In science, feeling confused is essential to progress. An unwillingness to feel lost, in fact, can stop creativity dead in its tracks. A mathematician once told me he thought this was the reason young mathematicians make the big discoveries. Math can be hard, he said, even for the biggest brains around. Mathematicians may spend hours just trying to figure out a line of equations. All the while, they feel dumb and inadequate. Then one day, these young mathematicians become established, become professors, acquire secretaries and offices. They don’t want to feel stupid anymore. And they stop doing great work.

Why editors must dare to be dumb

possibly noteworthy wrote:

wiretapping ATMs?

Decius wrote:

That's a bunch of bullshit, btw. ... If one of those guys knew how to do that it wouldn't just be a rumor. It would be a much, much bigger story than Mike Lynn.

I wasn't there, so I defer to you on the DEFCON situation last year.

However, independent of anything having to do with DEFCON, and regardless of the situation with wiretapping an ATM, it is worth pointing out that false-front ATM fraud is very real. [more, and more]

Vendors recognize this as a problem and are taking [weak] countermeasures.

Here's what Diebold does to protect you:

Opteva’s advanced function dispenser has been designed to have a variety of different surfaces and protrusions to make it difficult to add any kind of trapping device.

RE: Hacker Pranks at Defcon and Black Hat in Las Vegas Emphasize Computer Security

At last year's Black Hat, Cisco Systems Inc. tried to stop researcher Michael Lynn from speaking about a vulnerability that he said could let hackers virtually shut down the Internet.

Cisco managed to get pages documenting the flaw torn out of all 2,000 conference binders, but ultimately the biggest maker of Internet routing and switching equipment was unable to squelch Lynn's talk.

Isn't it nice to be mentioned alongside purple dye in swimming pools, the "wall of sheep", pouring cement into toilets, stealing payphones, and wiretapping ATMs?

Hacker Pranks at Defcon and Black Hat in Las Vegas Emphasize Computer Security

terratogen wrote:

Don't these guys have better things to do or critique? Maybe they want to kill the bastard themselves... I'm having trouble picturing Stephen King having a soft spot for Harry Potter.

In his memoirs, published in 2000, King included a book list. He explains:

These are the best books I've read over the last there or four years ... As you scan this list, remember that I'm not Oprah and this isn't my book club. These are the ones that worked for me, that's all. But you could do worse, and a good many of these might show you some new ways of doing your work. Even if they don't, they're apt to entertain you. They certainly entertained me.

The list contains approximately 90 books, nearly all of them fiction; it includes all three Harry Potter books that were "in the zone" for consideration at that time.

RE: Don't kill Harry Potter, authors urge Rowling - Yahoo! News

Skilled science popularizer Eric Grace helps readers understand what biotechnology is and what implications it holds for all of us.

Following on the heels of the success of the first edition, this thoroughly updated version offers an in-depth and accessible review of the basics of biotechnology. Accomplished science communicator Eric Grace focuses on the ethical implications involved, the wide range of public opinions both at home and abroad, the role of the media in communicating a complicated science topic, and the formidable problems associated with patenting life itself. With an emphasis on medicine, agriculture, and the environment, Grace explores the promises and realities of biotechnology. He deals frankly with the fact that biotechnology is first and foremost a commercial activity, often driven by big business and directed by the bottom line. And as biotechnology is used more frequently in medical diagnosis and treatment, we are witness to significant setbacks and reversals, dimming hopes that were prevalent when the first edition was released.

But we are also witness to the burgeoning use of the technology in forensic science where DNA analysis has become commonplace in solving crimes. Likewise, DNA analysis has been a boon to studies of human history and evolution, revealing ancient details originally thought lost to us. At the same time, new uses for genetically altered bacteria are being discovered that help us clean up the environment by breaking down or sequestering toxic chemicals. While the public remains concerned about biotechnology, there is increasing awareness of the potential benefits. This updated edition of Biotechnology Unzipped helps put the many issues in perspective and provides answers to the most important questions.

Biotechnology Unzipped: Promises and Realities, Revised Second Edition

Adaptive optics is a new and growing research area aimed at creating high-quality imagery by correcting aberrations in optical systems caused by turbulence in the earth s atmosphere. This paper concentrates on the basics of physical optics leading into the design of an adaptive optics test bed to study the correction of aberrations using optical beam control. Adaptive optics requires the use of sophisticated optical equipment such as deformable mirrors and wavefront sensors. The experimental portion of the work focuses on using a deformable mirror to control the aberrations in a system using laser light. By using a combination of lenses, deformable mirror, and wavefront sensor, the test bed will correct aberrations induced into a plane wave. In addition, the mechanics and function these components was be explored, setting the building blocks for future studies concerning optical beam control.

Could be interesting. I mentioned this technology to Decius recently.

Optical Beam Control Using Adaptive Optics

The Markle Foundation Task Force on National Security in the Information Age released its third report today with recommendations on how to reconcile national security needs with civil liberties requirements. The report offers a new "authorized use" standard for government handling of legally collected information that bases authorization to view information on how the information is going to be used, rather than on the nationality of the subject or the location of collection. The report also proposes a new risk management approach to sharing classified information that balances the risk of compromising classified information with the security risk that can come from failing to share information with those who need it to understand the threats to national security. Further, the report identifies examples of technology that can be used effectively to provide appropriate oversight and accountability.

Accelerating Development of a Trusted Information Sharing Environment

The authors reflect on a 1998 paper in First Monday.

Almost a decade later, the most glaring omission of our vision for a more trustworthy Web was ...

Click through ...

We captured what I believe today is the essential challenge: a plastic medium for presenting information is necessarily at odds with a static medium for memorializing trustworthy transactions. If anyone can whip up the look-and-feel of a banking site, nobody can.

And more:

A world in which the only alternative is to pay for an (expensive!) crawl of one’s own, with its attendant limitations on freshness and breadth suggest that there is still ample room for innovation, into event-driven (“push”) architectures, into reputation management by way of social network analysis, and other new technologies for safely harnessing the power of the Web, warts and all.

Reflections on: Trust management on the World Wide Web

In a jubilee year, when all the old Mozart myths come rising out of the ground where scholars have tried to bury them, the usefulness of “Don Giovanni” is that it puts a stake through the heart of the chocolate-box Mozart, the car-radio Mozart, the Mozart-makes-you-smarter Mozart. If the opera were played in bus stations or dentists’ waiting rooms, it would spread fear. It would probably cause perversion in infants. No matter how many times you hear the punitive D-minor chord with which the opera begins, or the glowering diminished seventh that heralds the arrival of the stone statue of the Commendatore (“Don Giovanni, you invited me to dinner, and I have come”), it generates a certain mental panic. Mozart’s harmonies of disaster are all the more terrifying because they break through the frame of what purports to be a saucy comedy about an aristocratic seducer -- a successor to “Figaro.” The fact that “Figaro” is actually quoted in the score -- “Non più andrai” is one of the airs that the Don enjoys at dinner, just before the Commendatore arrives -- suggests that Mozart is consciously subverting his reputation as a supplier of ambient musical pleasure.

THE STORM OF STYLE

Cluster, defined as a group or bunch in Webster's dictionary, has different meanings depending on the given discipline. In medicine, for example, a cluster can refer to a severe headache that can occur several times in a day, whereas, in astronomy, clusters are usually associated with stars and galaxies. Clusters also are associated with bombs, music, and computers. However, to physicists and chemists, the word cluster has come to mean a group of atoms or molecules formed by interactions ranging from very weak van der Waals contacts to strong ionic bonds. Although reference to the formation of aggregates and related nucleation phenomena can be found in literature dating from the 1930s and earlier, studies of clusters in mass spectrometer ion sources and later in molecular beams (1) began to emerge in the 1950s and developed rapidly as a subject of considerable interest in the 1970s and 1980s. The advent of the laser vaporization technique (2) enabled researchers to produce clusters of virtually any element in the periodic table and spawned wide-ranging interest in the studies of clusters of various compositions, beyond systems of volatile materials, which had been the focus in the beginning. For this community, in the past 30 years clusters have come to symbolize a new embryonic form of matter that is intermediate between atoms and their bulk counterpart. Clusters bridge phases as well as disciplines.

Clusters: A bridge between disciplines