with teens for life, and their digital footprint can follow them wherever they go."

Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2013-09-eraser-law-california-kids-online.html#jCp 

....

And, couldn't we adults use an "Oops!" button?

 

Food and Drug Administration jurisdiction + non-sequitur

If my mind is half-way functional today, it was recently ruled that the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) had not the jurisdiction to regulate e-cigarettes. Anyone want to bet on what happens concerning FDA attempts to regulate electronic applications? The question is brought to mind by another Slashdot.org posting (below). BTW: they ban candy cigarette sales to minors, but a 12-year-old can buy an e-cig??? An e-cig is considered, by some, to be a gateway drug.

FDA Will Regulate Some Apps As Medical Devices12

Posted by Soulskillon Tuesday September 24, 2013 @04:03PM
from the software-is-hardware dept.

chicksdaddy writes "In an important move, the U.S. Food & Drug Administration (FDA) has released final guidance to mobile application developers that are creating medical applications to run on mobile devices. Some applications, it said, will be treated with the same scrutiny as traditional medical devices. The agency said on Monday that, while it doesn't see the need to vet 'the majority of mobile apps,' because they pose 'minimal risk to consumers,' it will exercise oversight of mobile medical applications that are accessories to regulated medical devices, or that transform a mobile device into a regulated medical device. In those cases, the FDA said that mobile applications will be assessed 'using the same regulatory standards and risk-based approach that the agency applies to other medical device.' The line between a mere 'app' and a 'medical device' is fuzzy. The FDA said it will look to the 'intended use of a mobile app' when determining whether it meets the definition of a medical 'device.' The Agency may study the labeling or advertising claims used to market it, or statements by the device maker and its representatives. In general, 'when the intended use of a mobile app is for the diagnosis of disease or other conditions, or the cure, mitigation, treatment or prevention of disease, or it is intended to affect the structure of any function of the body of man, the mobile app is a device.'"

I throw in a non-sequitur, just for fun*, also from Slashdot.org:

Romanian Science Journal Punked By Serbian Academics88

Posted by Unknown Lameron Tuesday September 24, 2013 @05:01AM
from the groundbreaking-research dept.

schwit1 writes "A group of Serbian academics, disgusted with the poor state of their country's research output, have scammed a Romanian science journal by getting it to accept their completely fabricated hoax article. From the article: 'The paper is replete with transparent gimmicks — obvious, that is, had anyone at the publication been paying attention — including a reference to the scholarship of [singer Michael] Jackson, Weber, [porn star Ron] Jeremy and citations to new studies by Bernoulli and Laplace, both dead more than 180 years (Weber died in 1920). They also throw in references to the "Journal of Modern Illogical Studies," which to the best of our knowledge does not and never has existed (although perhaps it should), and to a researcher named, dubiously, "A.S. Hole." And, we hasten to add, the noted Kazakh polymath B. Sagdiyev, otherwise known as Borat.' Their paper is hilarious and completely ridiculous, and yet it was published in a so-called serious journal without question. The best part is that they list Alan Sokal's hoax paper from 1996 as one of their sources."

_____________

* I point out, as part of the "fun", that my Hunky Husband is 50% Serbian.

For my writer/editor blog friends

CHUCK LORRE PRODUCTIONS, #386

I like words. I like the way they sound, I like their subtle shades of meaning, their power, and most particularly, their ancient roots, their origins. For example, I recently became fascinated with the rather routine word 'miscellaneous.' To begin with, it really sounds great. Miscellaneous. I dare you to say it out loud and not smile. Plus, you can just forget its meaning and have fun with it. "Miscellaneous, miss a lot." Then consider its long journey from the Latin 'miscere' (to mix), to its current form. How did miscere become miscellaneous? Whose idea was it to drop the 'ere' and add the 'ellaneous?' And why? Were they drunk? Was it some sort of strange speech impediment that caught on with the general populace? Or more likely, did the French get hold of it and decide to do what they do best - unnecessarily fancy it up? Makes you think, right? And speaking of the paths words take to arrive at their current form, how can anyone not be entranced by the rocky road traveled by the old Germanic word ' f i c k e n ' (to move back and forth)? Was it first used in carpentry? "Grab the other end of this saw and we'll ficken it across this log." Or is it the Teutonic ancestor of 'fickle'? "First you say we should sack Rome, then you say we shouldn't. Boy, you are one ficken barbarian." [**CENSORED**]

1st Aired: 26 April 2012

It's bigger than the whole of us.

Linking Mass Extinctions To the Sun's Journey In the Milky Way95

Posted by timothyon Saturday September 21, 2013 @03:36PM
from the arms-are-for-hugging-and-mass-extinction dept.

schwit1 writes "In a paper published today on the Los Alamos astro-ph preprint service, astronomers propose that as many as eleven past extinction events can be linked to the Sun's passage through the spiral arms of the Milky Way. (You can download the paper here [pdf].) From the paper: 'A correlation was found between the times at which the Sun crosses the spiral arms and six known mass extinction events. Furthermore, we identify five additional historical mass extinction events that might be explained by the motion of the Sun around our Galaxy. These five additional significant drops in marine genera that we find include significant reductions in diversity at 415, 322, 300, 145 and 33 Myr ago. Our simulations indicate that the Sun has spent ~60% of its time passing through our Galaxy's various spiral arms.'"

 

The above is from Slashdot.org. Following the link to the paper, I'll give the synopsis that appears there. One may, from there, access files containing the whole paper.

Mass Extinction And The Structure Of The Milky Way

Authors:M. D. Filipović, J. Horner, E. J. Crawford, N. F. H. Tothill

Comments: Accepted for publication in Serbian Astronomical Journal

Subjects: Galaxy Astrophysics (astro-ph.GA); Earth and Planetary Astrophysics (astro-ph.EP)

We use the most up to date Milky Way model and solar orbit data in order to test the hypothesis that the Sun's galactic spiral arm crossings cause mass extinction events on Earth. To do this, we created a new model of the Milky Way's spiral arms by combining a large quantity of data from several surveys. We then combined this model with a recently derived solution for the solar orbit to determine the timing of the Sun's historical passages through the Galaxy's spiral arms. Our new model was designed with a symmetrical appearance, with the major alteration being the addition of a spur at the far side of the Galaxy. A correlation was found between the times at which the Sun crosses the spiral arms and six known mass extinction events. Furthermore, we identify five additional historical mass extinction events that might be explained by the motion of the Sun around our Galaxy. These five additional significant drops in marine genera that we find include significant reductions in diversity at 415, 322, 300, 145 and 33 Myr ago. Our simulations indicate that the Sun has spent ~60% of its time passing through our Galaxy's various spiral arms. Also, we briefly discuss and combine previous work on the Galactic Habitable Zone with the new Milky Way model.

Dream World

I assume that I'm not different from the majority of people; thus, I assume that the dreaming that I've experienced over the past 75 years is, in general, in line with the dreaming of others. You might see how we compare.

As a child, I dreamed rather mundane dreams that no longer respond to my recollection, for the most part. I did dream one dream that resulted from my having stolen a piece of bubble gum (priced at one cent, which I obviously did not have, in those days) at age six. (My parents did a good job of instilling a sense of right vs wrong, and guilt, into my subconscience.) In that dream, Dad had pulled the family car into a filling station with the passenger side of the car (I was seated behind my mother who was the front-seat passenger) toward the towering pumps. As happened, there were actually two pumps (one for gasoline, one for kerosene) that stood about four feet tall in that dream - and - an angel stood abeam of me, where a third pump would have stood. The angel pointed its whole arm and pointy-finger at me, saying, "God is not pleased with you!!!!" Message received. (In reality, when I had started to chew the gum, I could not - I was choked up with guilt and discarded the gum shortly into my walk homeward.)

One other childhood dream that I recall involved a fountain pen (no ballpoints in those days) that I had lost at my grandmother's house. My dream told me where the pen was.

Moving along, I don't recall teen-aged dreams, at all; but, I know that when our children were young, most of my dreams were nightmares involving their being in danger and my being unable to save them from whatever the danger of the current dream might be. (I was always running toward them, interminably, never reaching them, for one thing.)

Aging on, while in my mid-30s, I had a dream in which I was being chased by a bad guy - a spy of some sort. Eventually, he chased me into a motel room. Boy! Did he ever get a surprise. I turned on him and killed the SOB! After killing him, I stuffed him up into the space over the dropped ceiling in the bathroom of the hotel room. That was the end of my nightmares! Message received. I now knew, in real life, that I was in charge of my life. Delicious!

Last night, for the second time in my life, I dreamed that I killed a man. I should have made notes on it. At this point (it's been a busy, busy day), I no longer recall the dream. All I know is that I killed a man who needed killing. Ah, me. How can I say, "message received" when I don't even recall the message?

If anyone was in tune with my brain, last night, please help me out with this. Tell me the content of the dream!

P.S. Before you ask, the man in my dream of 40 years ago was armed with a gun. I was not armed with anything but my wits and body. The man in my dream of last night was not armed - nor was I.

P.P.S. Bogie & Dudette--In deference to your sensibilities, I'll omit all reference to dreams of passion - lol!  ;  )

Another slant on TSA

Former DHS Official Blames Privacy Advocates For TSA's Aggressive Procedures193

Posted by timothyon Thursday September 12, 2013 @03:42PM
from the it's-that-pesky-interest-in-freedom dept.

colinneagle writes with an interesting excerpt from Senate testimony offered yesterday, on the 12th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, from Stewart Baker. Baker formerly served as DHS Assistant Secretary and NSA General Counsel, and gave his opinion on the source of the real problems within the TSA, opining: "Unlike border officials, though, TSA ended up taking more time to inspect everyone, treating all travelers as potential terrorists, and subjecting many to whole-body imaging and enhanced pat-downs. We can't blame TSA for this wrong turn, though. Privacy lobbies persuaded Congress that TSA couldn't be trusted with data about the travelers it was screening. With no information about travelers, TSA had no choice but to treat them all alike, sending us down a long blind alley that has inconvenienced billions."