There is an Indian story -- at least I heard it as an Indian story -- about an Englishman who, having been told that the world rested on a platform which rested on the back of an elephant which rested in turn on the back of a turtle, asked (perhaps he was an ethnographer; it is the way they behave), what did the turtle rest on? Another turtle. And that turtle? "Ah, Sahib, after that it is turtles all the way down."

Thick Description

Probably the most basic reason behind the absence of a general treatment of resource allocation in modern computer systems is an adequate model for program behavior. In this paper a new model, the "working set model," is developed. The working set of pages associated with a process, defined to be the collection of its most recently used pages, provides knowledge vital to the dynamic management of paged memories. "Process" and "working set" are shown to be manifestations of the same ongoing computational activity; then "processor demand" and "memory demand" are defined; and resource allocation is formulated as the problem of balancing demands against available equipment.

The Working Set Model for Program Behavior

I felt warm and safe following her thin blue line.

It was unnerving at first, but then a relief.

Life is a math problem, and I had a calculator.

Until that moment, I had thought that the magic of the information age was that it allowed us to know more, but then I realized the magic of the information age is that it allows us to know less. It provides us with external cognitive servants — silicon memory systems, collaborative online filters, consumer preference algorithms and networked knowledge. We can burden these servants and liberate ourselves.

Online content? I have externalized it. Now I just log on to MemeStreams and it tells me what I like.

That's David Brooks.

That last part? I paraphrased, but he does end the column with a comment about memes.

The Outsourced Brain

"Systems biology" represents a significant shift both in the way biologists think about their field and in how they go about investigating it.

A central tenet of most scientific endeavour is the notion of reductionism—the idea that things can best be understood by reducing them to their smallest components. This turns out to be immensely useful in physics and chemistry, because the smallest components coming from a particle accelerator or a test tube behave individually in predictable ways.

In biology, though, the idea has its limits.

A complete understanding of biological processes means putting the bits back together again -- and that is what systems biologists are trying to do, by using the results of a zillion analytical experiments to build software models that behave like parts of living organisms.

Ultimately, the aim is to build an entire virtual human for researchers to play with.

Biology: All systems go

File under Joy [2, 3, 4]:

As concerns about threats and terrorist activities have become global, so have the rapid transfer of information and communication. The confluence of the globalization of business and the revolution in information storage and transmittal has changed the landscape upon which to build national and international security. This requires a re-examination of the security measures developed during the days of the Cold War to assess whether those tools are still appropriate and to determine how they are affecting the current science and technology enterprises.

...

Moreover, there is concern that terrorists aspiring to apply advanced technology to the development of weapons might develop the technical capability to do so through a university education.

Hence, it is argued that there is a need for special programs to screen foreign students from a range of countries who might be pursuing studies in "sensitive" fields.

Science and Security in a Post 9/11 World

"There are two Saudi Arabias. The question is which Saudi Arabia will take over."

For some reason I am drawn to recall this:

Are Americans suffering from an undue sense of entitlement?

Somebody said to me the other day that the entitlement we need to get rid of is our sense of entitlement.

Saudi King Tries to Grow Modern Ideas in Desert

LAS VEGAS -- This city, famous for being America's playground, has also become its security lab. Like nowhere else in the United States, Las Vegas has embraced the twin trends of data mining and high-tech surveillance, with arguably more cameras per square foot than any airport or sports arena in the country. Even the city's cabs and monorail have cameras. As the US government ramps up its efforts to forestall terrorist attacks, some privacy advocates view the city as a harbinger of things to come.

From Casinos to Counterterrorism

The US military's new counterinsurgency manual is an overdue step forward in doctrine. But a look back at the history of counterinsurgency offers a sobering reminder of how low the odds of success are -- as Iraq is showing all too well.

COIN of the Realm

It is a libertarian dream. Hexagonal neighborhoods of square apartments bob sedately by tiny coiffed parks and tastefully featureless marinas, an Orange County of the soul. It is the ultimate gated community, designed not by the very rich and certainly not by the very powerful, but by the middlingly so. As a utopia, the Atlantis Project is pitiful. Beyond the single one-trick fact of its watery location, it is tragically non-ambitious, crippled with class anxiety, nostalgic not for mythic glory but for the anonymous sanctimony of an invented 1950s. This is no ruling class vision: it is the plaintive daydream of a petty bourgeoisie, whose sulky solution to perceived social problems is to run away--set sail into a tax-free sunset.

Floating Utopias

Philip H. Gordon, writing in Foreign Affairs:

It can, but only if US officials start to think clearly about what success in the war on terror would actually look like. Victory will come only when Washington succeeds in discrediting the terrorists' ideology and undermining their support. These achievements, in turn, will require accepting that the terrorist threat can never be eradicated completely and that acting as though it can will only make it worse.

Can the War on Terror Be Won?