Priceless!

This is the kind of priceless picture that really says more than a thousand words.

As the president said: “I do so recognizing that change cannot happen overnight. No single speech can eradicate years of mistrust, nor can I answer in the time that I have all the complex questions that brought us to this point. But I am convinced that in order to move forward, we must say openly the things we hold in our hearts, and that too often are said only behind closed doors. There must be a sustained effort to listen to each other; to learn from each other; to respect one another; and to seek common ground.”

Well, the listening has began. That by itself is no small achievement!

Members of Hamas, wearing masks to conceal their identity, watch President Obama's speech at their training base in the Gaza Strip.

Parallel Universes

They ask why; why are you not jovial?

Alone, pensive, and distant

They ask why; why are you so banal?

Small, shallow, and trite

Their wills live on parallel universes

Governed by rules disparate and diverging

Unbeknownst to them the gulf widens

Like the parting of the sea, only to come

Together at last up on the awakening

On the emotional journey bridging the divide

The essence of completion in the co-joining

Of the complementary universes; through time warps.

Genetics, Intelligence, I.Q., and Success

What do Asian-Americans, Jews and West Indian blacks have in common? Well, these groups are considered to be relatively successful in the U.S. Nicholas D. Kristof provides, yet again, another insightful opinion piece on the connection (or lack thereof) between genetics, intelligence, I.Q., and success. He debunks the myth of the connection between genetics and intelligence (and success) by contrasting the experience of these genetically disparate groups of people.

“Asian-Americans are renowned — or notorious — for ruining grade curves in schools across the land, and as a result they constitute about 20 percent of students at Harvard College.

As for Jews, they have received about one-third of all Nobel Prizes in science received by Americans. One survey found that a quarter of Jewish adults in the United States have earned a graduate degree, compared with 6 percent of the population as a whole.

West Indian blacks, those like Colin Powell whose roots are in the Caribbean, are one-third more likely to graduate from college than African-Americans as a whole, and their median household income is almost one-third higher.

These three groups may help debunk the myth of success as a simple product of intrinsic intellect, for they represent three different races and histories. In the debate over nature and nurture, they suggest the importance of improved nurture — which, from a public policy perspective, means a focus on education. Their success may also offer some lessons for you, me, our children — and for the broader effort to chip away at poverty in this country.”

Truth Telling: A Pragmatist’s Foreign Policy

Many things can be said of the speech (I would say it is more of a lecture and a lesson in smart diplomacy than a speech) President Barack Obama gave to the Muslim world in Cairo, Egypt. One thing is certain; the president believes in truth telling and partnership built on mutual respect and appreciation. Below is the speech. Enjoy!

“Goodbye Art”: Jimi Hendrix on Fire

Here is a fascinating video of art by Phil Hansen. Enjoy!

Flying White House Over New York City

Here is a picture of the flying White House gracing the New York City sky.

Hawt Post

The Little Imperfections has become a Hawt Post. Thanks to all visitors who have found it to be interesting enough to be shared with others. Keep spreading the good message…

Curated Information: The Next Big Thing?

That is what Wolfram|Alpha hopes to get to. The brainchild of Mathematica and other projects, Stephen Wolfram, is aiming at delivering a more relevant and accurate  information than current day search is not capable of achieving , according to a reporting by The Independent and Wolfram’s blog. Frequenters of this space know that I have a strong desire for seeing information being made more useful. The observation that the explosion of content that is being rapidly added into the already vast Null Information was begging for the delivery of service that can accomplish what the Wolfram Alpha is presumed to be capable of; that is, making progress “towards what many consider to be the internet’s Holy Grail – a global store of information that understands and responds to ordinary language in the same way a person does.” That way quantity of information becomes irrelevant. Quality as measured by relevance will be king. Indeed, the idea of incorporating the old and the new guard is what I find to be striking about the promise of this service. The internet provides an easily malleable platform that can bring to bear diverse sets of resources to partake in instant and collaborative sourcing of information. At the same time, there is the age old model of value of information being tailored by the origin. Expertise had and continues to have a role to play. I believe the tackling of the Null Information is one that will require the division of labor in evaluating and pricing, if you will, information. To that end, the folks at Wolfram Alpha seem to get it. They hope to leverage the knowledge of the experts in curating information. In this type of environment, where the old and the new are harmoniously integrated, the notion of publishing will continue to evolve and thrive. The other interesting evolution is in the ability of machines to interact with humans. Humanities attempt at taking baby steps towards broad proliferation of artificial intelligence lives on…

An excerpt of The Independent report:

The new system, Wolfram Alpha, showcased at Harvard University in the US last week, takes the first step towards what many consider to be the internet’s Holy Grail – a global store of information that understands and responds to ordinary language in the same way a person does.

Although the system is still new, it has already produced massive interest and excitement among technology pundits and internet watchers.

Computer experts believe the new search engine will be an evolutionary leap in the development of the internet. Nova Spivack, an internet and computer expert, said that Wolfram Alpha could prove just as important as Google. “It is really impressive and significant,” he wrote. “In fact it may be as important for the web (and the world) as Google, but for a different purpose.

Tom Simpson, of the blog Convergenceofeverything.com, said: “What are the wider implications exactly? A new paradigm for using computers and the web? Probably. Emerging artificial intelligence and a step towards a self-organising internet? Possibly… I think this could be big.”

Wolfram Alpha will not only give a straight answer to questions such as “how high is Mount Everest?”, but it will also produce a neat page of related information – all properly sourced – such as geographical location and nearby towns, and other mountains, complete with graphs and charts.

The real innovation, however, is in its ability to work things out “on the fly”, according to its British inventor, Dr Stephen Wolfram. If you ask it to compare the height of Mount Everest to the length of the Golden Gate Bridge, it will tell you. Or ask what the weather was like in London on the day John F Kennedy was assassinated, it will cross-check and provide the answer. Ask it about D sharp major, it will play the scale. Type in “10 flips for four heads” and it will guess that you need to know the probability of coin-tossing. If you want to know when the next solar eclipse over Chicago is, or the exact current location of the International Space Station, it can work it out.

Dr Wolfram, an award-winning physicist who is based in America, added that the information is “curated”, meaning it is assessed first by experts. This means that the weaknesses of sites such as Wikipedia, where doubts are cast on the information because anyone can contribute, are taken out. It is based on his best-selling Mathematica software, a standard tool for scientists, engineers and academics for crunching complex maths.

“I’ve wanted to make the knowledge we’ve accumulated in our civilisation computable,” he said last week. “I was not sure it was possible. I’m a little surprised it worked out so well.”

Winning Hearts and Minds

There is a lot that has been said about what the U.S. needs to do or not do to win the over the hearts and minds of locals in either Afghanistan or Iraq. I believe it ultimately boils down to the alignment of ambitions and goals; to get locals to realize that you’re on their side. The following photograph distills the essence of that connection. We just need to replicate the experience shared between this soldier and the Afghan man millions of times over. It can be done!

An Afghan man gives tea to a U.S soliders of 3rd Brigade, 10th Mountain Division patrol during a search operation to hunt members of Taliban in Nerkh district of Wardak province in west of Kabul, Afghanistan, Friday, May 1, 2009.(AP Photo/Rafiq Maqbool)

Yes You Can!

When you think the odds are stacked up against you, when you feel like giving up, when the going gets really tough; just watch this and be inspired.

An Experiment in Mass Song Destruction?

You be the judge.

Apparently “13,500 people spontaneously sang Hey Jude together in Trafalgar Square. Everyone involved arrived thinking they could be dancing – no-one had any idea how the event would unfold.”

The Art of Building a Successful Social Site

An insightful and impressive information on the ingredients necessary for the making of a successful venture in the social media space. It is regarding Stack Overflow, a free question and answer site built by developers for developers that has fostered a strong and committed online community in under one year. It was founded by Joel Spolsky and Jeff Attwood in an attempt to fill in a void that is not successful exploited by search engines. It is the perfect example of a service built to expand reaches in the vast and largely unexplored Null Information. Below is an excerpt from the article:

Why Search Engines are Failing when it Comes to Collaborative Sites

According to Spolsky, there are certain reasons why search engines are failing when it comes to Q&A sites, and they are the same issues Stack Overflow is trying to solve.

1. Sign-up scams: Sites that a search engine may send you to where you must first sign up and pay, if you want an answer.
2. Register: A “road bump” that many sites have, and one Spolsky thinks reduces participation dramatically
3. Wrong answers: When searching for highly technical questions, a search engine may send you to a forum that has multiple answers. If you are unsure which answer is the correct one, you waste too much time working through the wrong ones.
4. Obsolete results: Google, for instance, will oftentimes give an older page priority. In turn, the page you are served is often outdated and no longer relevant.

How did Stack Overflow address this issue? By applying and implementing what they call “The Nine Building Blocks of Social Engineering” in an effort to create a site that was anthropologically correct and would encourage people to behave in a way that would work.

Below is a talk given by Joel Spolsky on this issue:

Extreme Nature

Magnificence is the only way to put. Below is an example of photographs taken during the collusion of extreme forces of nature. The one shown “here in the form of a bolt looking to lock horns with lava issuing from Mount Rinjani in Indonesia. When volcanic gasses and materials are thrust high into the air, lightning can be triggered inside the ash clouds. Yet despite the fact that such electrical activity frequently accompanies large eruptions, and have done so at least 150 times in the past two centuries, these spectacular natural light shows are not clearly understood.“

Carbon Nanotube Lamp

It was only a matter of time before we saw this development. NewScientist resports (World’s tiniest lamp spans quantum and classical physics) about the worlds first incandescent lamp that made using a carbon nanotube filament.

The smallest ever incandescent lamp, made using a single carbon nanotube, has been created by physicists in the US. At 1.4 micrometres long and just 13 nanometres wide, the filament is invisible to the naked eye until it is switched on.

Chris Regan’s team at the University of California, Los Angeles attached a palladium and gold electrode to each end of the carbon nanotube, which spans a tiny hole in a silicon chip and is held in a vacuum.

When electricity runs along the nanotube it heats up and begins to glow, releasing millions of photons every second, of which a few thousand reach the eye. “That makes the light relatively easy to see,” says Regan. “Your eye is nearly single-photon sensitive.” But it would make a poor reading lamp, he jokes.

Visitor Explosion!

Not long after my previous post stating that the number of visitors coming through this information domain has passed 10,000, I am now back to report to you that ROL surpassed more than 21,000 visitors mark! Below is a comparison of the graph then and now…

Now:

weekly visitor count for Ruminating Out Loud

Then:

weekly visitor count for Ruminating Out Loud

Mine That Bird, The Overlooked Underdog, Wins Kentucky Derby

LOUISVILLE, KY - MAY 02: Jockey Calvin Borel atop Mind That Bird crosses the finish line to win the 135th running of the Kentucky Derby on May 2, 2009 at Churchill Downs in Louisville, Kentucky. (Photo by Jamie Squire/Getty Images)

Here is the the story of this “stunning upset” win according to SI:

There have been plenty of long shots to win the Kentucky Derby, most recently Giacomo at 50-1 in 2005. But Mine That Bird (who also went off at 50-1) is one of the most obscure of them all — certainly more than any horse in recent memory. Sold as a yearling for the bargain-basement price of $9,500, the colt began his racing career in Canada, then, after a brief stop in Southern California — where he stayed long enough to finish dead last in the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile — he moved on to New Mexico. His home track is Sunland Park, 1,500 miles west of Churchill Downs. Mine That Bird’s last start was in the Sunland Derby, which isn’t even a graded-stakes race (he finished a weakening fourth).

He made it to Louisville on the back of a trailer pulled by his trainer, the laconic Bennie (Chip) Woolley Jr. – a trip that Woolley estimates took “about 21 hours.” Mine That Bird does have some class in his bloodstream. His papa is 2004 Belmont winner Birdstone, who spoiled the Triple Crown bid of Smarty Jones, and his grandsire is 1996 Derby winner Grindstone. Grindstone beat the Bob Baffert – trained Cavonnier by a nose. Mine That Bird beat Baffert’s Pioneerof the Nile by 6 3/4 widening lengths, the largest margin since Assault won by eight in 1946.

Now contrast that with the inside analysis at The Online wire by Phil Simms, which in an article posted online on April 30 detailed the likelihood that this long-shot upset would come to pass.

Mine That Bird needs to run a perfect race to beat the favored Kentucky Derby contenders thus his odds are worthy if you look for a huge payout.

Currently this horse is listed amongst the 4 biggest underdogs out of the 2009 Kentucky Derby odds at 50/1 and really deserves to be the biggest underdog considering how slow he’s ran in recent races.

That being said, there are a few reasons for optimism if you are looking for an incredible Kentucky Derby payout with this horse.

First off, he has drawn the #8 spot in the Kentucky Derby post positions and that should help him out quite a bit.

He’s had nothing but failure when placed on the outside and has never shown the ability to come in high and get himself involved in a race. It’s just not his style at all.

He needs to get in on the rail early and hope for the best.

Another benefit is that he has one of the likely fast starters next to him at #9 in Join In The Dance with another fast starter, Regal Ransom, at #10.

If this horse is going to have a chance to spoil many people’s 2009 Kentucky Derby picks, he’ll have to get out ahead and to do that, he’ll need to be pushed from another horse in the Kentucky Derby lineup.

If he had been lined up outside, this guy would have no chance at all to finish in the top 10 spots but I like where he got put and he’s really in a best place scenario with this Kentucky Derby lineup.

It’s going to take nothing but perfection to be in the top 3 for Mine That Bird but at least everything is set up perfectly to give him a chance at the massive upset.

sociotrade: Trading the Right Way; the Social Way.

That is the motto of sociotrade. It hopes to leverage the existing interconnectedness and trust built via social networks to make trading and exchange of goods and services right. In getting the participation of friends and acquaintances, it brings the real world interaction resulting in the buying/selling to the virtual one. It is one of the prime examples of the next level of social networking; that is, networking not for the sake of networking, but networking to a well defined end. Because of this characteristic feature, such services will have a staying power way past the day when the excitement around what is “cool” fades away. The utility provided by such a service is more than the buying the selling of goods and services, but rather getting those close to us be intimately involved in the decision making process entailed in the endless production/consumption cycle that feeds the market place. No more wondering if what you buy is going to be perceived as being cool or not; the friends are right there to guide you in the process. It is a service that is definitely worth checking.

Illusion

What is illusion, really? Dictionary defines it as something that deceives by producing a false or misleading impression of reality. Then, this article at BBC will amaze you. It is a story about Sara Watson, a design student who managed to get an old Skoda disappear by painting it to merge with the surrounding objects.

Fractals in Black and White

Beauty transcends color and presentation. It is specially the case for the depiction of objects in art (e.g. photography). The most pleasing elements need not be  masqueraded with color. A simple black and while image distills the essence of attraction and creativity. Below are fractal images (Yes, I realize you are aware of the fondness ROL has to these abstractions we call fractals…) via a compilation put together by  Smashing Magazine for your pleasure. Enjoy!

Enormous Compensations

It is difficult to imagine what it is like to be getting millions of dollars in compensation. Just for record keeping purposes, I will post here about AP’s reporting on the top 10 salary getting CEOs. You be the judge of whether they are deserving of it or not…

1. Aubrey McClendon, Chesapeake Energy Corp., $112.5 million

2. Sanjay Jha, Motorola Inc., $104.4 million

3. Robert Iger, Walt Disney Co., $51.1 million

4. Lloyd Blankfein, Goldman Sachs Group Inc., $42.9 million

5. Kenneth Chenault, American Express Co., $42.9 million

6. Vikram Pandit, Citigroup Inc., $38.2 million

7. Steven Farris, Apache Corp., $37.2 million

8. Louis Camilleri, Philip Morris International Inc., $36.9 million

9. Kevin Johnson, Juniper Networks Inc., $36.1 million

10. Jamie Dimon, JPMorgan Chase & Co., $35.7 million

The Rainman Twins

The story of Flo and Kay, the worlds only female autistic savant twins. Savantism is a rare condition in which sufferers of developmental disorders, often autism, are capable of acts of genius that far outstrip their expected levels of ability. In Flo and Kays case, they each have extraordinary memories for facts and dates.

Amazing!

Obama with Umbrella

A well composed photograph of President Barack Obama for your viewing pleasure. Always the center of attention…

President Barack Obama and members of his staff arrive for a reception April 6, 2009, at the Dolmabahce Palace in Istanbul. Official White House Photo by Pete Souza

Bringing Science Back to Its Rightful Place

It is incredibly refreshing to hear a leader clearly articulate the importance in dedication to and advancement of science and technology is in either good times or bad. President Obama, ever since his inauguration speech where he famously declared his intent to bring science to its rightful place, has been making a clear and convincing argument for why it is important to separate ideology from scientific explorations, how we should invest in exploratory research that may pave the way to solving some of the major issues facing the nations, and how we should redouble our efforts in broadening scientific education to prepare a competent work force that will fuel the growth and prosperity of the future. In a speech at the National Academy of Sciences, President Obama announced today his commitment to allocating > 3% of GDP to the funding of scientific research and education. In so doing this, he has shown the strong dedication towards using scientific advancements as catalysts to the transformation of the economic landscape of the nation.

It is a true mark of leadership not to seek to appease the few and be bogged down by the short-term thinking for political positioning, and chart a course and provide the vision forward for growth and advancement in the long run. President Obama has repeatedly shown this.He has been forceful and unapologetic commitment to making the necessary investments to building a strong foundation for future growth and prosperity for the nation. For this, he has truly been a God-send to help galvanize the efforts of the federal government in these challenging times.

The speech was as strong as any. Frequent visitors know that I am particularly fond of the president’s ability to synthesize and deliver thoughts in a symphony of words. Truly a pleasure and a privilege to be inspired by such a gifted leader. Below are excerpts from the speech, which I would like to highlight.

“…The very founding of this institution stands as a testament to the restless curiosity, the boundless hope so essential not just to the scientific enterprise, but to this experiment we call America.

A few months after a devastating defeat at Fredericksburg, before Gettysburg would be won, before Richmond would fall, before the fate of the Union would be at all certain, President Abraham Lincoln signed into law an act creating the National Academy of Sciences — in the midst of civil war.

Lincoln refused to accept that our nation’s sole purpose was mere survival.  He created this academy, founded the land grant colleges, and began the work of the transcontinental railroad, believing that we must add — and I quote — “the fuel of interest to the fire of genius in the discovery… of new and useful things.”

This is America’s story.  Even in the hardest times, against the toughest odds, we’ve never given in to pessimism; we’ve never surrendered our fates to chance; we have endured; we have worked hard; we sought out new frontiers.

Today, of course, we face more complex challenges than we have ever faced before:  a medical system that holds the promise of unlocking new cures and treatments — attached to a health care system that holds the potential for bankruptcy to families and businesses; a system of energy that powers our economy, but simultaneously endangers our planet; threats to our security that seek to exploit the very interconnectedness and openness so essential to our prosperity; and challenges in a global marketplace which links the derivative trader on Wall Street to the homeowner on Main Street, the office worker in America to the factory worker in China — a marketplace in which we all share in opportunity, but also in crisis.

At such a difficult moment, there are those who say we cannot afford to invest in science, that support for research is somehow a luxury at moments defined by necessities.  I fundamentally disagree.  Science is more essential for our prosperity, our security, our health, our environment, and our quality of life than it has ever been before.

…

Federal funding in the physical sciences as a portion of our gross domestic product has fallen by nearly half over the past quarter century.  Time and again we’ve allowed the research and experimentation tax credit, which helps businesses grow and innovate, to lapse.

Our schools continue to trail other developed countries and, in some cases, developing countries.  Our students are outperformed in math and science by their peers in Singapore, Japan, England, the Netherlands, Hong Kong, and Korea, among others.  Another assessment shows American 15-year-olds ranked 25th in math and 21st in science when compared to nations around the world.  And we have watched as scientific integrity has been undermined and scientific research politicized in an effort to advance predetermined ideological agendas.

We know that our country is better than this.  A half century ago, this nation made a commitment to lead the world in scientific and technological innovation; to invest in education, in research, in engineering; to set a goal of reaching space and engaging every citizen in that historic mission.  That was the high water mark of America’s investment in research and development.  And since then our investments have steadily declined as a share of our national income.  As a result, other countries are now beginning to pull ahead in the pursuit of this generation’s great discoveries.

I believe it is not in our character, the American character, to follow.  It’s our character to lead.  And it is time for us to lead once again.  So I’m here today to set this goal:  We will devote more than 3 percent of our GDP to research and development.  We will not just meet, but we will exceed the level achieved at the height of the space race, through policies that invest in basic and applied research, create new incentives for private innovation, promote breakthroughs in energy and medicine, and improve education in math and science.

…

The pursuit of discovery half a century ago fueled our prosperity and our success as a nation in the half century that followed.  The commitment I am making today will fuel our success for another 50 years.  That’s how we will ensure that our children and their children will look back on this generation’s work as that which defined the progress and delivered the prosperity of the 21st century.

This work begins with a historic commitment to basic science and applied research, from the labs of renowned universities to the proving grounds of innovative companies.

Through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, and with the support of Congress, my administration is already providing the largest single boost to investment in basic research in American history.  That’s already happened.

This is important right now, as public and private colleges and universities across the country reckon with shrinking endowments and tightening budgets.  But this is also incredibly important for our future.  As Vannevar Bush, who served as scientific advisor to President Franklin Roosevelt, famously said:  “Basic scientific research is scientific capital.”

The fact is an investigation into a particular physical, chemical, or biological process might not pay off for a year, or a decade, or at all.  And when it does, the rewards are often broadly shared, enjoyed by those who bore its costs but also by those who did not.

And that’s why the private sector generally under-invests in basic science, and why the public sector must invest in this kind of research — because while the risks may be large, so are the rewards for our economy and our society.

No one can predict what new applications will be born of basic research:  new treatments in our hospitals, or new sources of efficient energy; new building materials; new kinds of crops more resistant to heat and to drought.

It was basic research in the photoelectric field — in the photoelectric effect that would one day lead to solar panels.  It was basic research in physics that would eventually produce the CAT scan.  The calculations of today’s GPS satellites are based on the equations that Einstein put to paper more than a century ago.

…

In addition to the investments in the Recovery Act, the budget I’ve proposed — and versions have now passed both the House and the Senate — builds on the historic investments in research contained in the recovery plan.

So we double the budget of key agencies, including the National Science Foundation, a primary source of funding for academic research; and the National Institute of Standards and Technology, which supports a wide range of pursuits from improving health information technology to measuring carbon pollution, from — from testing “smart grid” designs to developing advanced manufacturing processes.

And my budget doubles funding for the Department of Energy’s Office of Science, which builds and operates accelerators, colliders, supercomputers, high-energy light sources, and facilities for making nano-materials — because we know that a nation’s potential for scientific discovery is defined by the tools that it makes available to its researchers.

…

And today, I’m also announcing that for the first time, we are funding an initiative — recommended by this organization — called the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Energy, or ARPA-E.  (Applause.)

This is based, not surprisingly, on DARPA, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, which was created during the Eisenhower administration in response to Sputnik.  It has been charged throughout its history with conducting high-risk, high-reward research.  And the precursor to the Internet, known as ARPANET, stealth technology, the Global Positioning System all owe a debt to the work of DARPA…”

China Moving Away From the Dollar

To those who are worried about China accumulating a significant amount of debt from the U.S., this surely will not come as a good news. In an interview with the Newsweek, Economist Nouriel Roubini (Dr. Realist, as he calls himself), sounds the alarm by stating that China has taken more action (e.g. conducting bilateral trades in yuan) in the past month than the past decade to establish their currency as an internationally accetable one.

Do you worry about China getting tired of holding our bonds?
In the short run, China has no option but to accumulate more reserves and dollar reserves. Why? Because if they stop doing that, their currency would appreciate sharply while their exports are plunging. So in the short run, they are going to keep on accumulating. But I have seen a huge number of new initiatives in the last month that suggest [the Chinese] are pushing for the yuan to become an international currency and a reserve currency. They are doing bilateral deals with countries like Argentina and half a dozen others in yuan, not in dollars.

They are moving away from the dollar?
Yes, slowly they will. First they have to establish their own currency as an international currency. That will take years, but already in a month they have done more than in the last 10 years.

What You Need to Know about Swine Flu

ABC news is reporting that people are being advised “Don’t shake hands, don’t kiss on the cheeks, don’t go to the movies — best of all, just stay at home” in Mexico, where this deadly outbreak has already sickened more than 1,000 people and killed as many as 68. Various new cases are now being reported here in the U.S.

Courtesy of CDC, below are facts about Swine Flu you should be aware of. Please make sure you understand the risks of dissemination and seek for medical help if and when you start seeing the symptoms. Thanks.

[Update] Public health emergency has been declared as the 20th case has been confirmed in the U.S. “warning Americans to prepare for widespread outbreaks now or in the future, yet urging them not to panic.” The government is moving aggressively to prevent any potential major outbreak: “U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said the government would release a quarter of its 50-million-unit strategic reserve of antiviral medications, which combat the disease in infected patients, to states where outbreaks have occurred. Besser said the CDC has begun laying the groundwork to manufacture a swine flu vaccine if one becomes necessary.”

[Update II] Governments around the world are racing to ready themselves to prevent a potential spread of the Swine Flu.

[Update III] CDC has just released an updated Q&A on Swine Flu. Please check it out for more information on this issue.

[Update IV] President Barack Obama has no flu symptoms after Mexico visit. This is great news given the state of affairs Mexico is in.

Swine Flu in Humans

What is Swine Influenza?
Swine Influenza (swine flu) is a respiratory disease of pigs caused by type A influenza virus that regularly causes outbreaks of influenza in pigs. Swine flu viruses cause high levels of illness and low death rates in pigs. Swine influenza viruses may circulate among swine throughout the year, but most outbreaks occur during the late fall and winter months similar to outbreaks in humans. The classical swine flu virus (an influenza type A H1N1 virus) was first isolated from a pig in 1930.

Can humans catch swine flu?
Swine flu viruses do not normally infect humans. However, sporadic human infections with swine flu have occurred. Most commonly, these cases occur in persons with direct exposure to pigs (e.g. children near pigs at a fair or workers in the swine industry). In addition, there have been documented cases of one person spreading swine flu to others. For example, an outbreak of apparent swine flu infection in pigs in Wisconsin in 1988 resulted in multiple human infections, and, although no community outbreak resulted, there was antibody evidence of virus transmission from the patient to health care workers who had close contact with the patient.

How common is swine flu infection in humans?
In the past, CDC received reports of approximately one human swine influenza virus infection every one to two years in the U.S., but from December 2005 through February 2009, 12 cases of human infection with swine influenza have been reported.

What are the symptoms of swine flu in humans?
The symptoms of swine flu in people are expected to be similar to the symptoms of regular human seasonal influenza and include fever, lethargy, lack of appetite and coughing. Some people with swine flu also have reported runny nose, sore throat, nausea, vomiting and diarrhea.

Can people catch swine flu from eating pork?
No. Swine influenza viruses are not transmitted by food. You can not get swine influenza from eating pork or pork products. Eating properly handled and cooked pork and pork products is safe. Cooking pork to an internal temperature of 160°F kills the swine flu virus as it does other bacteria and viruses.

How does swine flu spread?
Influenza viruses can be directly transmitted from pigs to people and from people to pigs. Human infection with flu viruses from pigs are most likely to occur when people are in close proximity to infected pigs, such as in pig barns and livestock exhibits housing pigs at fairs. Human-to-human transmission of swine flu can also occur. This is thought to occur in the same way as seasonal flu occurs in people, which is mainly person-to-person transmission through coughing or sneezing of people infected with the influenza virus. People may become infected by touching something with flu viruses on it and then touching their mouth or nose.

What do we know about human-to-human spread of swine flu?
In September 1988, a previously healthy 32-year-old pregnant woman was hospitalized for pneumonia and died 8 days later. A swine H1N1 flu virus was detected. Four days before getting sick, the patient visited a county fair swine exhibition where there was widespread influenza-like illness among the swine.

In follow-up studies, 76% of swine exhibitors tested had antibody evidence of swine flu infection but no serious illnesses were detected among this group. Additional studies suggest that one to three health care personnel who had contact with the patient developed mild influenza-like illnesses with antibody evidence of swine flu infection.

How can human infections with swine influenza be diagnosed?
To diagnose swine influenza A infection, a respiratory specimen would generally need to be collected within the first 4 to 5 days of illness (when an infected person is most likely to be shedding virus). However, some persons, especially children, may shed virus for 10 days or longer. Identification as a swine flu influenza A virus requires sending the specimen to CDC for laboratory testing.

What medications are available to treat swine flu infections in humans?
There are four different antiviral drugs that are licensed for use in the US for the treatment of influenza: amantadine, rimantadine, oseltamivir and zanamivir. While most swine influenza viruses have been susceptible to all four drugs, the most recent swine influenza viruses isolated from humans are resistant to amantadine and rimantadine. At this time, CDC recommends the use of oseltamivir or zanamivir for the treatment and/or prevention of infection with swine influenza viruses.

What other examples of swine flu outbreaks are there?
Probably the most well known is an outbreak of swine flu among soldiers in Fort Dix, New Jersey in 1976. The virus caused disease with x-ray evidence of pneumonia in at least 4 soldiers and 1 death; all of these patients had previously been healthy. The virus was transmitted to close contacts in a basic training environment, with limited transmission outside the basic training group. The virus is thought to have circulated for a month and disappeared. The source of the virus, the exact time of its introduction into Fort Dix, and factors limiting its spread and duration are unknown. The Fort Dix outbreak may have been caused by introduction of an animal virus into a stressed human population in close contact in crowded facilities during the winter. The swine influenza A virus collected from a Fort Dix soldier was named A/New Jersey/76 (Hsw1N1).

Is the H1N1 swine flu virus the same as human H1N1 viruses?
No. The H1N1 swine flu viruses are antigenically very different from human H1N1 viruses and, therefore, vaccines for human seasonal flu would not provide protection from H1N1 swine flu viruses.

How Wrong

How wrong was humanity to believe

That it was birthing a tour de force

Of ever imagined and bottled love-peace

All but, a dried silver orifice oozes

Of a life that was dressed in upside-down skirt

A top the facade for the world to see

Fluffy where it matters little, bottle-necking

Where mobility is made dead to grace.

The Hope-Change Index

Via, The Economist, an interesting diagram on the usage of the words hope and change in inaugural addresses by Presidents of the U.S.:

“While hope has found a place in each of the 26 inaugural addresses, change is used more sparingly. Seven inaugural speeches did not contain the word; six more made use of it just once. Presidents coming to office during economic booms, such as Calvin Coolidge and Warren Harding in the 1920s, Dwight Eisenhower and then George Bush junior, have been heavier users of hope than those who were inaugurated during leaner times.”

Betrayal: The Identity of Atomic Spy Unmasked

Smithsonian has a fascinating story about how George Koval, Iowa-born and army-trained spy, managed to steal a critical U.S. atomic bomb secret for the Soviets. The amazing thing is that it is only now that the intricate details of the betrayal are coming to be known.

“… in November 2007 Russian President Vladimir Putin posthumously awarded Koval, who had mustered out of the Red Army as a lowly private in 1949, a gold star marking him as a Hero of the Russian Federation—then publicly named him as Delmar. The spy’s identity had been such a closely held secret that Putin himself, a former KGB officer, may have learned of it only in 2006, after he saw the man’s portrait at a GRU museum opening and asked, in effect: who’s that?

…What can be gleaned so far—from Western and Soviet archives, FBI documents, current scholarship and interviews with Koval’s surviving former colleagues in the United States and his relatives in Russia—is that he was perfectly positioned to steal information about one of the most crucial parts of the bomb, the device that initiates the nuclear reaction. This required not only careful planning, rigorous training and brazen lying, but also astounding turns of luck. And in contrast to the known KGB spies, Haynes notes, “Koval was a trained agent, not an American civilian. He was that rarity, which you see a lot in fiction but rarely in real life—a sleeper agent. A penetration agent. A professional officer.”

Most unsettling, he was born in the United States. Scholars knew that much from Lota’s book. Now, after Koval’s unmasking, it is possible to trace the roots of his betrayal of his native land all the way back to Sioux City, Iowa…”

Milestone Reached!

Here is to reaching the 10,000 visitors mark for these pages… For the curious among the audience, below is a graph of the sum total weekly visits to this space since early December 2008, when this journey began. Thanks for coming along for the ride.

weekly visitor count for Ruminating Out Loud

Investing, Financial Advisers, and Survival

Jeffrey Goldberg has a wonderful piece at The Atlantic about investing, financial advisers, survival, and other ruminations. There are a number of references to discussions with folks ranging from pronounced investors to off-the-grid survivalist, which I am sure you will enjoy and find to be insightful. I particularly liked the following portion, which to the frequent visitors here will be reminiscent of the themes sounded in my Concrete Wealth entry from a while back.

“THE WAY I SEE IT, it’s all a con game,” Cody Lundin was saying. “What I mean is that Wall Street has always been an illusion. Now it’s an illusion that’s crumbling. Wall Street is like someone who’s having heart trouble. It’s in constant need of resuscitation, but after a while, it just doesn’t work anymore. People think that Bernard Madoff was unique, that he was an illusion, but he’s just an extension of the same illusion, the same con game. This is one of the reasons I don’t like to have any debt. When you have debt, you become part of this illusion, and sometimes you get trapped by it.”

I asked Cody how he invests his money. “I don’t believe in the intangible economy; I believe in the tangible economy. When I have extra money, I buy tools, food, or land. I like to be able to see what I’m buying. And I really don’t like debt, so I’d rather not have certain things than be in debt to anyone. I just feel better knowing that I don’t owe money, and I feel good knowing that I can take care of myself. That’s the American way, to be able to be self-reliant.”

“Internet Symphony”: Symphony without Borders

In an example that most acutely typifies the increasingly integrated world we live in, here is a video of a symphony, a Tan Dun composition “Internet Symphony, Eroica” as selected and mashed up from thousands of video submissions from around the globe, presented by YouTube. It speaks to the boundless connectivity between vast corners of the world and the emergence of infrastructure that allows for tapping into the wealth of resources and creativity henceforth undiscovered or made relevant.

Writings in Clouds

This is not to be confused with imaginary or otherwise writings seen on real clouds. This entry refers to the word cloud representation of my Writings, which are created using wordle, in what I call cloud-100, cloud-500, cloud-1000, cloud-10000, and cloud-100000 images. The number in each of these representations refers to the maximum number of words represented in the computation. That is, cloud-X contains the top X number of most heavily utilized words.

The most frequently used words (ignoring the most commonly used words in the English language) are one, information, people, president, time, Obama, life, time, process, think, sense, world,… How interesting! It is apparent that the majority of words are used infrequently (notice the resemblance in the proportionality of words in the cloud-1000, cloud-10000, and cloud-100000). I am not sure what that says about my writing, but it is, nonetheless incredible that we can transform data (information) and present it in such visual and easy to comprehend format.

cloud-100

cloud-500

cloud-1000

cloud-10000

cloud-100000

Hubble’s Best: Explorations Through the Majestic Space

Watch this video for a mind blowing journey through some of the best images the Hubble telescope has brought into life. Enjoy!

The Most Important Image Ever Taken by Humanity

Thanks to the tireless and thankless efforts of the Hubble telescope, we have been graced with insights into the natural order and beauty in the grandest of scales imaginable. Here is an awesome video about the Hubble Deep Field, which is arguably one of the most important images taken by humanity. Enjoy!

Aneesh Chopra Named as Federal CTO

As promised, President Obama has appointed a Chief Technology Officer for his administration. In his weekly address, he announced the appointment of Aneesh Chopra for this post. The envisioned responsibility is:

“As Chief Technology Officer, Chopra will promote technological innovation to help the country meet its goals from job creation, to reducing health care costs, to protecting the homeland. Together with Chief Information Officer Vivek Kundra, they will help give all Americans a government that is effective, efficient, and transparent.”

Tim O’Reilly has a thorough assessment of why this appointment is a great choice. Below is a speech Mr. Chopra gave as a keynote speaker at the 5th Annual State of the Net Conference 2009.

Anatomy of Misinformation

Sarkozy: Obama “Weak, Inexperienced and Badly Briefed” states the headline at The Page, Politics up to the Minute blog by Mark Halperin. To the unassuming eye and one that has propensity for running with such snippets of information without the full context, it can send the message that President Sarkozy thinks lowly of President Obama in the broadest of terms. Now, let us look at an excerpt from the original report by The New York Times:

“Over three courses at the lunch, Mr. Sarkozy held forth on the shortcomings of others, according to the newspaper Libération and other French news outlets, based on the accounts of opposition legislators who attended.

In the world according to Sarko, President Obama is weak, inexperienced and badly briefed on climate change; Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany did not comprehend her country’s economic problems and “had no other choice than to rally to my position”; and the leader of the European Commission, José Manuel Barroso, was “totally absent” from the recent Group of 20 meeting negotiations in London.”

There you have it. President Sarkozy was using those adjectives to describe President Obama as it relates to a particular issue, climate change. It is not clear why President Obama would come across as such. One thing that is crystal clear is that President Sarkozy likes to talk down about his equals. Provided in context, it provides a whole new perspective and meaning, doesn’t it?

I.Q. Scores and Genetics

Much of the bigotry and discrimination directed at underclass people and minorities is based on the disillusioned thinking that ones ability to succeed in life is tied to the individual’s genetic make up. It is no secrete that I strongly believe in the structural disadvantages people from disadvantaged background experience and how that manifests itself in socioeconomic inequities that exist. I was pleasantly surprised to read a column by Nicholas D. Kristof, at the New York Times, entitled How to Raise Our I.Q. I recommend it as a good reading matter for opening oneself to the world of new research that has come to shatter the misconception about the link between I.Q. scores, which are routinely used as a measure of intelligence and aptitude for success, and genetics. Excerpt from the column is provided below:

“If intelligence were deeply encoded in our genes, that would lead to the depressing conclusion that neither schooling nor antipoverty programs can accomplish much. Yet while this view of I.Q. as overwhelmingly inherited has been widely held, the evidence is growing that it is, at a practical level, profoundly wrong. Richard Nisbett, a professor of psychology at the University of Michigan, has just demolished this view in a superb new book, “Intelligence and How to Get It,” which also offers terrific advice for addressing poverty and inequality in America.

Intelligence does seem to be highly inherited in middle-class households, and that’s the reason for the findings of the twins studies: very few impoverished kids were included in those studies. But Eric Turkheimer of the University of Virginia has conducted further research demonstrating that in poor and chaotic households, I.Q. is minimally the result of genetics — because everybody is held back.

“Bad environments suppress children’s I.Q.’s,” Professor Turkheimer said.

One gauge of that is that when poor children are adopted into upper-middle-class households, their I.Q.’s rise by 12 to 18 points, depending on the study. For example, a French study showed that children from poor households adopted into upper-middle-class homes averaged an I.Q. of 107 by one test and 111 by another. Their siblings who were not adopted averaged 95 on both tests.

Another indication of malleability is that I.Q. has risen sharply over time. Indeed, the average I.Q. of a person in 1917 would amount to only 73 on today’s I.Q. test. Half the population of 1917 would be considered mentally retarded by today’s measurements, Professor Nisbett says.

Good schooling correlates particularly closely to higher I.Q.’s. One indication of the importance of school is that children’s I.Q.’s drop or stagnate over the summer months when they are on vacation (particularly for kids whose parents don’t inflict books or summer programs on them)…”

Income Inequality

Via Ezra’s blog, a table depicting the degree of income inequality which has worsened over time.

On the Release of “Torture Memos”

On a fundamental level, the action of Obama’s administration in releasing memos authored by Department of Justice officials to give legal backing to the “enhanced interrogation tactics” that were applied in the post 9-11 era of the Bush administration is a testament of the enduring strength of the rule of law. It also demonstrates the decency and malleability of our country’s system of governance, as it relates to the ability to self-correct the trajectory towards perfection and bringing transparency to bear in the behind-the -scene government dealings – sometimes delayed, but almost always without fail.

While this action has been lauded by some as courageous act by President Obama, some have expressed anger and disblief about it. These people who opposed the making public of these documents, most of whom are members of the previous adminstration, make the point that these techniques have been instrumental in acquiring valuable information about potential treats posed against the U.S. and her allies. It is difficult to prove the negative. It may be true that the actions taken by the Bush admistration were partly responsible for preventing further attacks. What is clear, however, is that the methods of interogation constitute of torture, which U.S. and international law prohibit. The legalistic parsing of the meaning of pain and suffering and what constitutes of a long-term consequence can not hide the fact that individuals were made to undergo through the type of robust interogation, which resulted in not only the potential harm to the individuals, but also to fatalities in some occasions. Hence, the defense of these memos and the actions ensued based the neutering of the definition of what torture is at best weak and untenable.

The other argument that is posed in defense of the actions taken during those “enhanced interogations” is that in disclosing the information about the type of techniques utilized, the U.S. government is essentially broadcasting to the terrorists as to what to prepare for in the condition that they are captured. This arguement is fundamentally flawed in that President Obama has already ordered, as part of one of the first executive orders he signed, for these methods not to be used from here on out, the reasoning of which was clearly articulated in the president’s inauguration speech:

“As for our common defense, we reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals. Our Founding Fathers, faced with perils we can scarcely imagine, drafted a charter to assure the rule of law and the rights of man, a charter expanded by the blood of generations. Those ideals still light the world, and we will not give them up for expedience’ sake. And so to all other peoples and governments who are watching today, from the grandest capitals to the small village where my father was born: Know that America is a friend of each nation and every man, woman, and child who seeks a future of peace and dignity, and that we are ready to lead once more.”

Hence, we are evidently in a new era where the inspiration of the ideals that helped found and sustain our country are to be a shining beacons and legal means are to be utilized to hinder others from doing us harm. So, it makes little sense to argue against the release of the memos by stating that we are communicating valuable information to our enemies. An excerpt from President Obama’s statement on the release of the memos:

“While I believe strongly in transparency and accountability, I also believe that in a dangerous world, the United States must sometimes carry out intelligence operations and protect information that is classified for purposes of national security. I have already fought for that principle in court and will do so again in the future. However, after consulting with the Attorney General, the Director of National Intelligence, and others, I believe that exceptional circumstances surround these memos and require their release.

First, the interrogation techniques described in these memos have already been widely reported. Second, the previous Administration publicly acknowledged portions of the program – and some of the practices – associated with these memos. Third, I have already ended the techniques described in the memos through an Executive Order. Therefore, withholding these memos would only serve to deny facts that have been in the public domain for some time. This could contribute to an inaccurate accounting of the past, and fuel erroneous and inflammatory assumptions about actions taken by the United States.”

And there are those, while they are appreciative of President Obama’s decision to make the memos public, who think that this action is only half-measure and demand that those who instituted the interogations should be brought to justice. I find this to be a reflexive reaction. A significant amount is not known about how these interrogation regimes came about. All we know is what is contained within the memos. The time calls for a meditative reflection on what happened and move with caution and deliberation. It does not appear that the government is ruling out any action except for absolving those who acted in good faith to implement these techniques per the order provided to them from being persecuted. The logic applied by the administration in explaining the reason for pursuing this avenue is explained by the following execert:

“In releasing these memos, it is our intention to assure those who carried out their duties relying in good faith upon legal advice from the Department of Justice that they will not be subject to prosecution. The men and women of our intelligence community serve courageously on the front lines of a dangerous world. Their accomplishments are unsung and their names unknown, but because of their sacrifices, every single American is safer. We must protect their identities as vigilantly as they protect our security, and we must provide them with the confidence that they can do their jobs.”

Indeed, those who partook in the institution of the interrogation techniques are helpless individuals who are consigned to the order of their superior. The ones responsible for this act are those in the higher level of government who sought to apply these methods to some end, no matter how justifiable they think their actions may be. It is unclear whether they did so with the clear intention of breaking laws as they are applied to torture. It is, yet, a remarkable depiction of President Obama’s temperament and judgment not to go down the avenue of crimination given the more than likely chance of the process being highly politicized and distracting the nation from the important task of fighting through the great difficulties facing us. An valuable excerpt from his statement is:

“This is a time for reflection, not retribution. I respect the strong views and emotions that these issues evoke. We have been through a dark and painful chapter in our history. But at a time of great challenges and disturbing disunity, nothing will be gained by spending our time and energy laying blame for the past. Our national greatness is embedded in America’s ability to right its course in concert with our core values, and to move forward with confidence. That is why we must resist the forces that divide us, and instead come together on behalf of our common future.

The United States is a nation of laws. My Administration will always act in accordance with those laws, and with an unshakeable commitment to our ideals. That is why we have released these memos, and that is why we have taken steps to ensure that the actions described within them never take place again.

In a nutshell, Andrew Sullivan has the right perspective on this issue. He presents a thorough assessment of the significance of these memos and the actions that they brought about and importance of releasing of these memos at this point in time.

Obama’s Vision for High-speed Rail in America

President Obama, with Vice President Joe Biden, announcing the plan for high-speed rail networks acoss the country.

President Barack Obama announced today about his plan to spend $13 billion to build a vast high speed rail network across the nation. It is announced that the stimulus plan will provide $8 billion initially, after that it will require $1 billion each year for the next five years.

“There are those who say high-speed rail is a fantasy — but its success around the world says otherwise… Building a new system of high-speed rail in America will be faster, cheaper and easier than building more freeways or adding to an already overburdened aviation system, and everybody stands to benefit.”

Below is the map of the proposed network of such rail system:

Coexistence

The Little Imperfections

Touching. True. Truly and characteristically human. A poem inspired by this video: Wishful Vision. Other poems can be found here. Enjoy!

In Obama’s Footstep

President Barack Obama has attributed the time spent as a community organizer as one of the most defining experiences in his life. Needless to say, the consequence of his service was far broader than the immediate assistance provided to the communities in Southside Chicago. That experience paved the way to his engagement in politics and, recently, the launching and execution of  the most organized, admired, and successful presidential campaigns ever. Here, the New York Times reports on the emergence of a new generation of young adults inspired to partake in community organizing, in large part due to the success of the world’s most famous organizer, Barack Obama. This typifies the tremendous influence the president is having in shaping the attitudes of the young and old about engagement in communities and service.

“…Certainly, there is an Obama effect. Through his presidential campaign and in his memoir, “Dreams From My Father,” Mr. Obama managed to glamorize and, more important, explain community organizing. He wrote about meeting with people in their homes and churches, listening to their stories, the failures and small victories.

“Before, you’d talk to young people about community organizing and they wouldn’t have a clue what you were talking about,” said Susan Chinn, a longtime community organizer who started the internship program at the Center for Community Change. “Community-based organizations have not done a very good job of marketing this work to a broad swath of people across the country.”

But they now have had a presidential campaign full of free advertising, and they want to capitalize. “We tell them, ‘Obviously there’s a lot you can do with it,’ ” said Robert Fisher, who teaches community organizing at the graduate school of social work at the University of Connecticut, Hartford. “And now we have the punch line: ‘Now you can be president… ”

A Virus-built Battery

Angela Belcher holds a display of the virus-built battery she helped engineer. The battery -- the silver-colored disc -- is being used to power an LED. Photo / Donna Coveney

Scientists from MIT have demonstrated a virus-built battery using genetically engineer viruses to build both the positively and negatively charged ends of a lithium-ion battery. These viruses, which are in the family of bacteriophage, are harmless to humans.

“The new virus-produced batteries have the same energy capacity and power performance as state-of-the-art rechargeable batteries being considered to power plug-in hybrid cars, and they could also be used to power a range of personal electronic devices, said Angela Belcher, the MIT materials scientist who led the research team.

The new batteries, described in the April 2 online edition of Science, could be manufactured with a cheap and environmentally benign process: The synthesis takes place at and below room temperature and requires no harmful organic solvents, and the materials that go into the battery are non-toxic.

In a traditional lithium-ion battery, lithium ions flow between a negatively charged anode, usually graphite, and the positively charged cathode, usually cobalt oxide or lithium iron phosphate. Three years ago, an MIT team led by Belcher reported that it had engineered viruses that could build an anode by coating themselves with cobalt oxide and gold and self-assembling to form a nanowire.

In the latest work, the team focused on building a highly powerful cathode to pair up with the anode, said Belcher, the Germeshausen Professor of Materials Science and Engineering and Biological Engineering. Cathodes are more difficult to build than anodes because they must be highly conducting to be a fast electrode, however, most candidate materials for cathodes are highly insulating (non-conductive).

To achieve that, the researchers, including MIT Professor Gerbrand Ceder of materials science and Associate Professor Michael Strano of chemical engineering, genetically engineered viruses that first coat themselves with iron phosphate, then grab hold of carbon nanotubes to create a network of highly conductive material.

Because the viruses recognize and bind specifically to certain materials (carbon nanotubes in this case), each iron phosphate nanowire can be electrically “wired” to conducting carbon nanotube networks. Electrons can travel along the carbon nanotube networks, percolating throughout the electrodes to the iron phosphate and transferring energy in a very short time…”

Blackest Material Ever

Via Wired, a reporting on the blackest material ever made:

“Scientists have fashioned what may be the blackest material in the universe: a sheet of carbon nanotubes that captures nearly every last photon of every wavelength of light.

The substance absorbs between 97 percent and 99 percent of wavelengths that can be directly measured or extrapolated. It’s the closest that scientists have yet come to a black body, a theorized state of perfect absorption whose closest analogue is believed to be the opening of a deep hole.

The material, described Monday by Japanese nanotechnologists in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, is made from a flat array of vertically-aligned, single-walled carbon nanotubes. Photons that aren’t immediately absorbed by a single nanotube deflect off and are absorbed by its neighbors.

“This interaction,” write the researchers, “repeats until the attenuated light is completely absorbed by the forest.” To the naked eye, the substance appears perfectly flat; in effect, it’s a sheet of deep holes.

By comparison, the blackest paints and coatings absorb between 84 and 95 percent of all light. Researchers say the material would be useful in solar panels or to collect heat in the frigid vacuum of space.”

Wishful Vision

I saw you, wished you into reality

A vision of perfection, epitomized

By the grace of movement, dancing

By the lucidity of feeling, sympathetic

By the curing of words, uplifting

By the electrifying touch, erogenic

By the insense of breath, soothing

By the sound of laughter, euphoric

You are not a dream, you are here

A wishful vision realized, heeded

By living in reality and seeing

Beyond imperfection, the lovesick heart.

Confidence

It’s the kind of thing that’s intangible, untouchable

Indescribable, but to a calmed nerve or senses

Vivid and there, in a state of panic or desperation

In times of gain or pain, simply cruising

In autopilot, floating upstream undeterred

The feeling of empowerment with the knowledge

Of a likely failure not being a life sentence

Of doom and gloom, pain and despair.

It is the certainty in waving the sun goodbye

With the knowledge it shall rise yet again

Delayed by a night or a season, but it rises nonetheless.

It is what it takes to step into a river not knowing

How deep the bottom lies and how little breath is left

After a breathtaking realization that today

Is better than tomorrow and yesterday

And tomorrow better than yesterday, because of today

It is what it takes to live and let live with courage

Conviction and comfort in the unknown

Allowing to be tested by the depth of peace and fortitude.

How Bacteria Talk to Each Other

A fascinating talk by Bonnie Bassler, of the Department of Molecular Biology at Princeton University, on how Bacteria communicate to one another:

A Deserved Public Welcome Home

At long last, after 18 years, the media was allowed to be present at the arrival of a coffin to Dover Air Force Base from overseas; this time bearing the body of Air Force Staff Sgt. Phillip Myers of Hopewell, Va. The sharing of the moment, which was allowed courtesy of his family and the Obama administration’s lifting of the ban, is as symbolic as it is significant. The war efforts in Afghanistan and Iraq have now been going on for years with the human toll being borne by the families of the select few while the collective consciousness of the population at large is kept at bay from the burden of true sacrifice of the wars.

A photograph by Brendan Smialowski for The New York Times

War on Terror >> Overseas Contingency Operation

Much has been said and made about the the leaked memo directed to Pentagon staff, in which an official from the defense department’s office of security review noted that “this administration prefers to avoid using the term ‘Long War’ or ‘Global War on Terror’ [GWOT]. Please use ‘Overseas Contingency Operation.” As pragmatism goes, I find this approach to be telling of the approach the Obama administration is taking in redefining the goals of the Afghan engagement in particular and defeating terrorist elements at large. In the face of little structural foundation for establishment of western democratic system of governance and the rampant corruption and little resource available for “nation-building,” the administration is keen in narrowing the scope of ambition in this already more than seven-year old war. The mission has been re-defined to “disrupt, dismantle, and defeat” al Qaeda and destroy its safe haven in the region. The specificity of this goal is what allows the administration to put in place concrete measures to assess progress towards the eventual extrication of the U.S. from this conflict. The renaming of the “global war on terror” is in line with this purpose. Much like the ineffectual declarations of war on drugs, crime, cancer, and others malices that pose a threat to humanity, which have rendered the nation with vacuous and diffused effort and sloganeering with the appearance of stalemate even in the face of progress, the phraseology of a global war on terror has done little in isolating the enemies we wish to defeat and advancing the goals of eliminating the influence they exert on free people in every corner of the world.

Our conception of war is largely defined by the gigantic conflicts of decades, and generations, past which involved the marshaling of resources against an enemy with a well-defined territorial location and where winning meant conquering of a land and liberation of a nation. Terrorism is a different animal all together. The battle is waged in the minds of innocent individuals. One can not marshal resources and armies against the brainwashing and propaganda, the dissemination of which has been made easy with the pervasive nature of communication apparatus in the current age, that pollutes the young in the most desperate and disparate corners of the world. Moreover, the declaration of war against these small and increasingly fragmented entities elevates them to the level of parity worthy of partaking in a battle against nations as powerful as ours. It provides these entities legitimacy and power, which they should be denied if they are to be made irrelevant and defeated. That is where the Obama administration has excelled. Its efforts against those who did us harm and continue to plot for further harm are defined. The focus is guided by the undertaking of operations, covert or otherwise, to disrupt, dismantle, and defeat these elements.

On a parallel track, President Obama has made increasingly warm and overt reach to the people of nations that harbor extremest elements by appealing to our common humanity and shared history of their country and the rest of the world. This charm offensive, as some have called it, is as effective and targeted as the approach discussed above. While the the de-legitimization of their cause relegates the extremists to state of disgruntled and fragmented bands that are not worthy of war-like engagement against the most powerful nation in the world and its allies, the charm offensive isolates them further from the population that harbors them. In the long run, the efficacy of the administration’s effort in making us safe and ensuring peace and stability in the world will strongly depend in its ability to isolate and destroy the elements that wish to us harm and deny them the platform for propagandist exploitation of their futile effort as an epic war against the west. It appears to me, based on the effort that is put in place in just a couple of months into his administration while actively engaged in averting an economic disaster of historic proportion, President Obama is well on his way in accomplishing this goal.