Category Archives: History

History, Poetry, Security

Chinese regulate dancing to avert “young love”

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Here is an amusing story that reminds me of the American movie Footloose. Crazy kids doing crazy expressive and touchy things can not be trusted to avert the disaster commonly known as falling-in-love. Xinhua’s English news feed provides details:

Parents with traditional values are alarmed at the prospect of boys and girls dancing hand in hand, believing the risk of their children falling in love and losing track of exam results would increase.

“Four students will be grouped together to perform the waltz and they will change partners regularly as soon as one song finishes. This way, the risk of young love will be lowered,” said Yang Guiren, an official in charge of art and physical education with the MOE [Ministry of Education].

Never mind Footloose, this reminds me of square dancing classes I was required to attend in grade school for “physical education”. All of these schemes sound positively ridiculous as everyone knows kids fall in love regardless of what they are doing. Glances through bulletproof glass, or even just secret messages ferreted through secured chambers by note or IM are the very nature of the resilience of young love. Instead, I would argue, MORE exposure to each other in regular doses is the surest cure for youthful adoration.

Is there a LARRY and CURLY to go along with the Chinese MOE? Will they ban poetry next to prohibit the messaging of young love?

Consider, for example, Chinese poems based on the story of the Magpie Bridge. Here is one by Qin Guan, translated by Professor Kylie Hsu:

Among the beautiful clouds,
Over the heavenly river,
Crosses the weaving maiden.
A night of rendezvous,
Across the autumn sky,
Surpasses joy on earth.
Moments of tender love and dream,
So sad to leave the magpie bridge.
Eternal love between us two,
Shall withstand the time apart.

The part of the Magpie Bridge story that seems suspect to me is the weaver “enjoyed her marriage so much”. Perhaps if the Heavenly Mother had left the bridge alone, the weaver would soon have settled back to earth to find her weaving more rewarding and increased productivity. Am I being too cynical?

History, Security

Nixon called Fred Thompson “dumb as hell”

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The Associated Press has published some interesting history on one of the Republicans who may be a 2008 presidential hopeful:

President Nixon and his top aides viewed the fellow Republican as a willing, if not too bright, ally, according to White House tapes.

[…]

Nixon was disappointed with the selection of Thompson, whom he called “dumb as hell.” The president did not think Thompson was skilled enough to interrogate unfriendly witnesses and would be outsmarted by the committee’s Democratic counsel.

[…]

“Oh shit, that kid,” Nixon said when told by his chief of staff, H.R. Haldeman, of Thompson’s appointment on Feb. 22, 1973.

“Well, we’re stuck with him,” Haldeman said.

In a meeting later that day in the Old Executive Office Building, Baker assured Nixon that Thompson was up to the task. “He’s tough. He’s six feet five inches, a big mean fella,” the senator told Nixon.

Physical presence noted.

Nixon expressed concern that Thompson was not “very smart.”

“Not extremely so,” Buzhardt agreed.

“But he’s friendly,” Nixon said.

“But he’s friendly,” Buzhardt agreed. “We are hoping, though, to work with Thompson and prepare him, if Dean does appear next week, to do a very thorough cross-examination.”

Five days later, Buzhardt reported to Nixon that he had primed Thompson for the Dean cross-examination.

“I found Thompson most cooperative, feeling more Republican every day,” Buzhardt said. “Uh, perfectly prepared to assist in really doing a cross-examination.”

Later in the same conversation, Buzhardt said Thompson was “willing to go, you know, pretty much the distance now. And he said he realized his responsibility was going to have be as a Republican increasingly.”

What is it with all these Nixon-era discredited insiders running for office in America? Is there some kind of weird organization of conservative corporate moguls from that era who are now trying to prove a point by pretending the world has not changed? It’s like a flash-back to Soviet-era politics where the Politicheskoye Buro (political bureau or politburo) was in control of who gets to be a candidate and what they can think, regardless of what was going on in the world around them. Clearly Thompson did bidding for Nixon, although Nixon clearly didn’t care for the guy. Would not surprise me if he was told to pick Cheney to be his Vice President too, or maybe Rumsfeld, or…someone else who worked for Nixon.

I guess one thing has actually changed, the Nixon-era gang appear to playing games with public records (the modern equivalent of tapes) to limit their liability from future discovery.

Energy, History, Poetry, Sailing, Security

Dover Beach

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by Matthew Arnold (1822-1888)

The sea is calm to-night.
The tide is full, the moon lies fair
Upon the straits; on the French coast the light
Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand;
Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay.
Come to the window, sweet is the night-air!
Only, from the long line of spray
Where the sea meets the moon-blanched land,
Listen! you hear the grating roar
Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling,
At their return, up the high strand,
Begin, and cease, and then again begin,
With tremulous cadence slow, and bring
The eternal note of sadness in.

Sophocles long ago
Heard it on the A gaean, and it brought
Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow
Of human misery; we
Find also in the sound a thought,
Hearing it by this distant northern sea.

The Sea of Faith
Was once, too, at the full, and round earth’s shore
Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled.
But now I only hear
Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,
Retreating, to the breath
Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear
And naked shingles of the world.

Ah, love, let us be true
To one another! for the world, which seems
To lie before us like a land of dreams,
So various, so beautiful, so new,
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.

Why do the pessimists always seem to get it so right?

History, Security

Malware attacks on virtual world greater than on real world

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MetaSecurity’s latest post cites McAfee:

McAfee now sees more malware programmed to steal passwords for World of Warcraft now than trojans aiming for banking information, said Craig Schumager of the McAfee research labs.

This is highly misleading, I say. Banking is not just a brick-and-mortar building with furniture from the 1980s, bad art, and air-conditioning in overdrive. The exchange of funds in the virtual world, in online forums, etc. is now reaching proportions that it rivals or even replaces more traditional forms of access. Call it a back-door to the same assets, if you will. MetaSecurity hints at this perspective in the same post:

In talks with Erik Larkin at PCWorld.com, he outlined why fake game gold is more attractive than real money. Primarily, there’s less risk of getting caught and easier punishments for hacking World of Warcraft than Bank of America, but the gold is still easily commutable to real-world dollars and cents.

It goes deeper than that, as they point out in terms of a “secondary” market:

As Brock Pierce of Affinity Media (formerly IGE), put it “Fraud in the secondary market is rampant. On eBay, secondary sales were resulting in 10 percent fraud at one point I think. Someone in Russia could login through a proxy to a server in the US and make a purchase with a stolen card, turn around and resell it on the secondary market, and sell it for 75 percent in a matter of minutes. Organized crime is involved, and it’s anonymous.“

Or as Raph Koster put it: “I described this years ago at a social policy conference. And they [the government representatives] said, ‘Well it’s not drug money, but it is terrorist money.’ The government will get interested.�

Good for Koster.

I see the core of the story as malware aimed at finance is shifting to the newer less regulated methods of banking. This is not really about a move from banking to non-banking, but a move from attacking bank A to bank B, and that is a big difference in security perspective if you are a bank.

I remember arguing in political science classes about what the lifetime would be for the nation-state and its boundaries (as introduced by the medieval Italians). Will virtual worlds be dragged back into the constructs that we use today (real-world banks operating virtual-world branches) in order for us to make sense of how to regulate them, or is a whole new paradigm needed (real-world banks displaced by virtual-world challengers)?