NASAdude

Last night when I returned from bible study, I saw a rabbit in the grass.

Today I was treated to a view of a cardinal, a bluejay, and a plethora of nuthatches. There are easily fifty of them. They are outside my office window in a brushy fencerow only about three feet away.

Beyond the fencerow is a new bank under construction. The building is nearly finished, and the property perimeter was landscaped last week. The nuthatches are having a field day hopping through the straw and eating the grass seed.

My cat also enjoys it; he chatters at the birds when they get close to the window. In fact, I might be happier with his entertainment than my own with the wild things.

It's a good day.

Posted by NASAdude at 12:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I thought my incoming email was bad. Seventy-five percent of the mail I get is spam, about 75 per day.

Bill Gates get 4 million per day. He has an entire department to handle his email filtering.

I don't. I use K9 local proxy to filter my mail, and only see about 0.2% of the spam directed my way. That's about one spam slipping into my inbox every week. My ISP has recently required users to use SSL for POP connections. K9 doesn't support SSL. An easy workaround is to set up stunnel locally, an SSL proxy. A small manual for SSL tunneling for K9 is here.

Yahoo news
SINGAPORE (AFP) - Internet junkies, take heart: Microsoft chairman Bill Gates receives four million e-mails daily, most of them spam, and is probably the most "spammed" person in the world.

But unlike ordinary users, the software mogul has an entire department to filter unsolicited e-mails and only a few of them actually get through to his inbox, Microsoft chief executive Steve Ballmer said here Thursday.

Ballmer was speaking to government information technology and development officials from the Asia-Pacific at the start of a two-day Microsoft-sponsored Asia Leadership Forum in Singapore.

"There are two people who probably are the number one spam recipients in the world," Ballmer said, referring to Gates and himself.

"Bill Gates (is number one) because he is Bill Gates. Bill literally receives four million pieces of e-mail per day, most of it spam.

"And so we have special technology which just filters (spam). Literally there's a whole department almost that takes care of it."

Ballmer said he was "probably also amongst the most spammed people in the world" because he gave out his e-mail address -- steveb@microsoft.com -- in all his public speeches.

"I receive many pieces of spam (but) only about 10 of them actually make it into my inbox because of the spam technologies that our IT department implements."

Posted by NASAdude at 10:26 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

It's now decided. The case has been dismissed, on the basis of free speech.

Consumers Union, the folks who publish Consumer Reports, was sued by Sharper Image for disparaging its Ionic Breeze air filter product.

Comments on this case hypothesise how such actions might suppress future reporting by independent media, who may now fear legal reprisals when they issue a bad product review.

Sharper Image fogs up
David Lazarus
Sunday, November 14, 2004

Corporate interests and consumer interests collided head-on in a San Francisco courtroom the other day.

Consumers won.

Sort of.

U.S. District Judge Maxine Chesney dismissed a lawsuit filed by San Francisco's Sharper Image that claimed Consumer Reports magazine unfairly maligned the company's hottest product, its Ionic Breeze air purifier.

"Sharper Image has not demonstrated a reasonable probability that any of the challenged statements were false," Chesney wrote in her ruling.

The company hasn't yet said whether it will appeal. But Steve Williams, an attorney for Consumers Union, publisher of Consumer Reports, says Sharper Image may not have to.

It's already gotten its point across.

"What this case was really about was the First Amendment and the right to free speech," Williams told me. "This is very frightening.

"Consumers Union may not have backed down, but how willing will magazines like Good Housekeeping be in the future to criticize products? How willing will newspapers be to do independent reviews?"

Good questions. I tried to put them to Sharper Image, but no one at the company, including its founder, Richard Thalheimer, returned my calls.

However, I did speak briefly with Bob Wallach, lead attorney for Sharper Image in the suit against Consumers Union. He said there needs to be limits on "media attacks" when the media proves itself unworthy of the public's trust.

It wasn't clear what exactly he was referring to. In the case of Consumer Reports, though, Wallach said Sharper Image firmly believes the magazine crossed the line when it concluded that Ionic Breeze doesn't work very well.

"Consumers Union utilized testing procedures that were inappropriate for the technology in Ionic Breeze," he insisted. "That produced false and misleading results."

A little background: Ionic Breeze is Sharper Image's flagship product, accounting by some estimates for as much as half of the company's annual sales. (Sharper Image won't say how much exactly.)

For the nine months ended Oct. 31, Sharper Image reported a 25 percent increase in total sales to $448 million. The company said it had stepped up advertising in October for its new "professional series" Ionic Breeze models.

Ionic Breeze ads crop up frequently on TV and in print. Large displays for the purifiers are the first thing you see when you enter Sharper Image's Union Square store in San Francisco.

But does it work? A Google search will turn up plenty of testimonials from satisfied customers. It'll also find more than a few who were unimpressed.

Unlike so-called high-efficiency particulate air filters, which use electric fans to help clear the air, Ionic Breeze uses Sharper Image's "Zenion Effect" technology to trap particles using an electrical field.

Ionic Breeze models range in price from about $200 for a desktop model to $500 for the Professional Series GP model.

In February 2002, Consumer Reports published a lengthy article reviewing 16 different air purifiers. It placed the Ionic Breeze Quadra model at the bottom of its rankings, saying the device produced "no measurable reduction in airborne particles."

Williams, the Consumers Union attorney, said Sharper Image complained after the article was published that the tests were unfair. (Consumer Reports had placed each purifier in a room and measured how much dust and smoke were removed from the air in a half-hour.)

"They said the Ionic Breeze needed to run longer," Williams said. "So Consumer Reports went back and tested again, this time seeing how much cigarette smoke could be removed over 19 hours. It couldn't even clean the smoke from one-eighth of a cigarette."

Consumer Reports ran a second article on purifiers in October 2003. Once again, Ionic Breeze ended up near the bottom of the magazine's rankings.

"They told Consumers Union again that the test was unfair," Williams said. "So Consumers Union asked what test they'd like to run. They have never, to this day, recommended a test for Consumers Union to do."

Sharper Image filed suit in September 2003, shortly after learning the results of the second test. The case was dismissed last week. Sharper Image was ordered to pay about $400,000 in Consumers Union's legal costs.

Consumers Union has been sued 15 times over its product reviews since 1968. It has never once had to pay any money or issue a retraction.

"Sharper Image could have just let it go without drawing more attention to Consumer Report's articles, but they didn't," Williams said. "I think they wanted to have a chilling effect on the media."

When I visited the Sharper Image store in Union Square, a salesman proudly told me he had four Ionic Breeze units in his home because of allergies. He pointed out that the gadgets are endorsed by the Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America.

According to the foundation's annual report, Sharper Image donated up to $99,999 to the organization last year.

William McLin, the asthma and allergy foundation's executive director, didn't return repeated calls for comment.

So I called Russell Leong, a prominent San Francisco allergist, and asked what he thought of Ionic Breeze. He said he doesn't recommend either that or fan-driven purifiers to his patients.

"The air is never clean, because there's a constant influx of things into the room," Leong said. "You'd have to have your face right next to the purifier to benefit from it."

His advice?

"Save your money."

Other info sources:
QuackWatch
KABC-TV (abc7: L.A., CA) 9/25/03
WCPO, Cincinnati 9/11/03
InfomercialScams (user comments)
WFOR, CBS4, Miami 11/10/04
Large article/reviews on air filters by ConsumerSearch

Posted by NASAdude at 04:58 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Yes, folks, now you don't need to impatiently wait for answered prayers. A new saint is here to serve your every whim and wish. Prayers are answered within 24 hours. Don't waste your time praying to other saints who dawdle and take their good old time.

Whatever.

This article got me thinking about prayer again. I wrote about it two months ago in the entry "How to pray (and hearing God)" a.k.a. "Are you there God? It's me, NASAdude."

In the previous entry, I pondered the idea of a "God frequency" that we tune in to when we pray. If we want to pray to a saint, how is that done? Do we just say the name of the saint and abra-ca-dabra, our brain is tuned to the correct frequency so our prayer is only heard by that dead person? I don't know... this prayer thing seems dubious if not downright hokey.

The original wired.com article follows.

NEW ORLEANS -- Here in the oldest church building in New Orleans, tucked into a dark corner by the door as far away from the main altar as possible, stands the statue of St. Expedite -- the unofficial patron saint of hackers.

Unofficial because the Roman Catholic Church doesn't know what to do about St. Expedite. He's too pagan to be a proper saint, and too popular for his statues to be simply tossed out the door.

Statues of St. Expedite seem to appear at some churches, a puzzling phenomenon. Where do the statues come from? Who sends them? No one really seems to know who St. Expedite was in life or even if he ever existed.

But whatever St. Expedite may or may not be, geeks, hackers, repentant slackers, folks who run e-commerce sites and those who rely on brains and sheer luck to survive have all claimed the saint as their own.

"People who are computer experts or who work with computers do say Expedite is their patron saint," said the Rev. Michael Amesse, pastor of Our Lady of Guadeloupe Chapel in New Orleans, the only American church with a statue of the saint.

"I don't know why they say Expedite is the computer saint. St. Isidore is the saint of technology and the internet. Yet these people insist on praying to Expedite. Like all things that concern this saint, it is a mystery."

In 2002, the Catholic Church offered up St. Isidore of Seville as the saint of computer programmers. Isidore seemed to be a fine choice -- in the 7th century, he produced one of the world's first databases, a 20-volume encyclopedia called The Etymologies, intended to be a summation of everything that was known about the world he lived in.

But Isidore somehow seems a bit too plodding for hackers, plus his life story includes none of the weird wordplay that makes so many hackers happy.

St. Expedite's name obviously relates to his attested ability to deliver favors quickly to the faithful. But wait! There's more -- a joke about how St. Expedite manages to maneuver his statues into churches.

In 1781, or so the story goes, a packing case containing the body of a saint who'd been buried in the Denfert-Rochereau catacombs of Paris was sent to a community of nuns in the city. Those who sent the body wrote "Expedite" on the case, to ensure fast delivery of the corpse for the obvious reasons.

The nuns got confused, assumed Expedite was the name of a martyr, prayed to him, had a bunch of prayers answered amazingly quickly and the cult of St. Expedite was born. News of this saint who cheerfully dispensed quick miracles soon spread rapidly through France and on to other Catholic countries.

It's a swell story, but Italians were asking St. Expedite to grant their wishes well before 1781, so either the date or the entire story is wrong. And the whole thing just screams urban legend anyway.

A different version of the same story is told in New Orleans. Supposedly, the church of Our Lady of Guadeloupe received a big shipment of assorted saint statues. Only one didn't have a proper label on the case identifying the saint whose statue was contained within. But the crate did have an "Expedite" label on it, so the locals decided that must be the saint's name.

A century and a half later, according to the story, they found out there was no saint called Expedite. However, a little research turned up the obscure St. Expeditus, whose status as a possible Armenian martyr gave the Expedite myth legitimacy.

St. Expedite is typically depicted as a young Roman centurion squashing a crow beneath his right foot and hoisting a clock or, in later versions, a cross inscribed with the word hodie ("today" in Latin). A ribbon with the word cras ("tomorrow" in Latin) emerges from the squished crow's mouth. The idea is that St. Expedite destroys people's proclivity to procrastinate and vanquishes vague promises of joyous tomorrows in favor of making things happen right now.

Why a crow? English-speaking people tend to mimic the sound a crow makes as "caw caw." Italians hear it as "cras cras." In Italian folk tales, crows and ravens are forever yapping on about tomorrow.

St. Expedite is also widely considered, among people who consider such things, to provide real-time assistance on problems -- he's the saint of the fast solution. He is also is the patron saint of people who have to deliver work or products on a tight schedule.

While visiting St. Expedite in New Orleans, we saw half a dozen people come in and tuck notes and flowers by the saint's statue, ignoring the official saints in the front of the church.

"St. Expedite got me a job fast after my company closed down last month," said Letish Jackson of New Orleans, who'd come to the church to thank the saint. "If you knew how hard it is to get jobs here you'd know that me being employed is a very big miracle."

She's not the only one who turned to the saint for financial help. A recent article that appeared on the front page of The Wall Street Journal noted that St. Expedite has also become the patron of victims of outsourcing.

Jackson, and other Our Lady of Guadeloupe parishioners, said that "computer people," as Jackson described them, often come to visit St. Expedite.

"I asked my friend who runs a computer repair service why those people come here, and he says Expedite is the nerd's saint," said Jackson. "My friend said St. Expedite is all about delivering information fast."

Patron saints in general are broadband connections to the Almighty, passing along messages from the desperate or faithful. And the Catholic Church seems to have a patron saint for every possible need.

St. Joseph of Cupertino, the "flying friar," is not the patron saint of Mac users -- he's appealed to by skittish air travelers (it's said the good friar levitated whenever he was happy). Girls who live in rural areas can pray to St. Germaine of Pibrac, the patron of peasant females.

"I'm not a big believer in the saints, but St. Expedite is another whole story -- he's so good he's scary," said freelance computer support consultant Kathy Dupon, a resident of New Orleans. "My clients were forever paying me late until I taped a card with the saint's picture behind my mailbox as a joke last year. Now my checks almost always arrive on time."

Posted by NASAdude at 01:34 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I found this an interesting engineering application to meet religous needs. Also, it can get us to think about our own adherance to rules and the basis for those rules.
The source of the paragraph below also includes user comments. Some of them are interesting as well.

How do modern Jews survive after sun-down on Friday given they can't use electricity? They buy Star-K-approved devices. These devices include a "sabbath mode" in which they won't turn on as a direct result of human intervention. Flip a switch, the light doesn’t turn on. However, it may turn on randomly 10 second later, not as a direct result of the switch flipping. Open the fridge, the light doesn't come on and the compressor doesn't immediately compensate. So if you're looking for a kosher oven, look for the Star-K.

Wired.com article with more info.

Posted by NASAdude at 10:37 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Source Slashdot discussion

Researchers provide concrete evidence about how the human eye evolved
When Darwin's skeptics attack his theory of evolution, they often focus on the eye. Darwin himself confessed that it was "absurd" to propose that the human eye, an "organ of extreme perfection and complication" evolved through spontaneous mutation and natural selection. But he also reasoned that "if numerous gradations from a simple and imperfect eye to one complex and perfect can be shown to exist" then this difficulty should be overcome. Scientists at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory [EMBL] have now tackled Darwin's major challenge in an evolutionary study published this week in the journal Science. They have elucidated the evolutionary origin of the human eye.

Researchers in the laboratories of Detlev Arendt and Jochen Wittbrodt have discovered that the lightsensitive cells of our eyes, the rods and cones, are of unexpected evolutionary origin ­ they come from an ancient population of light-sensitive cells that were initially located in the brain.

"It is not surprising that cells of human eyes come from the brain. We still have light-sensitive cells in our brains today which detect light and influence our daily rhythms of activity," explains Wittbrodt. "Quite possibly, the human eye has originated from light-sensitive cells in the brain. Only later in evolution would such brain cells have relocated into an eye and gained the potential to confer vision."

The scientists discovered that two types of lightsensitive cells existed in our early animal ancestors: rhabdomeric and ciliary. In most animals, rhabdomeric cells became part of the eyes, and ciliary cells remained embedded in the brain. But the evolution of the human eye is peculiar ­ it is the ciliary cells that were recruited for vision which eventually gave rise to the rods and cones of the retina.

So how did EMBL researchers finally trace the evolution of the eye?

By studying a 'living fossil,' Platynereis dumerilii, a marine worm that still resembles early ancestors that lived up to 600 million years ago. Arendt had seen pictures of this worm's brain taken by researcher Adriaan Dorresteijn [University of Mainz, Germany]. "When I saw these pictures, I noticed that the shape of the cells in the worm’s brain resembled the rods and cones in the human eye. I was immediately intrigued by the idea that both of these light-sensitive cells may have the same evolutionary origin."

To test this hypothesis, Arendt and Wittbrodt used a new tool for today’s evolutionary biologists – 'molecular fingerprints'. Such a fingerprint is a unique combination of molecules that is found in a specific cell. He explains that if cells between species have matching molecular fingerprints, then the cells are very likely to share a common ancestor cell.

Scientist Kristin Tessmar-Raible provided the crucial evidence to support Arendt's hypothesis. With the help of EMBL researcher Heidi Snyman, she determined the molecular fingerprint of the cells in the worm's brain. She found an opsin, a light-sensitive molecule, in the worm that strikingly resembled the opsin in the vertebrate rods and cones. "When I saw this vertebrate-type molecule active in the cells of the Playtnereis brain – it was clear that these cells and the vertebrate rods and cones shared a molecular fingerprint. This was concrete evidence of common evolutionary origin. We had finally solved one of the big mysteries in human eye evolution."

Posted by NASAdude at 03:24 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)