Pocket-sized spectrometer from the University of Arizona

NASA's 2009 Mission to Mars will carry the Mars Science Laboratory, which includes a cell-phone-sized device capable of identifying minerals in the Martian soil. The device, designed by Robert Downs at the University of Arizona, shoots a laser at materials to be identified, causing its atoms to vibrate at different frequencies and generate a detectible signal. The process, known as Raman spectroscopy, is a quantum mechanical process that earned its discoverer, Sir Chandrasekhara Venkata Raman, the Nobel prize in physics in 1930.

Excerpts from an interview with Downs:

I know that Miami Police Department has about 220,000 spectra of all the illicit drugs that are out there in the world. You just take these things; you can shoot them and ten second later you know what they’re holding: is it baby powder, is it cocaine? Really easy to tell. This little white powder that came in envelopes that the post office was getting. Bonner Denton has a demonstration he uses upstairs. He takes a bottle of Tylenol, a white plastic container and the pills are inside. You can shoot the Raman and a laser goes through that white plastic, it identifies the three parts of Tylenol and it tells you what the plastic is made out of. It works on leaves. I can identify the species of trees by shooting their leaves. I don’t think the biologists are aware of this yet.

...

There is about just over 4000 mineral species that are known and we’ve shot about 700 of them so far; so, one fifth of the way. I think it will be about a six-year project to complete everything we know found on Earth. And we’re also looking at the meteorites as well with the NASA people.

(Via jwz's blog.)

Matt Stone calls Isaac Hayes on his double standard

Isaac Hayes has quit "South Park"--no more appearances from Chef, at least not with Hayes' voice. His reason, however, is bogus:

"There is a place in this world for satire, but there is a time when satire ends and intolerance and bigotry towards religious beliefs of others begins," the 63-year-old soul singer and outspoken Scientologist said.

"Religious beliefs are sacred to people, and at all times should be respected and honored," he continued. "As a civil rights activist of the past 40 years, I cannot support a show that disrespects those beliefs and practices."

"South Park" has been bashing religious views other than Scientology since began in 1997. Hayes is only upset now because his religion, Scientology, was targeted last season in the "Trapped in the Closet" episode, which correctly described some of Scientology's crazy cosmology.

"South Park" co-creator Matt Stone calls him on his hypocrisy:

"This is 100 percent having to do with his faith of Scientology... He has no problem — and he's cashed plenty of checks — with our show making fun of Christians." ...

Stone told The AP he and co-creator Trey Parker "never heard a peep out of Isaac in any way until we did Scientology. He wants a different standard for religions other than his own, and to me, that is where intolerance and bigotry begin."

Parker stated that they intentionally avoided the subject of Scientology--while taking on Christianity, Catholicism, Judaism, Mormonism, Buddhism and Islam--because of Hayes. "We knew he is a Scientologist and he's an awesome guy. We were like, 'Let's just avoid that for now.'"

"South Park" creators Stone and Parker also created a spoof of the Scientology-related film "Battlefield Earth" in 2000 for the MTV Awards, which Isaac Hayes did not play a role in.

CIA employee identities discoverable via web searches

The Chicago Tribune has reported that it was able to identify 2,653 employees of the CIA, including covert agents, from online data providers who charge for access to public records. The Tribune reports that it identified agents through telephone listings, real estate transactions, voting records, property tax records, and other documents, and that they were able to identify internal CIA phone numbers, covert mailing addresses, and two dozen CIA facilities. One facility, "The Farm" at Camp Peary, VA, was looked up via ordinary Internet searches, which yielded the names of 26 people who work there. (John Young's cryptome site features this May 31, 2005 New York Times story on Camp Peary.)

Amazon.com removes all customer reviews

It appears that Amazon.com has removed all customer reviews from their website, and has introduced a new beta feature called "Customer Discussions" for each product.

There are still customer rankings (the "Rate it" feature) and editorial reviews, but all the customer reviews are gone, the reviewer ranking is gone, and the helpful/unhelpful votes are gone.

A pity, as I was hoping to someday make the ranks of the top 1000 reviewers--my best rank was 2,171 in late February of this year.

This move seems to be really poor judgment on Amazon.com's part. I heavily relied upon customer reviews when making purchasing decisions, and I considered the reliability of individual's reviews by comparing them to other reviews by the same person. Now, that feature of Amazon.com is unavailable, as the huge existing database of commentary has been removed. Perhaps the "Customer Discussions" will replace it, but if the purpose is for people to go back-and-forth debating specifics of the content, rather than giving an overview and opinion of the work as a whole, it won't be the same.

It was also rather rude of Amazon.com to delete, without notice, the substantial contributions of its top reviewers. I was ranked only 2,171, but I reviewed 113 books to get there--and there were several million Amazon.com reviewers. Top reviewers reviewed thousands of books. That's an enormous amount of customer contribution to just throw away without notice or acknowledgment.

UPDATE (12:35 p.m. MST Sunday): As cowmix pointed out, the reviews are back. I spoke with a friend who works at Amazon.com, and he said that it is common for Amazon.com to make changes like this which are only visible to a test population of users, for a short period of time that's long enough to obtain information about how it affects customer behavior.

Global Crossing blog

Last week Global Crossing, my employer, unveiled a corporate blog site. The current bloggers there are David Siegel, writing on the future of the Internet (and most recently on the IPTV World Forum), Adam Uzelac, writing on VOIP technology, Norm Schilacci, writing to clarify new technologies and concepts for the layman, and Paul Kouroupas, writing on public policy issues and regulatory matters (most recently on net neutrality, in which he recommends an excellent paper by Blair Levin, Rebecca Arbogast, and David Kaut of Stifel/Nicolaus, "Net Neutrality: Value Chain Tug of War").

In conjunction with this blog site, Global Crossing has defined a fairly open blogging policy for employees to comment publicly about the company. The policy contains most of the core and common policies described at the CorporateBlogging Blog.

I've tended (with a few exceptions) to avoid blogging specifically about my employer here, and this is the first time I've specifically named the company on my blog. That's a tendency I plan to continue here, though I expect to comment from time to time on the company blog site. (You can find a couple comments of mine in the DRM thread on Siegel's blog.) Lest there be any doubt, any opinions I express on this blog (or on the company blog) are my own, and do not necessarily represent those of my employer.

Antony Flew on advisory board of Scientology front group

Lest anyone think that Flew's only lapse of judgment has been his off-again, on-again (PDF), off-again support for intelligent design and theism, it seems that he has also lent his name to the advisory board of Scientology's anti-psychiatry front group, the Citizens Commission on Human Rights, which opposes the use of drugs to treat mental illnesses.

Psychics and missing persons

Kelly Jolkowski is the mother of a child who has been missing for nearly five years. She has begun authoring a series of blog posts about psychics and the search for missing people from her perspective--and she characterizes them as "Advantage Takers" who are exploiting people at their most vulnerable. (Hat tip: Respectful Insolence.)

Former White House domestic policy advisor arrested for retail fraud scheme

Claude Allen, who was up February 9 the White House domestic policy advisor, advocating abstinence education, school prayer, and opposition to abortion, was arrested this week in Maryland for a retail fraud scheme. Allen, who was previously a deputy secretary in the Department of Health and Human Services, would purchase items at Target or Hecht's, take them out to his car, return with the receipts and take an identical item off the shelf and "return" it for a credit back to his credit card. He apparently did this more than 25 times between October 29, 2005 and January 2, 2006, defrauding the stores of more than $5,000. This from a guy who was making $160,000 a year. His attorney says it's just a misunderstanding.

(From Talking Points Memo.)

UPDATE (March 14, 2006): Claude Allen has an evil twin. No, really!

UPDATE 2 (March 14, 2006): But the twin wasn't the one who admitted the scam.

Arizona legislators sponsoring bills for Scientology front group

The Arizona Republic reports today that a number of Arizona legislators have been sponsoring bills on behalf of Scientology's Citizens Commission on Human Rights (CCHR), an anti-psychiatry group. Several of them have taken trips to Scientology events at the Celebrity Center in Los Angeles to meet with John Travolta.

The CCHR and Scientology have a religiously-based opposition to psychiatry and medicine pertaining to mental health. This derives from L. Ron Hubbard's own opposition to psychiatry and his development of Dianetics as an alternative to psychological therapy. When he created Scientology (after having temporarily lost control of his Dianetics organization to his partner Don Purcell of Wichita, Kansas), he adopted the trappings of religion and invented a cosmology involving evil intergalactic psychiatrists who assisted the warlord Xenu in order to eliminate those who opposed him. They did this by injecting billions of people with alcohol and glycol, loading them onto space planes that looked just like DC-8s, and flying them to planet Teegeeack (Earth), where they were dumped into volcanoes and blown up with hydrogen bombs. Their souls (or "thetans") departed their bodies and are still here, attached to our own souls and causing all manner of psychological ills for us. Psychiatry and psychology, according to Scientology, are bogus methods which do nothing to address the real problems caused by these "body thetans" attached to us--only the Scientology process of auditing with an e-meter can free us from them.

(You can find more details about Scientology's cosmology at Wikipedia, which has a very comprehensive set of articles about the religion, as well as at Operation Clambake. I also highly recommend Russell Miller's book about L. Ron Hubbard, Bare-Faced Messiah, which is online in its entirety.)

So who are the Arizona legislators working with CCHR and attending Scientology functions?

Sen. Karen Johnson (R-District 18, Mesa). Karen Johnson is on the Family Services, Finance, Appropriations, and K-12 Education committees. She is one of the nuttier fundamentalists in the legislature, a member of Concerned Women for America and in tight with James Dobson's Focus on the Family and Gary Bauer's Family Research Council. Johnson has gone so far as to lend her name to the CCHR's Advisory Board.

Sen. Linda Gray (R-Glendale, District 10), who is on the K-12 Education, Higher Education, Government, and Family Services committees and is a big supporter of Mothers Against Drunk Driving. She has degrees in recreation administration and sociology.

Sen. Carolyn Allen (R-District 8, Scottsdale), who is on the Commerce and Economic Development, Health, and Transportation committees.

Sen. Marilyn Jarrett (R-District 19, Mesa). She just died on Friday after having a stroke in her office on Thursday.

Sen. Albert Hale (D-District 2, Window Rock). Former president of the Navajo Nation, on the Government Accountability and Reform, Government, and Higher Education committees.

Rep. Tom Prezelski (D-District 29, Tucson). On the Counties, Municipalities, and Military Affairs, Federal Mandates and Property Rights, and Transportation committees.

Rep. Pamela Gorman (R-District 6, Anthem). A member of "Pure Heart Christian Fellowship," the Arizona Women's Shooting Association (she holds a concealed carry permit), and Concerned Women for America. She's on the Appropriations, Transportation, and Ways and Means committees.

Rep. Russell Pearce (R-District 18, Mesa). A pro-lifer and strong advocate of English-only and against illegal immigration.

Sen. Thayer Verschoor (R-District 22, Gilbert). On the Family Services, Government Accountability and Reform, Higher Education, and Transportation committees. Verschoor is the guy who introduced a bill to require state universities to "provide a student with alternative coursework if the student deems regular coursework to be personally offensive" where "a course, coursework, learning material or activity is personally offensive if it conflicts with the student’s beliefs or practices in sex, morality or religion." He didn't introduce this over the issue of evolution, but because of the book The Ice Storm, which features a 1970s "key party." He missed the point that it was not portrayed in a favorable way.

Rep. Lucy Mason (R, District 1, Prescott). She's on the Appropriations, Natural Resources and Agriculture, and Universities, Community Colleges and Technology committees.

Kudos to Sen. Robert Cannell (D-District 24, Yuma), the only M.D. in the state legislature, for calling them on this. Any legislator dumb enough enough to promote bills based on Scientology advocacy and pseudoscience is unfit for public office and should be voted out at the earliest opportunity. (By the way, this doesn't mean that every position the CCHR advocates is wrong--but when they're right it's generally not for the right reasons, and they are completely unreliable on the science.)

(My previous blog entry on Scientology recounted my experiences interacting with the church when it decided to declare war on the Internet, and an earlier one reported on the updated "Space opera in Scientology" Wikipedia entry.)

Rain, at long last...

It finally started raining last night, ending a five-month drought in Phoenix. It last rained on October 18, 2005, which was while I was having my house hooked up to the city sewer system (I have an older home that had two cesspools).

Despite this long drought, the area's lakes and water reservoirs have still been filled to greater capacity than they had been for the last several years, which had caused Salt River Project to reduce irrigation deliveries an unprecedented two years in a row, returning to a normal schedule in February 2005.