Technofascism blog

PassivSystems, of Newbury, England recently developed a medical sensor that detects if an elderly person who lives alone collapses on the floor, or even has heart irregularities.  So, the problem this piece of technology solves is how to keep someone alive while still ensuring that they remain alone and isolated.  Wouldn’t it be simpler just to make it easier for people to maintain human contact?  But somehow I don’t think that solution can be patented.  Besides, just think of the surveillance potential for this new robotic fly-on-the-wall.

via The Economist.

It looks like in these troubled times, the next big thing isn’t McMansions or Hummers but nuke-proof bunkers.

via ABC News.

A company with a doomsday plan is taking money for what it promises will be a comfortable, nuke-proof bunker under the Mojave Desert, with an atrium, gym and jail, and sloppy joes and pearl potatoes on the menu.

Robert Vicino, who runs the Del Mar-based company called Vivos, has collected deposits on half the 132 spaces planned in the 13,000-square-foot bunker in Barstow.

The facility is among several popping up across the country as fears of doomsday have been fueled recently by strong earthquakes, terrorism and predictions of the world’s end in 2012 when the ancient Mayan calendar is said to end.

“I’m careful not to promote fear. But sooner or later, I believe you’re going to need to seek shelter,” said Vicino, a real estate salesman whose career started with advertising and moved on to timeshares.

The political climate now in some ways reflects the Cold War era, when many Americans dug backyard fallout shelters, said Jeffrey Knopf, an associate professor of national security affairs at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey.

“There’s a lot of free-floating anxiety out there about the dangers that terrorists will get nuclear weapons and it multiplies,” he said.

Facilities such as Vicino’s are attracting interest in other states such as Oregon and Kansas, where one engineer is developing underground survival condos for $1.75 million.

In Barstow, $50,000 will get a bunk in a four-person room. Vicino is still taking reservations: $5,000 for adults and $2,500 for kids. Pets are free.

He said the Portland, Ore., company that owns the Barstow property, TSG Investments, gave him permission to convert it. The land once belonged to AT&T and was originally used as an emergency government communications center during the Cold War.

The Los Angeles Times toured the bunker, promising not to reveal the location because Vicino said he didn’t want freeloaders trying to get in if disaster strikes.

The Times found a giant open area with anemic blue walls and a 3,000-pound door. Vicino said he hasn’t raised enough money to start renovating but claims the place is already protected from electromagnetic pulses that could destroy electrical equipment.

Steve Kramer, a 55-year-old respiratory therapist from San Pedro, said he paid $12,500 to reserve spots for him and his family. He’s stocking up on dried food and teaching his 12-year-old son to ride a dirt bike in case they have to go off-road to get to the desert bunker.

“We’re not crazy people, but these are fearful times,” Kramer said.

Video link: http://abcnews.go.com/Nightline/video/vivos-survival-bunkers-sell-11019475

The technocrats need to make Afghanistan a safe place for all the future mining corporations but how can that be accomplished when the entire population hates the fake modern society that they know will be imposed upon them?

Simple solution: employ the same kind of mind-control, social engineering nonsense that keeps the masses in line back home: endless television advertising, control of media, polls, worship of celebrities and sports figures, financial desperation,  and “democracy”.

If you are a well-adjusted, participant in modern society, you are already quite familiar with the techniques the US military will use to convince the Afghans that “our” way is the best way.  Indeed, it must be the only way.

via Wired.com.

The Pentagon’s ultimate team of technologists is looking to looking to bridgethe cultural divide in Afghanistan — with storytelling, pantomime and the Wizard of Oz.

After nine years of conflict, the U.S. military is still having trouble finding common ground with warzone locals. One way to fill that breach, Darpa figures, is through “interactive stories.”

Counterinsurgency, in many ways, is a series of negotiations — over economic development, over security, over political power. And “negotiation,” Darpa explains in a new request for information, “is best served by a culturally-specific narrative that explains why we hold a position, how it relates to other parties, and how it affects all parties both positively and negatively.”

Darpa’s tales are part of a larger Defense Department push to get smarter about the battlefield’s “human terrain.” Teams of social scientists are now embedding with combat units; Pentagon-funded researchers are building computer models of how the societies of Afghanistan and Iraq work; military pollsters are trying to tap public opinion in the conflict zones.

To come up with its storytelling tools, Darpa’s Information Processing Technologies Office is hoping to go beyond its usual cadre of neuroscientists, artificial intelligence specialists, and gadgeteers.  The agency also wants contributions from “art, literature, film, dance, games development, advertising and public relations, advertising, grass roots organizing, collective decision making or any other discipline for which the respondent can make an argument that the approach bears on this task.”

There will be some technology involved — this is Darpa, after all. But the agency is encouraging “very non-traditional approaches to this problem (e.g., a virtual tribal storyteller interacts with a human mime to produce a silent theater improvisation with audience participation).”

The “Negotiate Across Cultures” project will kick off with a two-day workshop. There, Darpa will hold a “mock competition” of potential researchers. But this won’t be a gizmo demo. Instead, the “participants will use a ‘Wizard of Oz’ approach to illustrate how each approach, if implemented, would operate on selected negotiation problems within specific socio-cultural environments. In the ‘Wizard of Oz’ approach, one or two human representatives of each participant team will listen to a problem description and manually act out the operation and structure of the tool using props they bring to the event.”

Get your props ready; the workshop is planned for late July or early August.

The Nao robots, developed by Aldebaran Robotics,  demonstrate the latest agility in robotics.  The movements start out very simple with just simple arm motion but just wait it gets much more interesting.

When a Japanese inventor needs to create a new robot baby so that people in that country will be motivated to reproduce, you can be fairly certain that the Japanese will soon join the ever-growing list of extinct species.

via CNN.com.

Tokyo, Japan (CNN) — Yotaro cries, giggles, and kicks when you tickle him. He sneezes and his nose runs. When he is upset, his rattle calms him down.

An average baby — sort of — since Yotaro is a robot. His inventors hope he will help Japan’s sagging birth rate, among the lowest in the world.

“A robot can’t be human but it’s great if this robot triggers human emotions, so humans want to have their own baby,” said Hiroki Kunimura, the project leader for the Yotaro robot.

Kunimura and his University of Tsukuba team originally built Yotaro because they wanted to create a robot that would appeal across national and cultural lines. Since a baby doesn’t have any language skills yet, they chose to build a robotic infant.

The University of Tsukuba students then started showing off Yotaro at robot competitions, and were surprised by the reactions from the public and the media.

“People asked us if this baby robot was created to tackle the low birth rate in Japan,” said Kunimura, who describes himself as Yotaro’s “daddy.”

The low birth rate wasn’t the initial concept, but when Kunimura started seeing how the public touched and reacted to Yotaro, he saw the possibility of a robotic solution to a social crisis.

Yotaro, in Japan’s high-tech robotics world, is extraordinarily low-tech. The emotions are pre-set in a computer program and shot onto his eerily large head with a projector. Yotaro’s warm body temperature is silicone warmed by water. His endlessly runny nose is a water hose on a slow drip. But the effect Yotaro has on people, said his inventors, is stunningly human.

“I think it’s true that young working couples have no chance to have personal contact with babies in their lives. The people who came to the robot exhibitions enjoyed touching Yotaro, like a real baby,” said Kunimura.

Japan is struggling to find a solution to a pressing population problem. The country, with one of the world’s highest life expectancies, expects that 40 percent of its population will be over the age of 65 by 2050. Add in the nation’s low birth rate, and Japan’s social problem is clear: The country’s population is graying and dwindling every year.

Japan’s lawmakers instituted a radical plan hoping to take on the population crisis. The record budget this year included a provision to pay families 13,000 yen, approximately US $150, per month, per child. The child care subsidy would continue until the child reaches high school.

The hope is that a financial incentive would encourage families to have more children. Lawmakers, though, are already talking about cutting back the program in the wake of Japan’s massive public debt.

Yotaro project members think a mindset change on children in Japan won’t come from money, but some contact with a baby — even a robotic one. Project member Madoka Hirai said she started noticing baby clothes and pictured what life with a child could be like — something she had never thought about before Yotaro.

“(He) changed how I feel about babies,” she said.

via Reuters.

* People were right about themselves just half the time

* Technique might enhance advertising, education efforts

By Maggie Fox, Health and Science Editor

WASHINGTON, June 22 (Reuters) – Brain scans may be able to predict what you will do better than you can yourself, and might offer a powerful tool for advertisers or health officials seeking to motivate consumers, researchers said on Tuesday.

They found a way to interpret “real time” brain images to show whether people who viewed messages about using sunscreen would actually use sunscreen during the following week.

The scans were more accurate than the volunteers were, Emily Falk and colleagues at the University of California Los Angeles reported in the Journal of Neuroscience.

“We are trying to figure out whether there is hidden wisdom that the brain contains,” Falk said in a telephone interview.

“Many people ‘decide’ to do things, but then don’t do them,” Matthew Lieberman, a professor of psychology who led the study, added in a statement.

But with functional magnetic resonance imaging or fMRI, Falk and colleagues were able to go beyond good intentions to predict actual behavior.

FMRI uses a magnetic field to measure blood flow in the brain. It can show which brain regions are more active compared to others, but requires careful interpretation.

Falk’s team recruited 20 young men and women for their experiment. While in the fMRI scanner they read and listened to messages about the safe use of sunscreen, mixed in with other messages so they would not guess what the experiment was about.

“On day one of the experiment, before the scanning session, each participant indicated their sunscreen use over the prior week, their intentions to use sunscreen in the next week and their attitudes toward sunscreen,” the researchers wrote.

After they saw the messages, the volunteers answered more questions about their intentions, and then got a goody bag that contained, among other things, sunscreen towelettes.”

“A week later we did a surprise follow up to find out whether they had used sunscreen,” Falk said in a telephone interview.

About half the volunteers had correctly predicted whether they would use sunscreen. The research team analyzed and re-analyzed the MRI scans to see if they could find any brain activity that would do better.

Activity in one area of the brain, a particular part of the medial prefrontal cortex, provided the best information.

“From this region of the brain, we can predict for about three-quarters of the people whether they will increase their use of sunscreen beyond what they say they will do,” Lieberman said.

“It is the one region of the prefrontal cortex that we know is disproportionately larger in humans than in other primates,” he added. “This region is associated with self-awareness, and seems to be critical for thinking about yourself and thinking about your preferences and values.”

Now, Falk said, the team is looking for other regions of the brain that might add to the accuracy of the technique.

While the findings can be important for advertisers seeking to hone a motivational message, they can be equally important for public health experts trying to persuade people to make healthier choices, Falk said.

The team is now preparing a report on experiments to predict whether people would quit smoking after seeing motivational messages.

via APNews.

By MICHAEL VIRTANEN

ALBANY, N.Y. (AP) – Gov. David Paterson has proposed roughly doubling New York’s DNA database to include samples from even low-level offenders, making it the first in the nation to so broadly collect and use this evidence to solve crimes and exonerate people wrongly convicted.

New York’s law would require adding about 48,000 samples a year to a laboratory system that state officials say is capable of handling the extra work, with no current backlogs.

“You think it’d be a huge explosion, but we have samples on so many people that recommit crimes already – it’s the old rule of criminals don’t specialize,” said Sean Byrne, acting commissioner of the Division of Criminal Justice Services.

State police now have DNA samples from 356,000 people convicted of felonies and certain misdemeanors, including petty larceny and endangering the welfare of a child. The database began in 1996 with the genetic material from killers and sex predators, and has been expanded three times.

The governor’s plan has drawn support from a law school center involved in efforts nationwide to use DNA evidence to reverse wrongful convictions. But the New York Civil Liberties Union said the latest proposed expansion raises many questions, including about protection of privacy rights, and should be given further study.

Paterson said it would cost about $1.6 million more annually for state police to increase data collection to get a complete list of New York criminals’ DNA, adding many other misdemeanors.

“DNA is the most powerful tool ever discovered to solve crimes, prevent crimes and exonerate the innocent, but remarkably in New York State we are still collecting DNA from only 46 percent of the criminals convicted,” he said.

Former Gov. Eliot Spitzer first proposed the idea in 2007 but it did not win legislative approval.

The Assembly has twice passed broader legislation sponsored by Democratic Assemblyman Joseph Lentol, calling for the collection of DNA in all crimes as well as requiring videotaping of police interrogations, both measures meant to help prevent wrongful convictions.

“As long as we have the innocent guy in prison, the guilty guy is going around committing crimes willy-nilly,” Lentol said.

In the Senate, similar DNA bills have been introduced, including one by Sen. Eric Schneiderman, a Manhattan Democrat who is running for attorney general.

“We’re certainly confident there will be an expansion of the DNA data bank,” said Schneiderman spokesman James Freedland.

DNA currently is not collected in most misdemeanors – some 53 percent of all convictions, said Warren County District Attorney Kate Hogan, president of the state District Attorneys Association, which supports the expansion.

Robert Perry, New York Civil Liberties Union legislative director, said there are issues with privacy and the rights of defendants to due process – and that an independent analysis is needed first. He said problems from putting the DNA of thousands more people into the data bank include the risk of degraded samples, human error in testing labs and even intentional fraud.

“The complexity and importance of the issues raised by the proposal to expand the state’s DNA data bank – issues of law, science and public policy – are matched only by the indifference of lawmakers,” Perry said.

Through April 30, there were 7,825 positive matches against the state’s data bank, including 137 homicide convictions and 453 sexual assaults, according to the criminal justice department.

Since 2006, among those convicted of petty larceny, 652 have been linked to other crimes, including 170 sexual assaults, 72 robberies and 31 homicides.

Over the past two decades, there have been 254 post-conviction DNA exonerations in the United States, according to the Innocence Project. The nonprofit legal clinic, associated with New York’s Cardozo Law School, encourages use of DNA evidence to overturn convictions.

It is part of a network of nearly 61 legal clinics, 52 of them in the U.S., doing similar work. The project has 214 active cases, with 8,000 under evaluation, and to date has looked at 36,000 and taken 1,250 as clients, spokeswoman Emily Whitfield said.

Rob Warden, executive director of the Northwestern University Law School Center on Wrongful Convictions, part of the network, said he supports New York expanding its DNA database. “What we all hope is getting this right,” he said.

The New York State Police lab processes offender DNA samples, while it and seven other accredited labs statewide process DNA from crime scenes, Byrne said.

He said the average offender who made a first DNA submission last year had five prior convictions.

Retired cold case detective Joseph Pollini of the New York Police Department said requiring all criminals to submit DNA would be a huge help because most commit smaller offenses before committing a major crime.

via cbs5.com.

California drivers may soon come bumper to bumper with the latest product of the digital age: ad-blaring license plates.

State lawmakers are considering a bill allowing the state to begin researching the use of electronic license plates for vehicles.

The device would mimic a standard license plate when the vehicle is moving but would switch to digital messages when it is stopped for more than four seconds in traffic or at a red light.

In emergencies, the plates could be used to broadcast Amber Alerts or traffic information.

The author of SB1453 says California would be the first state to implement such technology if it decides to adopt the plates on a large scale.

Supporters say license-plate advertising could generate much-needed revenue in a state facing a $19 billion deficit.

FOXNews.com.

WASHINGTON — Fighting homegrown terrorism by monitoring Internet communications is a civil liberties trade-off the U.S. government must make to beef up national security, the nation’s homeland security chief said Friday.

As terrorists increasingly recruit U.S. citizens, the government needs to constantly balance Americans’ civil rights and privacy with the need to keep people safe, said Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano.

But finding that balance has become more complex as homegrown terrorists have used the Internet to reach out to extremists abroad for inspiration and training. Those contacts have spurred a recent rash of U.S.-based terror plots and incidents.

“The First Amendment protects radical opinions, but we need the legal tools to do things like monitor the recruitment of terrorists via the Internet,” Napolitano told a gathering of the American Constitution Society for Law and Policy.

Napolitano’s comments suggest an effort by the Obama administration to reach out to its more liberal, Democratic constituencies to assuage fears that terrorist worries will lead to the erosion of civil rights.

The administration has faced a number of civil liberties and privacy challenges in recent months as it has tried to increase airport security by adding full-body scanners, or track suspected terrorists traveling into the United States from other countries.

“Her speech is sign of the maturing of the administration on this issue,” said Stewart Baker, former undersecretary for policy with the Department of Homeland Security. “They now appreciate the risks and the trade-offs much more clearly than when they first arrived, and to their credit, they’ve adjusted their preconceptions.”

Underscoring her comments are a number of recent terror attacks over the past year where legal U.S. residents such as Times Square bombing suspect Faisal Shahzad and accused Fort Hood, Texas, shooter Maj. Nidal Hasan, are believed to have been inspired by the Internet postings of violent Islamic extremists.

And the fact that these are U.S. citizens or legal residents raises many legal and constitutional questions.

Napolitano said it is wrong to believe that if security is embraced, liberty is sacrificed.

She added, “We can significantly advance security without having a deleterious impact on individual rights in most instances. At the same time, there are situations where trade-offs are inevitable.”

As an example, she noted the struggle to use full-body scanners at airports caused worries that they would invade people’s privacy.

The scanners are useful in identifying explosives or other nonmetal weapons that ordinary metal-detectors might miss — such as the explosives that authorities said were successfully brought on board the Detroit-bound airliner on Christmas Day by Nigerian Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab. He is accused of trying to detonate a bomb hidden in his underwear, but the explosives failed, and only burned Abdulmutallab.

U.S. officials, said Napolitano, have worked to institute a number of restrictions on the scanners’ use in order to minimize that. The scans cannot be saved or stored on the machines by the operator, and Transportation Security Agency workers can’t have phones or cameras that could capture the scan when near the machine.

via Reuters.

Clearing forests in the Amazon helps mosquitoes thrive and can send malaria rates soaring, U.S. researchers reported on Wednesday.

They found a 48 percent increase in malaria cases in one county in Brazil after 4.2 percent of its tree cover was cleared.

Their findings, published in the journal Emerging Infectious Diseases, shows links between cutting down trees, a rise in the number of mosquitoes and infections of humans.

“It appears that deforestation is one of the initial ecological factors that can trigger a malaria epidemic,” said Sarah Olson of the University of Wisconsin, who worked on the study.

Experts are already worried that the destruction of Brazil’s Amazon forests can help drive climate change. Big fires, set by farmers to clear land for agriculture, are the main cause of deforestation.

One team estimated earlier this month that 19,000 square km (7,300 square miles) of forest had been lost every year in Brazil from 1998 to 2007.

The new study shows the immediate health consequences, the researchers said.

“Conservation policy and public health policy are one and the same,” Jonathan Patz, the professor who oversaw the work, said in a telephone interview. “How we manage our landscapes and, in this case, tropical rain forest has implications for public health.”

Malaria, caused by a parasite transmitted by mosquitoes, kills about 860,000 people a year globally, according to the World Health Organization. Brazil has about 500,000 cases a year of malaria, most carried by Anopheles darling mosquito.

Patz’s team has been tracking mosquito populations and how they change as forests are cut down in Brazil and Peru. They took satellite data showing changes in tree cover in one county of Brazil’s Amazon region and linked it with health records showing diagnosed cases of malaria.

DETAILED INFORMATION

The malaria data was exceptionally detailed — some of the teams used Global Positioning Satellite data to show precisely where patients lived. They documented more than 15,000 malaria cases in 2006

The conclusions were clear.

“We show that a 4.2 percent change in deforestation from August 1997 through August 2001 is associated with a 48 percent increase of malaria incidence,” the researchers wrote.

Forests in Brazil are cleared by large-scale loggers and subsistence farmers alike.

“Human-altered landscapes provide a milieu of suitable larval habitats for Anopheles darling mosquitoes, including road ditches, dams, mining pits, culverts, vehicle ruts, and areas of poor clearing,” the researchers wrote.

Another possible factor is that many of the farmers have started fish farms in the region. Patz said it was not possible to see those in the satellite images, but they could be providing breeding areas for mosquitoes.

“Our findings are likely generalizable to many parts of Amazonia, and build on our past entomological studies in the Peruvian Amazon,” Patz added.

“This environmental epidemiology study further shows that rain forest conservation policy should be a key component to any malaria control effort in the region.”