This is the kind of story that makes it difficult to remain culturally relativistic. it also makes it hard to look at women who are in purdah walking around in a “free” country like the US and not, in part blame them for compliance.A woman was gang raped in Saudi Arabia. Fourteen times. Seven men are now in jail, convicted of rape and serving sentences up to five years. In Saudi Arabia, I think five years is a lot for violently raping a woman.The woman who was raped, however, was sentenced to be tortured for being in the car of a “strange man.”In this case, the torture would involve 90 lashes. She appealed. The court, because of her appeal, changed the sentence from 90 lashes to 200 lashes. The courts punished the girl because she, allegedly, tried to “aggravate and influence the judiciary through the media.” The victim’s lawyer was also punished.Obviously, the Saudis, their government, and their society, are totally fucked. That is my considered anthropological opinion of the matter.But don’t worry. If anything bad threatens Saudi Arabia, the United States is there to protect them with the full strength of our military.
Daily Archives: November 17, 2007
Get Your Own Genome Sequenced
Today, deCODE genetics announced the launch of their consumer genotyping service, deCODEme. deCODEme is the first personal genomics company to launch, and will provide sequencing information about 1 million SNPs for the introductory price of $985. The service has two components:[source]
From deCODEme (Man, I’m siCK of these miXEDcase companynames.):
“Through your subscription to deCODEme, you can learn what your DNA says about your ancestry, your body -traits such as hair and eye color- as well as whether you may have genetic variants that have been associated with higher or lower than average risk of a range of common diseases. This information will be continually updated as new discoveries are made.”
Cool. They’ll tell you what color eyes you have and everything.See the decode.com webcast. They are very professional looking, I must say. But I could only get through the first two minutes, so don’t take my word for it.
IPCC Summary of Fourth Report
A few tidbits — just to give a flavor — from the Summary for Policymakers, which is available here. (Good luck downloading this file! You may want to wait until everyone is asleep…) Continue reading IPCC Summary of Fourth Report
Bees Teach Techies a Trick or Two
You all know about the honey bee waggle dance. A bee finds some nectar, returns to the hive, does a dance that communicates information about where the nectar can be found to other bees, and off the workers go to get the nectar.Techies at Georgia Tech have applied this method to developing a better way to run servers. Continue reading Bees Teach Techies a Trick or Two
For the kids: Narrow Income Gap
According to research just out from the University of Nottingham, lowering the differential between high and low incomes can have a more positive effect on child wellbeing than simply growing the economy in countries that are already wealthy. Continue reading For the kids: Narrow Income Gap
What’s the 411 on Goog 411?
[hat tip: Joe]
IPCC Working Group 3: Mitigation of Climate Change
This report covers six topics:
- Greenhouse gas (GHG) emission trends
- Mitigation in the short and medium term, across different economic sectors (until 2030)
- Mitigation in the long-term (beyond 2030)
- Policies, measures and instruments to mitigate climate change
- Sustainable development and climate change mitigation
- Gaps in knowledge.
This link will eventually get you to the PDF file of the summary for policy makers.The full report is here.
IPCC Working Group 2: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability
A report accepted by Working Group II of the Intergovernmental on Climate Change but not approved in detailSummary of main findings Continue reading IPCC Working Group 2: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability
IPCC Working Group 1: The Physical Science Basis
The following is quoted from the Working Group I report Continue reading IPCC Working Group 1: The Physical Science Basis
IPCC Fourth Assessment Report is here
Actually, here.There are three parts from three working groups. “The Physical Science Basis,” Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability,” and “Mitigation of Climate Change.”I shall presently post excerpts summarizing the reports.
Dan Egerstad, the “Hack of 07” Hacker Arrested
Last August, Dan Egerstad, of Sweden, hacked his way into secret email accounts of government embassies, various NGOs and corporations. It was easy, partly because it was not a secure network. He then posted a very large number of email user names and passwords.
The way he did it was simple.
There is a piece of software that acts, more or less, as a “caller ID blocker” that can be put on a node on the internet, including on your own computer.
This software, called “TOR” was developed by the Navy on the premise that “loose lips sink ships.” They wanted Naval personnel to be able to use email and otherwise access the internat without spies using this “traffic” info to infer global naval operations. But then one day it dawned on the Navy that TOR left a signature. Thus, anyone could tell that a TOR-marked communication was always a Navy-connected communication.
Continue reading Dan Egerstad, the “Hack of 07” Hacker Arrested
Dan Egerstad, the”Hack of 07″Hacker Arrested
Last August, Dan Egerstad, of Sweden, hacked his way into secret email accounts of government embassies, various NGOs and corporations. It was easy, partly because it was not a secure network. He then posted a very large number of email user names and passwords.The way he did it was simple.There is a piece of software that acts, more or less, as a “caller ID blocker” that can be put on a node on the internet, including on your own computer.This software, called “TOR” was developed by the Navy on the premise that “loose lips sink ships.” They wanted Naval personnel to be able to use email and otherwise access the internat without spies using this “traffic” info to infer global naval operations. But then one day it dawned on the Navy that TOR left a signature. Thus, anyone could tell that a TOR-marked communication was always a Navy-connected communication. Continue reading Dan Egerstad, the”Hack of 07″Hacker Arrested
Santa’s War on Science
Corpus Collosum shows us this graph of search frequency on Google for the word “Science.”
And asks “What could it possibly mean?”What it means is this: The following is a graph of search frequency on Google for the word “Santa.”
The graphs are from Google Trends. Just in case it is not utterly obvious, the steep annual dip in science is exactly correlated with the Santa Spike.What is not entirely evident is why are there two Santa Spikes per year? The larger one in December makes sense, but this later one in Feb/March does not. Unless you know that this is the time each year of the Santa Barbara Athletic Round table. … Ah, THAT Santa…
Are you as smart as a Second Year University Student?
Larry Moran asks this question in this post, and this post.