Things Confucius Did Not Say...

Via reader Simi L.:

Man who wants pretty nurse, must be patient.

Passionate kiss, like spider web, leads to undoing of fly.

Better to be pissed off than pissed on.

Lady who goes camping must beware of evil intent.

Squirrel who runs up woman's leg will not find nuts.

Man who leaps off cliff jumps to conclusion.

Man who eats many prunes get good run for money.

War does not determine who is right, it determines who is left.

Man who fight with wife all day, get no piece at night.

It takes many nails to build a crib, but only one screw to fill it.

Man who drives like hell is bound to get there.

Man who stands on toilet is high on pot.

Man who live in glass house should change clothes in basement..

Man who fish in other man's well often catch crabs.

Finally Confucius also didn't say: A lion will not cheat on his wife, but a Tiger Wood!

What is This?

Why, it's a close-up of a hole drilled into a rock.  A Martian rock.  By Curiosity, of course...

State and City Pension Fund Reform...

Carl DeMaio is a local politician and a Reason fellow.  He's got a piece in today's WSJ ($) on the need for reform of state and city pension funds (and the pension system in general) and some specifics of what he believes are needed.

I don't disagree with him on either the problem or the need for reform.  I'm not so sure about the specifics he proposes; my own inclinations would be for something much more dramatic.  I'd be especially interested in reform that put a stop to the politician's ability (or willingness) to spend the public's future money...

What's Wrong With this Graph?

There's a serious flaw with this infographic – a flaw that creates a false impression in just about every viewer.  Can you find it?  Here's the answer (a classic Megan McArdle takedown)...

Aw, Go Fly a Kite!

But do it like this, please...

New Record for Largest Prime...

It's a Mersenne prime, naturally: (2^57,885,161)-1.

Forget Due Process?

Reader Larry E. writes in with this regarding the leaked memo detailing the Obama administration's justification of targeted killings of Americans:

This is a sad, scary thing.

Seems all it takes to have you killed in the US is for some official to say you might be dangerous.

How we got to this point, from constitutional protections from unwarranted search, innocent until proven guilty, to no knock search warrants, secret courts, CIA prisons, actively mining all data flowing in the US for any evidence of wrong doing, to justifying murdering US citizens on US soil. Amazing.

Here's the actual memo.

This is disturbing, no doubt about it.  The opportunities for abuse are obvious, and if there's any lesson from history it is that any possible abuse will become an actual abuse. 

Also disturbing is the obvious alternative: American Taliban (or the equivalent) untouchable by U.S. military action because of legal restrictions.

I much prefer to err on the same side that our jury system errs on: I'll gladly take a small risk to my country (an American Taliban run amok) to keep the due process protection afforded (or so I thought) by our Constitution.

But little by little, bit by bit, our Constitutional protections have been eroded over the years.  This is not a recent phenomenon; it started a long, long time ago.  The examples are everywhere: illegal drugs and building codes are two noxious examples that are long-standing and have widespread public support.  With this memo, Obama is just participating in an old and well-practiced political sport...

Why...

(Geek Alert): Why does Google prepend while(1); to all of its JSON API reponses?

Short answer:it prevents cross-site request forgeries.

You learn something new every day :)

It's Official: Mach 1.25...

That's how fast Felix Baumgartner fell in his record-setting jump...

Quantum-Resistant Encryption (UPDATED)...

If you posit the existence of a quantum computer (either now, tucked away in a government agency, or in the future when scientists figure out how to do it), then the cryptosystems in general use today can be trivially broken.  In plain English: anybody with a quantum computer can read all of your encrypted messages, including any secure web sessions (HTTPS via SSL).

I just stumbled across a cryptosystem that doesn't have any known attack via quantum computer, and is available today.  It's called NTRU, and it's an asymmetric key system with fairly high performance (especially compared with conventional asymmetric cryptosystems).  It's available in a Java library from the creators, and it's now part of Bouncy Castle.

I just barely understand the math behind conventional cryptosystems.  I haven't (yet) tried to understand this one, but I'm very curious to see how its mathematical properties make it immune to the quantum attacks that would work against conventional cryptosystems.  Perhaps one of my readers understands and can illuminate the topic for us?

Update 2/5:  Reader and friend Doug W. writes to say:

Color me very skeptical. I have no problem with quantum computing as an interesting basic research topic, but many folks, both in the field and in the press, seem to believe that we’re just a few years away from something practical. My suspicion is that it’s more like nuclear fusion power, which has been a constant 10-20 years away from practicality for over sixty years. In fact, I’m far more optimistic about fusion power than quantum computers, which isn’t saying much.

It’s possible – in some very strange theoretical sense – for a quantum computer to factor large numbers used in RSA crypto, assuming you could even convince the quantum device to do big integer math, though that alone seems unlikely to me. However, my gut says that the thermal noise in any system, even near absolute zero, dwarfs the energy difference between that many superimposed quantum states by many orders of magnitude (dozens? hundreds?). Thus, I find it difficult to believe that such a system would be stable long enough to be useful. I could certainly be wrong, but I’m not holding my breath. Right now, quantum computers can factor the number 15, and they’ve been stuck there for a good while -- it’s a long way from 2**4 to 2**1024. Just saying…

And don’t get me started about quantum cryptography. As Paul Kocher (a very well known and respected crypto researcher) said in 2003:

To me, quantum cryptography is useless. It purports to solve a problem that’s already solved. It is an interesting research problem, though. But, you’re not going to see quantum computers showing up to do useful things probably in my lifetime and possibly never. But it is the most interesting problem in computing in the last 30 years. It’s absolutely fascinating. But, of all the things that keep us awake at night, that’s way down there with alien invasions.

I’ve heard lots of talks on quantum crypto at cryptography conferences over the past 15 years, and most of the cryptographers I know just roll their eyes. It is, however, a great research area if you are looking to get research grant money.

Also, fwiw, NTRU has been around quite a while and is at best a niche technology. Lattice cryptography has a bit of a funky reputation (not all due to NTRU), due to lots of claims which have been repeatedly broken. The NTRU folks are nice guys and very bright, but I don’t see it getting wide deployment anytime soon.

[Full disclosure: I have an applied physics degree from Caltech, and I do cryptography for a living]

We're Playing Defense – and That's the Problem...

Peter Munson is a Marine officer who recently returned from a tour in Afghanistan.  He's written a very thoughtful piece, the heart of which starts with this:

Since I returned home, a darkness has grown in me as both I and our nation have failed to live up to the sacrifices of these young men and women. I had no expectation of “victory” in Afghanistan or Iraq, whatever that would mean. Nor did I expect some epiphany of strategic insight or remorse from the nation’s brain trust.

I just found that I could not square the negativity, pettiness and paranoia in the discourse of our country’s elders with the nobility and dedication of the men and women I had seen and served with in Afghanistan.

Over time, as I listened to the squabbling, I realized that about the only thing Americans agree on these days is gratitude bordering on reverence for our military. It troubled me that the sum total of consensus in our discourse is deference toward the defenders of our nation. 

Please read the whole thing...

Chasing Ice...

The largest glacier calving ever captured in images.  Awesome...

Tour of the ISS...

Via my mom.  I have mixed feelings viewing this.  There is a lot of cool, advanced technology on display; fun stuff for any geek.  On the other hand, the video showcases the stuff we've spent a vast amount of money on, with negligible returns.  Sigh.

So God Made a Farmer...

I'm not a fan of Dodge Ram trucks, but I sure do like their SuperBowl ad:

Jerker Line Systems...

Power distribution.  When we think of that term today, what comes right to mind is electricity.  If we think a little harder, we might also think of the petroleum industry as a power distribution system.  Most of us would not think of “jerker line systems”, if for no other reason than we never heard of them.

In the early '60s, my dad, my brother and I took a trip out to the Western U.S. (from New Jersey) in my dad's beat-up 1948 Dodge.  We visited the oil fields of Texas and Oklahoma, and somewhere in those fields we saw several of these jerker line systems in action.  At the time we had no idea what they were called, but it was obvious how they worked: the back-and-forth action of the steel cables, often slithering along the ground, were operating oil pumps.  The motion of the cables made a distinctive sound.  We followed a cable from one of the pumps back to the electric motor that ran it (much like the one pictured here).  In the case of the one we followed, the motor was perhaps 500 yards from the pump – and that single motor was running three pumps.

We thought it was quite ingenious at the time.  It was most definitely low tech; a guy with a monkey wrench and some oil could maintain the entire thing, and it was obvious how it worked.

I wonder how they do this today?  Probably an electric motor in each pump, I'm guessing.  The advent of horizontal drilling has probably greatly reduced the number of well sites, too...

Reality Smacks Lefty Upside His Pointed Little Head...

On Friday, Matt Yglesias published a short article detailing how the tentacles of government bureaucracy made it crazy difficult to start his own small business.  If you recognize his name, you're probably chuckling already – because Yglesias is a well-known lefty blogger and commentator, one who can be relied on to support everything that smacks of big government.

As you might expect, the “rightosphere” has been having a lot of fun with this.  At The Spirit of Enterprise, for example, we have this:

I love when progressive dudes in designer glasses actually have to deal with the government in order to do something and are blown away by the stupidity, waste, and burden of it all. It is as if they have only read journal articles about the theory of regulators and never encountered them in the wild.

More such reactions in these search results...

Shadow Government Statistics...

John Williams has an interesting web site called Shadow Government Statistics, wherein he exposes flaws in the way government presents and analyzes economic and finance statistics.  Here's a good example using unemployment statistics.  Williams includes (in the blue line) long term “discouraged” workers which have been left out of all U.S. government statistics since 1994 (a piece of Bill Clinton legerdemain designed to make the economic picture look better than it actually was).  With those “discouraged” workers back in the stats, the current unemployment rate is really about 23%, not the much rosier 7.9% released as the official number...

English King Richard III Found...

His remains, that is.  Richard III was killed at the Battle of Bosworth Field in 1485, but his remains had been lost.  This skeleton was found last fall under a parking lot; scientists used DNA to positively identify it as Richard III.

Namibian Nights...

Awesome time-lapse video of the night sky in Namibia.  Via APOD, of course...

Life Found Deep Below the Antarctic Ice...

Most Antarctic biologists were expecting this, and now it's confirmed.  An underwater lake deep under the Antarctic ice has been cut off from the rest of the world for at least 100,000 years.  Nonetheless, life still thrives there.  It will be interesting to see how the life forms discovered obtain their energy in that cold, lightless environment...