Book Review: Mr. Popper's Penguins

An old book review of mine from 2011. Old stuff makes me laugh.

Originally done on Librarything.com at http://www.librarything.com/work/33809/reviews/68498558

I didn't know what to expect when I first started it, but I knew it was a children's book because of the Scholastic publisher. In the end it was, in a word (and not in a bad way), quaint.

The story is about a painter/wallpaper guy, Mr. Popper, who works in the summer, and stays home during the winter. He has an avid interest in the Arctic and Antarctic regions, and reads everything he can on the topics. He’s even gone a bit further and sent a letter to Admiral Drake, an explorer currently down in Antarctica.

Admiral Drake in turns sends Mr. Popper a penguin, who is promptly named Capt. Cook, after the Antarctic explorer James Cook. Mr. Popper makes him a home in the icebox, and becomes a minor celebrity after taking Capt. Cook about town.

The book is fantastic without being fantasy. It’s a humorous story, told more for the sake of imagining the antics of the characters than for any type of realism. I like some of the archaic phrases (“sixes and sevens”) which place the story back in time, but not at any particular point. I was curious as to what would happen next, but was skeptical of the ending.

Either way, I recommended it to my daughter. Even though it’s got a RL of 4 or so, I think it could hold her interest long enough so that she actually reads. 

FBI Sharing Facial Recognition Software

The reason I mentioned the 2007 post was because of this one.

From: http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2012/08/23/universal_face_workstation_fbi_to_give_facial_recognition_software_to_law_enforcement_.html

Via: http://itknowledgeexchange.techtarget.com/cio/facial-recognition-technology-to-be-used-by-local-law-enforcement/

FBI To Give Facial Recognition Software to Law-Enforcement Agencies

By Ryan Gallagher

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Posted Thursday, Aug. 23, 2012, at 5:08 PM ET

The speedy onward march of biometric technology continues. After recently announcing plans for a nationwide iris-scan database, the FBI has revealed it will soon hand out free facial-recognition software to law enforcement agencies across the United States.

The software, which was piloted in February in Michigan, is expected to be rolled out within weeks. It will give police analysts access to a so-called “Universal Face Workstation” that can be used to compare a database of almost 13 million images. The UFW will permit police to submit and enhance image files so they can be cross-referenced with others on the database for matches.

Instituting the technology nationally is the latest stage in the FBI’s $1 billion Next-Generation Identification program, which will also establish a system for searching a database of scars, marks, and tattoos. The FBI’s Jerome Pender, who was recently named executive assistant director of the Information and Technology Branch, says in a statement that Hawaii, Maryland, South Carolina, Ohio, New Mexico, Kansas, Arizona, Tennessee, Nebraska, and Missouri have already expressed interest in trying out the UFW. Pender says that “full operational capability” for facial recognition is scheduled for the summer of 2014.

The FBI has been keen to emphasize that the 12.8 million images stored on the database will only include “criminal mug shot photos” taken during the booking process. Last week, in a bid to quell privacy concerns, the bureau said in a podcast that it will not “store photographs obtained from other sources such as social media.”

But it’s unlikely that assurance will satisfy civil liberties enthusiasts. In a blog post earlier this month, the Electronic Frontier Foundation said it was concerned that the “FBI wants to be able to search and identify people in photos of crowds and in pictures posted on social media sites—even if the people in those photos haven’t been arrested for or even suspected of a crime.” This sentiment was echoed in July by Sen. Al Franken, D-Minn., during a hearing at the Senate judiciary committee’s subcommittee on privacy, technology, and the law. Franken said that he feared the FBI’s technology “could be abused to not only identify protesters at political events and rallies, but to target them for selective jailing and prosecution, stifling their First Amendment rights.” (The same fears punctuated the recent hysteria about TrapWire, which is not actually facial recognition software, contrary to widely published claims.)

In addition to privacy concerns, UAW has another weak spot: It still isn’t that great at tracking people. Last year, the Wall Street Journal reported how human analysts still trump machines when it comes to comparing and identifying people from photographs. Poor quality images or bad lighting, for instance, can render facial recognition almost useless.

One thing that is true is that the software is advancing rapidly—and developments show no sign of slowing down. Aside from the FBI’s facial network software, companies are turning to facial recognition technology to take snapshots of shoppers in order to offer them customized deals linked to Facebook preferences. It’s enough to make you reluctant to show your face in public again. As Anonymous hacktivists have pointed out in a new video, however, there are some alternatives. Options include walking about with your head tilted at a 15 degree angle, caking your face in make-up, or wearing a plastic mask.

Brain of Big Brother - Revisited

In 2007 I posted this:

http://creaturesformyamusement.blogspot.com/2007/12/brain-of-big-brother.html

The last link to the main article was dead, as the text was removed. I guess there is a reason I post the text of the articles.

Here is that article:
Via: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/12/21/AR2007122102544.html

And here is the full text of the article:

FBI Prepares Vast Database Of Biometrics

Highly accurate face-scanning cameras are being developed. (Photos By Bob Shaw For The Washington Post) Network News XPROFILE View More Activity TOOLBOX  Resize Print E-mail Reprints

By Ellen Nakashima

Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, December 22, 2007

CLARKSBURG, W. Va. -- The FBI is embarking on a $1 billion effort to build the world's largest computer database of peoples' physical characteristics, a project that would give the government unprecedented abilities to identify individuals in the United States and abroad.

Digital images of faces, fingerprints and palm patterns are already flowing into FBI systems in a climate-controlled, secure basement here. Next month, the FBI intends to award a 10-year contract that would significantly expand the amount and kinds of biometric information it receives. And in the coming years, law enforcement authorities around the world will be able to rely on iris patterns, face-shape data, scars and perhaps even the unique ways people walk and talk, to solve crimes and identify criminals and terrorists. The FBI will also retain, upon request by employers, the fingerprints of employees who have undergone criminal background checks so the employers can be notified if employees have brushes with the law.
"Bigger. Faster. Better. That's the bottom line," said Thomas E. Bush III, assistant director of the FBI's Criminal Justice Information Services Division, which operates the database from its headquarters in the Appalachian foothills.
The increasing use of biometrics for identification is raising questions about the ability of Americans to avoid unwanted scrutiny. It is drawing criticism from those who worry that people's bodies will become de facto national identification cards. Critics say that such government initiatives should not proceed without proof that the technology really can pick a criminal out of a crowd.


The Department of Homeland Security has been using iris scans at some airports to verify the identity of travelers who have passed background checks and who want to move through lines quickly. The department is also looking to apply iris- and face-recognition techniques to other programs. The DHS already has a database of millions of sets of fingerprints, which includes records collected from U.S. and foreign travelers stopped at borders for criminal violations, from U.S. citizens adopting children overseas, and from visa applicants abroad. There could be multiple records of one person's prints.

The use of biometric data is increasing throughout the government. For the past two years, the Defense Department has been storing in a database images of fingerprints, irises and faces of more than 1.5 million Iraqi and Afghan detainees, Iraqi citizens and foreigners who need access to U.S. military bases. The Pentagon also collects DNA samples from some Iraqi detainees, which are stored separately.

"It's going to be an essential component of tracking," said Barry Steinhardt, director of the Technology and Liberty Project of the American Civil Liberties Union. "It's enabling the Always On Surveillance Society."
If successful, the system planned by the FBI, called Next Generation Identification, will collect a wide variety of biometric information in one place for identification and forensic purposes.
In an underground facility the size of two football fields, a request reaches an FBI server every second from somewhere in the United States or Canada, comparing a set of digital fingerprints against the FBI's database of 55 million sets of electronic fingerprints. A possible match is made -- or ruled out--as many as 100,000 times a day.
Soon, the server at CJIS headquarters will also compare palm prints and, eventually, iris images and face-shape data such as the shape of an earlobe. If all goes as planned, a police officer making a traffic stop or a border agent at an airport could run a 10-fingerprint check on a suspect and within seconds know if the person is on a database of the most wanted criminals and terrorists. An analyst could take palm prints lifted from a crime scene and run them against the expanded database. Intelligence agents could exchange biometric information worldwide.
More than 55 percent of the search requests now are made for background checks on civilians in sensitive positions in the federal government, and jobs that involve children and the elderly, Bush said. Currently those prints are destroyed or returned when the checks are completed. But the FBI is planning a "rap-back" service, under which employers could ask the FBI to keep employees' fingerprints in the database, subject to state privacy laws, so that if that employees are ever arrested or charged with a crime, the employers would be notified.
Advocates say bringing together information from a wide variety of sources and making it available to multiple agencies increases the chances to catch criminals. The Pentagon has already matched several Iraqi suspects against the FBI's criminal fingerprint database. The FBI intends to make both criminal and civilian data available to authorized users, officials said. There are 900,000 federal, state and local law enforcement officers who can query the fingerprint database today, they said.

The FBI's biometric database, which includes criminal history records, communicates with the Terrorist Screening Center's database of suspects and the National Crime Information Center database, which is the FBI's master criminal database of felons, fugitives and terrorism suspects.

The FBI is building its system according to standards shared by Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.
At the West Virginia University Center for Identification Technology Research (CITeR), 45 minutes north of the FBI's biometric facility in Clarksburg, researchers are working on capturing images of people's irises at distances of up to 15 feet, and of faces from as far away as 200 yards. Soon, those researchers will do biometric research for the FBI.
Covert iris- and face-image capture is several years away, but it is of great interest to government agencies.
Think of a Navy ship approaching a foreign vessel, said Bojan Cukic, CITeR's co-director. "It would help to know before you go on board whether the people on that ship that you can image from a distance, whether they are foreign warfighters, and run them against a database of known or suspected terrorists," he said.
Skeptics say that such projects are proceeding before there is evidence that they reliably match suspects against a huge database.
In the world's first large-scale, scientific study on how well face recognition works in a crowd, the German government this year found that the technology, while promising, was not yet effective enough to allow its use by police. The study was conducted from October 2006 through January at a train station in Mainz, Germany, which draws 23,000 passengers daily. The study found that the technology was able to match travelers' faces against a database of volunteers more than 60 percent of the time during the day, when the lighting was best. But the rate fell to 10 to 20 percent at night.

To achieve those rates, the German police agency said it would tolerate a false positive rate of 0.1 percent, or the erroneous identification of 23 people a day. In real life, those 23 people would be subjected to further screening measures, the report said.
Accuracy improves as techniques are combined, said Kimberly Del Greco, the FBI's biometric services section chief. The Next Generation database is intended to "fuse" fingerprint, face, iris and palm matching capabilities by 2013, she said.
To safeguard privacy, audit trails are kept on everyone who has access to a record in the fingerprint database, Del Greco said. People may request copies of their records, and the FBI audits all agencies that have access to the database every three years, she said.
"We have very stringent laws that control who can go in there and to secure the data," Bush said.
Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, said the ability to share data across systems is problematic. "You're giving the federal government access to an extraordinary amount of information linked to biometric identifiers that is becoming increasingly inaccurate," he said.

In 2004, the Electronic Privacy Information Center objected to the FBI's exemption of the National Crime Information Center database from the Privacy Act requirement that records be accurate. The group noted that the Bureau of Justice Statistics in 2001 found that information in the system was "not fully reliable" and that files "may be incomplete or inaccurate." FBI officials justified that exemption by claiming that in law enforcement data collection, "it is impossible to determine in advance what information is accurate, relevant, timely and complete."

Privacy advocates worry about the ability of people to correct false information. "Unlike say, a credit card number, biometric data is forever," said Paul Saffo, a Silicon Valley technology forecaster. He said he feared that the FBI, whose computer technology record has been marred by expensive failures, could not guarantee the data's security. "If someone steals and spoofs your iris image, you can't just get a new eyeball," Saffo said.
In the future, said CITeR director Lawrence A. Hornak, devices will be able to "recognize us and adapt to us."
"The long-term goal," Hornak said, is "ubiquitous use" of biometrics. A traveler may walk down an airport corridor and allow his face and iris images to be captured without ever stepping up to a kiosk and looking into a camera, he said.
"That's the key," he said. "You've chosen it. You have chosen to say, 'Yeah, I want this place to recognize me.' "

Staff researcher Richard Drezen contributed to this report.

AdSense Activated!

So, after five years, I've finally decided to try the thing where ads appear on the blog.

Why?

Who the hell knows.

They seem to indicate that there is money to be made by doing so. When I see them elsewhere (gmail, etc.), I mostly tune them out. Occasionally the ads will have something of interest on it, but, I really only like the small text ads that do not spam your ass or take over your browser or computer.

So, I decided to allow the Google-type ads onto Creatures For My Amusement.

To see how it works, and what I think of it, and if I can use all the dough from it to put my kids through college. If they become particularly annoying, I'll take them off. If not, I'll probably forget about them until I no longer care about them. We'll see.

If you like or dislike the Ads, or have any experience with them, leave a comment and let me know.

How Listening to Complaining Affects the Brain

Another in the series on video games and movies. Now, how listening to complaining and negativity affects the brain, negatively. That means the news dramas that go beyond educating to instilling fear are bad for you.

Via: http://www.inc.com/minda-zetlin/listening-to-complainers-is-bad-for-your-brain.html

Minda Zetlin

Aug 20, 2012

Listening to Complainers Is Bad for Your Brain

Exposure to nonstop negativity actually impairs brain function. Here's how to defend yourself.

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Do you hate it when people complain? It turns out there's a good reason: Listening to too much complaining is bad for your brain in multiple ways, according to Trevor Blake, a serial entrepreneur and author of Three Simple Steps: A Map to Success in Business and Life. In the book, he describes how neuroscientists have learned to measure brain activity when faced with various stimuli, including a long gripe session.

"The brain works more like a muscle than we thought," Blake says. "So if you're pinned in a corner for too long listening to someone being negative, you're more likely to behave that way as well."

Even worse, being exposed to too much complaining can actually make you dumb. Research shows that exposure to 30 minutes or more of negativity--including viewing such material on TV--actually peels away neurons in the brain's hippocampus. "That's the part of your brain you need for problem solving," he says. "Basically, it turns your brain to mush."

But if you're running a company, don't you need to hear about anything that may have gone wrong? "There's a big difference between bringing your attention to something that's awry and a complaint," Blake says. "Typically, people who are complaining don't want a solution; they just want you to join in the indignity of the whole thing. You can almost hear brains clink when six people get together and start saying, 'Isn't it terrible?' This will damage your brain even if you're just passively listening. And if you try to change their behavior, you'll become the target of the complaint."

So, how do you defend yourself and your brain from all the negativity? Blake recommends the following tactics:

1. Get some distance

"My father was a chain smoker," Blake confides. "I tried to change his habit, but it's not easy to do that." Blake knew secondhand smoke could damage his own lungs as well. "My only recourse was to distance myself."

You should look at complaining the same way, he says. "The approach I've always taken with complaining is to think of it as the same as passive smoking." Your brain will thank you if you get yourself away from the complainer, if you can.

2. Ask the complainer to fix the problem

Sometimes getting distance isn't an option. If you can't easily walk away, a second strategy is to ask the complainer to fix the problem.

3. Shields up!"Try to get the person who's complaining to take responsibility for a solution," Blake says. "I typically respond to a complaint with, 'What are you going to do about it?'" Many complainers walk away huffily at that point, because he hasn't given them what they wanted, Blake reports. But some may actually try to solve the problem.

When you're trapped listening to a complaint, you can use mental techniques to block out the griping and save your neurons. Blake favors one used by the late Spanish golfer Seve Ballesteros during a match against Jack Nicklaus--a match the crowd wanted Ballesteros to lose. "He was having difficulty handling the hostility of the crowd," Blake says. "So he imagined a bell jar that no one could see descending from the sky to protect him."

Major League Baseball pitchers can sometimes be seen mouthing "Shields on!" as they stride to the mound, he says. He adds that his own imaginary defense is "more like a Harry Potter invisibility cloak."

A related strategy is to mentally retreat to your imagined favorite spot, someplace you'd go if you could wave a magic wand. "For me, it was a ribbon of beautiful white sugary sand that extended out in a horseshoe shape from a private island," Blake says. "I would take myself to my private retreat while people were ranting and raving. I could smile at them and nod in all the right places and meanwhile take myself for a walk on my private beach."

Blake first saw the picture of the island in a magazine, and the image stuck with him. Eventually, he got a chance to try it for real. "It turned out the island was for rent, and it was the same one I'd seen," he says. "So I rented it for a week. And I got to take that walk."

Read more:

Meet America's 10 Fastest Growing Private Companies

4 Signs You Should Say 'No' to a VC

5 Reasons People Unfollow You on Twitter

Minda Zetlin is a business technology writer and speaker, co-author of The Geek Gap, and president of the American Society of Journalists and Authors. @MindaZetlin

New Blog Added- Laura's Crafts.... And More!!!

It's not mine, but it's Laura's. She's all crafty and whatnot, so go check her stuff out at http://www.laurascraftsandmore.com/

Maybe I can do a series on man-crafts.....

The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society Awards $12 Million in Research Grants

LLS Awards $12 Million in Research Grants to Address Four Critical Areas of Unmet Medical Need | The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society

From: http://www.lls.org/aboutlls/news/pressreleases/08232012_llsawards

Contact: Andrea Greif
(914) 821-8958 
andrea.greif@lls.org

White Plains, NY (August 23, 2012) -  The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society (LLS) today announced the awarding of 20 grants representing a total investment of $12 million to tackle four areas of high unmet medical need in the blood cancers.

In response to requests for proposals from researchers in these four critical areas, LLS is awarding these grants under its Translational Research Program, an initiative designed to help accelerate the movement of promising discoveries from the lab to the clinic. Each grant is for a three-year duration with a total value of $600,000.

The RFPs mark LLS's aggressive and proactive approach to addressing the challenge of improving outcomes for cancer patients with particularly urgent needs. LLS aims to stimulate more academic research in these areas: the malignant stem cells in acute myelogenous leukemia (AML) and myelodysplastic syndromes (MDS); non-cutaneous T-cell malignancies; high-risk myeloma; and long-term and late effects of blood cancer therapies. The grants recipients are:

• The leukemic stem cell in AML and MDS and the identification of potential targeted therapies:
• Alan D'Andrea, M.D., Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Targeting ID1 in Acute Myeloid Leukemia Stem Cells
• James Griffin, M.D., Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Aberrant splicing in AML: novel molecular markers and therapeutic targets
• H. Leighton Grimes, Ph.D., Children's Hospital Medical Center of Cincinnati, RNA Therapeutics for Leukemia
• Monica Guzman, Ph.D., Joan & Sanford I. Weill Medical College of Cornell University, Strategies to eliminate leukemia stem cells during remission
• Duane Hassane, Ph.D., Joan & Sanford I. Weill Medical College of Cornell University, Significance and Mechanisms of Genomic Diversity in AML Stem Cells
• Anthony Letai, M.D., Ph.D.,  Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Personalizing AML therapy by BH3 profiling AML stem cells
• Ross Levine, M.D., Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, Targeting cytosine hydroxymethylation in AML stem cells
• A. Thomas Look, M.D., Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Targeting of nuclear export in primary AML cells
• Li  Zhang, MSc, M.D., Ph.D., University Health Network,  Preventing AML relapse by targeting stem cells with double-negative T-cells 
• Novel therapeutic strategies for non-cutaneous T-cell lymphoproliferative disorders:
• Jaroslaw Maciejewski, M.D., Ph.D., Cleveland Clinic Foundation, Implications of STAT3 Mutations in Large Granular Lymphocyte Leukemia
• Owen O'Connor, M.D., Ph.D., Columbia University, Epigenetic Approaches to PTCL Therapy 
• Development of therapeutic strategies for the high risk myeloma patient:
• Jennifer Carew, Ph.D., University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio, Targeting SIRT1 in Multiple Myeloma
• Irene Ghobrial, M.D., Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Targeting Hypoxic and Metabolic pathways in Multiple Myeloma
• Christoph Heuck, M.D., University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences, Targeting DNA methylation in the diagnosis and therapy of high-risk myeloma
• Alexander Stewart, M.D., Mayo Clinic, Development of Novel Therapeutics Targeting High Risk Myeloma 
• Mechanisms underlying long term and late effects resulting from cancer treatment and the development of measures to significantly reduce or prevent these toxicities 
• Smita Bhatia, M.D., M.P.H., City of Hope, Bone Marrow Transplant Survivor Study-2
• Eric Chow, M.P.H., Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, Dexrazoxane and prevention of anthracycline-related cardiomyopathy
• Ruben Niesvizky, M.D., Joan & Sanford I. Weill Medical College of Cornell University, Stem cell alterations in lenalidomide treated myeloma patients
• Pavan Reddy, M.D., University of Michigan, Alpha 1-antitypsin as a novel strategy to modulate GVHD
• Daniela Salvemini, Ph.D., Saint Louis University, Blocking bortezomib induced painful peripheral neuropathy with FTY720

LLS also announced the awarding of an additional 28 TRP grants, totaling $15.6 million, to scientists working in other areas of blood cancer research.

"By issuing RFP's LLS is taking a strategic approach to identifying and prioritizing areas of need and directing funding to research that shows the most promise for improving survival and quality of life for patients with these particularly difficult diseases," said Richard Winneker, Ph.D., LLS's SVP, Research.

About The Leukemia & Lymphoma SocietyThe Leukemia & Lymphoma Society ® (LLS) is the world's largest voluntary health agency dedicated to blood cancer. The LLS mission: Cure leukemia, lymphoma, Hodgkin's disease and myeloma, and improve the quality of life of patients and their families. LLS funds lifesaving blood cancer research around the world and provides free information and support services.

Founded in 1949 and headquartered in White Plains, NY, LLS has chapters throughout the United States and Canada. To learn more, visit www.lls.org or contact the Information Resource Center at (800) 955-4572, Monday through Friday, 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. ET. www.lls.org.

Mars Landing August 6, 2012

About 12:30 am

From NASA website

http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/nasatv/index.html