Formation of the Arbonian sea

BLDGblog has some great photos of the rifts opening up in the ground in central Ethiopia, where parts of the Afar triangle have already sunk to more than 100 meters below sea level. What's now a 37-mile-long fissure will apparently take a million years to reach full ocean status.

Skeptics Circle #30

The 30th meeting of the Skeptics Circle is up at Paige's Page.

Targeted bioweapons

Worried about biological weapons that can be specifically targeted to, say, disable the ability to store memories, cause the autoimmune system to attack myelin (i.e., mimic multiple sclerosis), or target specific ethnic groups? If not, you might be after you read this article from Technology Review. Unfortunately, some of these things may even be feasible to produce with old technology that is easily available--and if they aren't now, they will be.

(Via Bruce Schneier's blog.)

Spammed by the Arizona Republican Party

I don't know how they got my email address--I've never been (and never will be) a registered Republican.

From: "Chairman Matt Salmon"
To: [my email address]
Subject: Arizona Republican Party Roundup - March 15, 2006
Date: Wed, 15 Mar 2006 10:53:37 -0600

Attention Republican Clubs and Organizations - Submit your events to
events@azgop.org

In This Issue:
Chairman Salmon on the Death of State Senator Marilyn Jarrett
Capitol Update
Kyl Immigration Provisions Moving Forward

...

Paid for by the Arizona Republican Party

(602) 957-7770

Not authorized by any candidate or candidate committee.


----------------------------------------

This email was sent by:
Republican Party of Arizona
3501 N 24th Street
Phoenix, AZ, 85016, USA

The actual email came from ExactTarget.com, whose anti-spam policy says:

Anti-SPAM at ExactTarget

ExactTarget believes, practices, and requires its clients to practice only permission-based e-mail marketing. Our clients certify that they will use our software only to send e-mails to customers and prospects that have directly consented (opted-in) to receive their e-mail. They are forbidden to transmit unsolicited commercial e-mail (spam) via our system.

Members Agreement

Our clients agree not to use our system to send unsolicited e-mail. For any opt-in list of e-mail addresses used in ExactTarget's system, clients agree to provide us with the source of the e-mail addresses, the method used to capture the data, and verification of the consent to receive e-mails from such client. We also encourage our members to respect their customers' time and attention by controlling the frequency of mailings to individual e-mail addresses.

Our clients certify that they will not use rented or purchased lists, e-mail append lists, or any other list that contains e-mail addresses captured in any other method than opt-in. The use of opt-out lists is prohibited in our system. ExactTarget retains the right to review client lists and e-mails to verify that clients are abiding by the privacy and permission policies set forth herein. However, our clients are ultimately responsible for compliance with our policies.

I don't think there's any way my email address would have ended up on their list except by email appending.

I've complained to them and to ExactTarget's abuse address, asking both for an explanation and what they're going to do to rectify the situation. My guess is that they will continue to spam for the Republicans--in which case they deserve to be added to anti-spam blocking lists.

BTW, for anti-spammers, the originating MTA was mta.emailgop.com (207.67.38.104), on Time Warner Telecom's network. The IP block is SWIP'd to TW Telecom, and TW Telecom's rwhois shows it assigned to Exact Target. The company has had a few previous incidents with spamming, but the blog of Chip House, their VP of Privacy and Deliverability, endorses decent principles.

UPDATE: "Nate Romance" of Exact Target responded to my complaint, stating that:

At ExactTarget we take these complaints very seriously and we work hard to ensure that our clients send mail only to people who have asked to receive mail. Clients who do not adhere to our policies face an escalating series of penalties, including but not limited to: chargeback fees, mailing restrictions, and termination. Our Privacy Policy located here:

http://website.exacttarget.com/exacttarget_company_privacypolicy.asp

and our Anti-SPAM policy located here:

http://website.exacttarget.com/exacttarget_company_antispam.asp

will provide you with additional information and should answer any questions you might have.

Additionally, we will investigate this issue with our client, and determine what we can do to ensure that it does not persist. In the meantime, I have added your email address ([address deleted]) to our "Master Unsubscribe List" which will ensure that you do not receive email from the Arizona Republican Party or any other client of ExactTarget.

Thanks for bringing this matter to our attention and we apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused.

Please let me know if there are additional items I can assist you with.

Virus propagation via RFID tag

Ed Felten writes about a new paper that discusses the possibility of RFID tags being used to exploit flaws in RFID reader software to propagate a virus. The paper, authored by Melanie Rieback, Bruno Crispo, and Andy Tanenbaum of Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam, includes a description of a proof-of-concept the authors developed. By including a SQL injection flaw in the reader software they wrote, and RFID tag containing appropriate malicious code, the reader then propagated the malicious code by writing it to new RFID tags. If such a flaw exists in real reader code, the potential exists for a virus to be transmitted from reader to reader via RFID tags, with each infected reader writing the virus out to additional tags.

BTW, this is the same Andy Tanenbaum who wrote the classic textbook Operating Systems: Design and Implementation and developed Minix, which inspired Linus Torvalds to create Linux.

Rieback gave a talk at last year's "What the Hack" hacker conference in Amsterdam on "Fun and Mayhem with Radio Frequency Identification."

Create your own police department

Bruce Schneier reports on a case of "police department privilege escalation," where, because California allows transit companies to create their own police departments, Yosef Maiwandi was able to do so. He created the San Gabriel Valley Transit Authority, a nonprofit operating out of an auto repair shop that gives bus rides to disabled people and senior citizens. He then created the San Gabriel Valley Transit Authority Police Department, and made Stefan Eriksson a deputy police commissioner of their anti-terrorism division, and gave him business cards.

Eriksson is the guy who went drunk driving in a million-dollar Ferrari Enzo that crashed into a telephone pole in Malibu--he claims he was the passenger, but no other driver has been found.

UPDATE (March 19, 2006): There's now video that shows Eriksson and another person--Trevor Karney--in the Ferrari.

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.