"A few simple keystrokes may soon turn blather into books. Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University have discovered a way to enlist people across the globe to help digitize books every time they solve the simple distorted word puzzles commonly used to register at Web sites or buy things online.
The word puzzles are known as CAPTCHAs, short for "completely automated public Turing tests to tell computers and humans apart." Computers can't decipher the twisted letters and numbers, ensuring that real people and not automated programs are using the Web sites.
Researchers estimate that about 60 million of those nonsensical jumbles are solved everyday around the world, taking an average of about 10 seconds each to decipher and type in.
Instead of wasting time typing in random letters and numbers, Carnegie Mellon researchers have come up with a way for people to type in snippets of books to put their time to good use, confirm they're not machines and help speed up the process of getting searchable texts online.
Humanity is wasting 150,000 hours every day on these," said Luis von Ahn, an assistant professor of computer science at Carnegie Mellon. He helped develop the CAPTCHAs about seven years ago. "Is there any way in which we can use this human time for something good for humanity, do 10 seconds of useful work for humanity?"
Many large projects are under way now to digitize books and put them online, and that's mostly being done by scanning pages of books so that people can "page through" the books online. In some cases, optical character recognition, or OCR, is being used to digitize books to make the texts searchable.
But von Ahn said OCR doesn't always work on text that is older, faded or distorted. In those cases, often the only way to digitize the works is to manually type them into a computer.
Von Ahn is working with the Internet Archive, which runs several book-scanning projects, to use CAPTCHAs for this instead. Internet Archive scans 12,000 books a month and sends von Ahn hundreds of thousands of files that are images that the computer doesn't recognize. Those files are downloaded onto von Ahn's server and split up into single words that can be used as CAPTCHAs at sites all over the Internet.
If enough users decipher the CAPTCHAs in the same way, the computer will recognize that as the correct answer.
"If we can correct these books so that they are really in good shape, then you can go and use these books in other type devices more easily" such as handheld computers or in programs for reading to the blind, said Brewster Kahle, co-founder of the Internet Archive.
Von Ahn approached the Internet Archive to get help in developing the new system, but it has not been put into use yet. Theoretically, von Ahn said the new book-based CAPTCHAs could be used in place of any CAPTCHA currently on the Web.
The project, named reCAPTCHA, is one of many projects that enlist computer users from the community to help out. For example, Cloudmark Inc. uses its base of users to judge what is spam and what isn't. News aggregation sites like Digg Inc.'s digg.com and Time Warner Inc. (TWX)'s Netscape.com ask visitors to recommend and vote on items to go on top.
For von Ahn's project, Intel Corp. (INTC) donated equipment and the work was sponsored by the MacArthur Foundation, which awarded von Ahn a "genius grant" last year.
Kahle, whose Internet Archive has about 200,000 books currently online, is working with libraries in three countries to digitize their books. Kahle said von Ahn's project is "harnessing human power in exactly the right way."
"It's definitely a barn-raising to try to build the great library," Kahle said."
On the net:
http://www.recaptcha.net
http://www.gutenberg.org
Thursday, May 24, 2007
Saturday, May 19, 2007
What if Abe Lincoln had survived?
"Abraham Lincoln might have survived being shot if today’s medical technology had existed in 1865.
Given that scenario, the question is whether Lincoln would have recovered well enough to return to office, a doctor and a historian said Friday at an annual University of Maryland School of Medicine conference on the deaths of historic figures.
While the conference has traditionally re-examined the deaths of historic figures to determine if the diagnosis of the time was correct, this year’s event asks if Lincoln could have been saved and what impact that would have had.
Dr. Thomas Scalea, the physician in chief at the University of Maryland’s Shock Trauma Center, said brain injuries are unpredictable but Lincoln would have stood a good chance of surviving.
“I don’t believe that the president had a uniformly fatal injury,” said Scalea, who explained how
Lincoln would have been treated at his center, the world’s first dedicated trauma center.
The trauma center can conduct CT scans, X-rays and a host of other tests within minutes of arrival. Physical therapy, nutrition and other rehabilitative treatment also can make for dramatic improvements, though recovery varies from patient to patient, Scalea said.
“He probably would have been left with substantial disability, but you never really know,” the surgeon told the conference.
Lincoln died within 10 hours of being shot in the head at Ford’s Theatre on April 14, 1865. If modern methods could have saved the 16th president, he may have also retained his cognitive abilities because the fatal shot did not damage the frontal lobes of Lincoln’s brain, which are responsible for language, emotion and problem solving, Scalea said.
However, Lincoln would have faced months of recovery before he could have returned to office, and whether he would have been able to communicate is unclear, the surgeon said.
U.S. presidential historian Steven Lee Carson said Lincoln’s secretary of war, Edwin Stanton, who made a number of important decisions the day after the assassination, would likely have played a greater role if Lincoln had survived.
Vice President Andrew Johnson would not automatically have taken charge had Lincoln lived because the 25th Amendment, which deals with the transfer of power when a president is incapacitated, was not in place until after the Kennedy assassination. The decision as to who took charge was handled on a case-by-case basis until then, Carson said.
For example, Woodrow Wilson’s wife essentially took over when her husband fell ill, Carson said.
Johnson, who took office after Lincoln’s death, was the only Southern senator not to leave office upon secession. Lincoln had put him on the presidential ticket as a symbol of unity, but Johnson was a southern Democrat who was not sympathetic to Lincoln’s Republican party or to helping the newly freed slaves, said Carson, who spoke at the conference Friday.
If Lincoln had survived and “could reason and somehow get his thoughts across, the United States certainly would have been a better and more just nation, especially on matters of race, and in a far quicker fashion,” Carson said."
Given that scenario, the question is whether Lincoln would have recovered well enough to return to office, a doctor and a historian said Friday at an annual University of Maryland School of Medicine conference on the deaths of historic figures.
While the conference has traditionally re-examined the deaths of historic figures to determine if the diagnosis of the time was correct, this year’s event asks if Lincoln could have been saved and what impact that would have had.
Dr. Thomas Scalea, the physician in chief at the University of Maryland’s Shock Trauma Center, said brain injuries are unpredictable but Lincoln would have stood a good chance of surviving.
“I don’t believe that the president had a uniformly fatal injury,” said Scalea, who explained how
Lincoln would have been treated at his center, the world’s first dedicated trauma center.
The trauma center can conduct CT scans, X-rays and a host of other tests within minutes of arrival. Physical therapy, nutrition and other rehabilitative treatment also can make for dramatic improvements, though recovery varies from patient to patient, Scalea said.
“He probably would have been left with substantial disability, but you never really know,” the surgeon told the conference.
Lincoln died within 10 hours of being shot in the head at Ford’s Theatre on April 14, 1865. If modern methods could have saved the 16th president, he may have also retained his cognitive abilities because the fatal shot did not damage the frontal lobes of Lincoln’s brain, which are responsible for language, emotion and problem solving, Scalea said.
However, Lincoln would have faced months of recovery before he could have returned to office, and whether he would have been able to communicate is unclear, the surgeon said.
U.S. presidential historian Steven Lee Carson said Lincoln’s secretary of war, Edwin Stanton, who made a number of important decisions the day after the assassination, would likely have played a greater role if Lincoln had survived.
Vice President Andrew Johnson would not automatically have taken charge had Lincoln lived because the 25th Amendment, which deals with the transfer of power when a president is incapacitated, was not in place until after the Kennedy assassination. The decision as to who took charge was handled on a case-by-case basis until then, Carson said.
For example, Woodrow Wilson’s wife essentially took over when her husband fell ill, Carson said.
Johnson, who took office after Lincoln’s death, was the only Southern senator not to leave office upon secession. Lincoln had put him on the presidential ticket as a symbol of unity, but Johnson was a southern Democrat who was not sympathetic to Lincoln’s Republican party or to helping the newly freed slaves, said Carson, who spoke at the conference Friday.
If Lincoln had survived and “could reason and somehow get his thoughts across, the United States certainly would have been a better and more just nation, especially on matters of race, and in a far quicker fashion,” Carson said."
Sunday, May 13, 2007
Meet The Women Of Mercury 13
"They were aviation pioneers who were virtually unknown for nearly half a century.
But as CBS News correspondent Michelle Miller reports, a sea of graduating seniors recognized them for having had the right stuff at the wrong time.
The University of Wisconsin at Oshkosh awarded honorary doctorates to eight of the remaining Mercury 13 – thirteen of America's finest female pilots who trained secretly to become astronauts at the dawn of the space race.
"We were ready to lay our lives on the line to be an astronaut," 75-year-old Jerrie Cobb said.
But when NASA said "manned space flight," it meant just that. Sexism and prejudice scrubbed their mission and their dreams.
"I finally got to talk with Vice President Johnson and he said, 'Jerrie if we let you or other women into the space program, we have to let blacks in, we'd have to let Mexican-Americans in, we have to let every minority in and we just can't do it'."
Jerrie Cobb was the first of what NASA called the "First Lady Astronaut Trainees." She had set records as a pilot and logged twice as many flight hours as John Glenn.
All of the Mercury 13 were accomplished. All aced the same rigorous training as the Mercury 7 men, and sometimes outperformed them.
"The women took part in much more strenuous tests," said Martha Ackmann, who wrote the book that introduced these trailblazers to the world. She also gave Saturday's key note address.
While the Mercury 13 women were grounded, the Russians launched the first woman into space in 1963.
It would take the U.S. two more decades to send up astronaut Sally Ride, and another 12 years before Eileen Collins would pilot a space mission.
"I'm just sorry that it took our government so long," Cobb said. "We wanted to go. We were qualified and we were ready."
The glass ceiling remains in aviation. Only a quarter of the nation's 154 astronauts are women. The numbers are even smaller for female pilots. They account for just 2.5 percent of pilots flying military jets and 3.5 percent of pilots of commercial aircraft.
The men who made up the Mercury 7 got fame and glory, and many believe it's time the Mercury 13 got their due.
"I think something like a congressional gold medal would be an honor," Ackmann said. "I think their names should be in the Smithsonian."
For Jerrie Cobb, finding the right reward would be simple.
'I still expect to go into space," Cobb said. "It's what I was born to do, it's my destiny.'"
See the CBS video here.
But as CBS News correspondent Michelle Miller reports, a sea of graduating seniors recognized them for having had the right stuff at the wrong time.
The University of Wisconsin at Oshkosh awarded honorary doctorates to eight of the remaining Mercury 13 – thirteen of America's finest female pilots who trained secretly to become astronauts at the dawn of the space race.
"We were ready to lay our lives on the line to be an astronaut," 75-year-old Jerrie Cobb said.
But when NASA said "manned space flight," it meant just that. Sexism and prejudice scrubbed their mission and their dreams.
"I finally got to talk with Vice President Johnson and he said, 'Jerrie if we let you or other women into the space program, we have to let blacks in, we'd have to let Mexican-Americans in, we have to let every minority in and we just can't do it'."
Jerrie Cobb was the first of what NASA called the "First Lady Astronaut Trainees." She had set records as a pilot and logged twice as many flight hours as John Glenn.
All of the Mercury 13 were accomplished. All aced the same rigorous training as the Mercury 7 men, and sometimes outperformed them.
"The women took part in much more strenuous tests," said Martha Ackmann, who wrote the book that introduced these trailblazers to the world. She also gave Saturday's key note address.
While the Mercury 13 women were grounded, the Russians launched the first woman into space in 1963.
It would take the U.S. two more decades to send up astronaut Sally Ride, and another 12 years before Eileen Collins would pilot a space mission.
"I'm just sorry that it took our government so long," Cobb said. "We wanted to go. We were qualified and we were ready."
The glass ceiling remains in aviation. Only a quarter of the nation's 154 astronauts are women. The numbers are even smaller for female pilots. They account for just 2.5 percent of pilots flying military jets and 3.5 percent of pilots of commercial aircraft.
The men who made up the Mercury 7 got fame and glory, and many believe it's time the Mercury 13 got their due.
"I think something like a congressional gold medal would be an honor," Ackmann said. "I think their names should be in the Smithsonian."
For Jerrie Cobb, finding the right reward would be simple.
'I still expect to go into space," Cobb said. "It's what I was born to do, it's my destiny.'"
See the CBS video here.
Saturday, May 05, 2007
Activists Want Chimp Declared a 'Person'
"VIENNA, Austria (AP) - In some ways, Hiasl is like any other Viennese: He indulges a weakness for pastry, likes to paint and enjoys chilling out watching TV. But he doesn't care for coffee, and he isn't actually a person - at least not yet.
In a case that could set a global legal precedent for granting basic rights to apes, animal rights advocates are seeking to get the 26-year-old male chimpanzee legally declared a "person."
Hiasl's supporters argue he needs that status to become a legal entity that can receive donations and get a guardian to look out for his interests.
"Our main argument is that Hiasl is a person and has basic legal rights," said Eberhart Theuer, a lawyer leading the challenge on behalf of the Association Against Animal Factories, a Vienna animal rights group.
"We mean the right to life, the right to not be tortured, the right to freedom under certain conditions," Theuer said.
"We're not talking about the right to vote here."
The campaign began after the animal sanctuary where Hiasl (pronounced HEE-zul) and another chimp, Rosi, have lived for 25 years went bankrupt.
Activists want to ensure the apes don't wind up homeless if the shelter closes. Both have already suffered: They were captured as babies in Sierra Leone in 1982 and smuggled in a crate to Austria for use in pharmaceutical experiments. Customs officers intercepted the shipment and turned the chimps over to the shelter.
Their food and veterinary bills run about $6,800 a month. Donors have offered to help, but there's a catch: Under Austrian law, only a person can receive personal donations.
Organizers could set up a foundation to collect cash for Hiasl, whose life expectancy in captivity is about 60 years. But without basic rights, they contend, he could be sold to someone outside Austria, where the chimp is protected by strict animal cruelty laws.
"If we can get Hiasl declared a person, he would have the right to own property. Then, if people wanted to donate something to him, he'd have the right to receive it," said Theuer, who has vowed to take the case to the European Court of Human Rights if necessary.
Austria isn't the only country where primate rights are being debated. Spain's parliament is considering a bill that would endorse the Great Ape Project, a Seattle-based international initiative to extend "fundamental moral and legal protections" to apes.
If Hiasl gets a guardian, "it will be the first time the species barrier will have been crossed for legal 'personhood,'" said Jan Creamer, chief executive of Animal Defenders International, which is working to end the use of primates in research.
Paula Stibbe, a Briton who teaches English in Vienna, petitioned a district court to be Hiasl's legal trustee. On April 24, Judge Barbara Bart rejected her request, ruling Hiasl didn't meet two key tests: He is neither mentally impaired nor in an emergency.
Although Bart expressed concern that awarding Hiasl a guardian could create the impression that animals enjoy the same legal status as humans, she didn't rule that he could never be considered a person.
Martin Balluch, who heads the Association Against Animal Factories, has asked a federal court for a ruling on the guardianship issue.
"Chimps share 99.4 percent of their DNA with humans," he said. "OK, they're not homo sapiens. But they're obviously also not things - the only other option the law provides."
Not all Austrian animal rights activists back the legal challenge. Michael Antolini, president of the local Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, said he thinks it's absurd.
"I'm not about to make myself look like a fool" by getting involved, said Antolini, who worries that chimpanzees could gain broader rights, such as copyright protections on their photographs.
But Stibbe, who brings Hiasl sweets and yogurt and watches him draw and clown around by dressing up in knee-high rubber boots, insists he deserves more legal rights "than bricks or apples or potatoes."
"He can be very playful but also thoughtful," she said. "Being with him is like playing with someone who can't talk."
A date for the appeal hasn't been set, but Hiasl's legal team has lined up expert witnesses, including Jane Goodall, the world's foremost observer of chimpanzee behavior.
"When you see Hiasl, he really comes across as a person," Theuer said.
'He has a real personality. It strikes you immediately: This is an individual. You just have to look him in the eye to see that.'"
Visit the Great Ape Project website here.
In a case that could set a global legal precedent for granting basic rights to apes, animal rights advocates are seeking to get the 26-year-old male chimpanzee legally declared a "person."
Hiasl's supporters argue he needs that status to become a legal entity that can receive donations and get a guardian to look out for his interests.
"Our main argument is that Hiasl is a person and has basic legal rights," said Eberhart Theuer, a lawyer leading the challenge on behalf of the Association Against Animal Factories, a Vienna animal rights group.
"We mean the right to life, the right to not be tortured, the right to freedom under certain conditions," Theuer said.
"We're not talking about the right to vote here."
The campaign began after the animal sanctuary where Hiasl (pronounced HEE-zul) and another chimp, Rosi, have lived for 25 years went bankrupt.
Activists want to ensure the apes don't wind up homeless if the shelter closes. Both have already suffered: They were captured as babies in Sierra Leone in 1982 and smuggled in a crate to Austria for use in pharmaceutical experiments. Customs officers intercepted the shipment and turned the chimps over to the shelter.
Their food and veterinary bills run about $6,800 a month. Donors have offered to help, but there's a catch: Under Austrian law, only a person can receive personal donations.
Organizers could set up a foundation to collect cash for Hiasl, whose life expectancy in captivity is about 60 years. But without basic rights, they contend, he could be sold to someone outside Austria, where the chimp is protected by strict animal cruelty laws.
"If we can get Hiasl declared a person, he would have the right to own property. Then, if people wanted to donate something to him, he'd have the right to receive it," said Theuer, who has vowed to take the case to the European Court of Human Rights if necessary.
Austria isn't the only country where primate rights are being debated. Spain's parliament is considering a bill that would endorse the Great Ape Project, a Seattle-based international initiative to extend "fundamental moral and legal protections" to apes.
If Hiasl gets a guardian, "it will be the first time the species barrier will have been crossed for legal 'personhood,'" said Jan Creamer, chief executive of Animal Defenders International, which is working to end the use of primates in research.
Paula Stibbe, a Briton who teaches English in Vienna, petitioned a district court to be Hiasl's legal trustee. On April 24, Judge Barbara Bart rejected her request, ruling Hiasl didn't meet two key tests: He is neither mentally impaired nor in an emergency.
Although Bart expressed concern that awarding Hiasl a guardian could create the impression that animals enjoy the same legal status as humans, she didn't rule that he could never be considered a person.
Martin Balluch, who heads the Association Against Animal Factories, has asked a federal court for a ruling on the guardianship issue.
"Chimps share 99.4 percent of their DNA with humans," he said. "OK, they're not homo sapiens. But they're obviously also not things - the only other option the law provides."
Not all Austrian animal rights activists back the legal challenge. Michael Antolini, president of the local Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, said he thinks it's absurd.
"I'm not about to make myself look like a fool" by getting involved, said Antolini, who worries that chimpanzees could gain broader rights, such as copyright protections on their photographs.
But Stibbe, who brings Hiasl sweets and yogurt and watches him draw and clown around by dressing up in knee-high rubber boots, insists he deserves more legal rights "than bricks or apples or potatoes."
"He can be very playful but also thoughtful," she said. "Being with him is like playing with someone who can't talk."
A date for the appeal hasn't been set, but Hiasl's legal team has lined up expert witnesses, including Jane Goodall, the world's foremost observer of chimpanzee behavior.
"When you see Hiasl, he really comes across as a person," Theuer said.
'He has a real personality. It strikes you immediately: This is an individual. You just have to look him in the eye to see that.'"
Visit the Great Ape Project website here.
Thursday, May 03, 2007
Myths Abound About U.S. Bee Disappearance
"The answer to what happened to America's vanishing honeybees is simple, a caller told entomologist May Berenbaum: Bee rapture. They were called away to heaven.
No, wait, it is Earth's magnetic field, another caller told the University of Illinois professor.
And when Berenbaum went on the Internet, she found a parody news site that quoted her as blaming rapper Kevin Federline, Britney Spears' ex-husband, and his concerts for the disappearance of the bees. Berenbaum loved it.
The sudden disappearance of one-quarter of America's honeybees has brought out some strange ideas and downright myths.
“I just can't get any work done,” Berenbaum said. “I'm overwhelmed by e-mails. I can't keep up.”
A couple of bee myths are big on the Internet.
A small German scientific study looking at a specific type of cordless phones and the homing systems of bees exploded over the Internet and late night television shows. It morphed into erroneous reports blaming cell phones for the honeybee die-off, which scientists are calling Colony Collapse Disorder.
The scientist who wrote the paper, Stefan Kimmel, e-mailed The Associated Press to say that there is “no link between our tiny little study and the CCD-phenomenon ... anything else said or written is a lie.” And U.S. Department of Agriculture top bee researcher Jeff Pettis laughs at the idea, because whenever he goes out to investigate dead bees, he cannot get a signal on his cell phone because the hives are in such remote areas.
Also on the Internet is a quote attributed to Albert Einstein on how humans would die off in four years if not for honeybees. It is wrong on two counts.
First, Einstein probably never said it, according to Alice Calaprice, author of “The Quotable Einstein” and five other books on the physicist.
“I've never come across it in anything Einstein has written,” Calaprice said. “It could be that someone had made it up and put Einstein's name on it.”
Second, it is incorrect scientifically, Pettis said. There would be food left for humans because some food is wind-pollinated.
For his part, Pettis jokes that the bees are out creating crop circles 'and it's working them to death.'"
No, wait, it is Earth's magnetic field, another caller told the University of Illinois professor.
And when Berenbaum went on the Internet, she found a parody news site that quoted her as blaming rapper Kevin Federline, Britney Spears' ex-husband, and his concerts for the disappearance of the bees. Berenbaum loved it.
The sudden disappearance of one-quarter of America's honeybees has brought out some strange ideas and downright myths.
“I just can't get any work done,” Berenbaum said. “I'm overwhelmed by e-mails. I can't keep up.”
A couple of bee myths are big on the Internet.
A small German scientific study looking at a specific type of cordless phones and the homing systems of bees exploded over the Internet and late night television shows. It morphed into erroneous reports blaming cell phones for the honeybee die-off, which scientists are calling Colony Collapse Disorder.
The scientist who wrote the paper, Stefan Kimmel, e-mailed The Associated Press to say that there is “no link between our tiny little study and the CCD-phenomenon ... anything else said or written is a lie.” And U.S. Department of Agriculture top bee researcher Jeff Pettis laughs at the idea, because whenever he goes out to investigate dead bees, he cannot get a signal on his cell phone because the hives are in such remote areas.
Also on the Internet is a quote attributed to Albert Einstein on how humans would die off in four years if not for honeybees. It is wrong on two counts.
First, Einstein probably never said it, according to Alice Calaprice, author of “The Quotable Einstein” and five other books on the physicist.
“I've never come across it in anything Einstein has written,” Calaprice said. “It could be that someone had made it up and put Einstein's name on it.”
Second, it is incorrect scientifically, Pettis said. There would be food left for humans because some food is wind-pollinated.
For his part, Pettis jokes that the bees are out creating crop circles 'and it's working them to death.'"
Monday, April 30, 2007
Quantum cryptography is hacked
"A team of researchers has, for the first time, hacked into a network protected by quantum encryption.
Quantum cryptography uses the laws of quantum mechanics to encode data securely. Most researchers consider such quantum networks to be nearly 100% uncrackable. But a group from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge was able to 'listen in' using a sort of quantum-mechanical wiretap. The trick allowed them to tease out about half of the data, in a way that couldn't be detected by those transmitting or receiving the message.
The group admits that their hack isn't yet capable of eavesdropping on a real network. "It is not something that currently could attack a commercial system," says Jeffrey Shapiro, a physicist at MIT and one of the authors on the study.
But they expect that one day it will be able to do so, if quantum encryption isn't adequately adapted to stop such hackers from succeeding.
Tangled message
Most quantum networks send secret data in the polarization of photons. The sender encodes each photon's polarization such that the receiver who tries to measure it will only get the right information out about half of the time. When this information does come through, the duo can agree to use that particular bit of data as a key to encode and decode a message.
The system ensures secrecy because anyone intercepting a transmitted photon will disrupt its polarization, and affect the rate at which the receiver can correctly measure it. So the sender and receiver can detect the eavesdropper by noticing a spike in the transmission error rate. They can then stop communicating or try again on a different network.
Shapiro and his co-authors have successfully executed a trick that gets at least part-way around this. To listen in, the team used a quantum-mechanical principle known as entanglement, which can link together two different traits of a particle. Using an optical setup, the team was able to entangle the transmitted photon's polarization with its momentum. The eavesdropper could then measure the momentum in order to get information about the polarization, without affecting the original polarization.
But the tap isn't perfect, says co-author Franco Wong. The entanglement does sometimes perturb the polarization, and Wong says that the team can only extract about 40% of the transmitted data without causing the error rate to rise noticeably.
The idea for this cunning trick has been around since 1998, but nobody had put it into practice until now. The team's experimental proof-of-concept is published in the 25 April issue of the journal Physical Review.
Simulated attack
Aside from the occasional perturbation to the polarization, there is a more important reason why the team's particular setup wouldn't work in the real world, says Hoi-Kwong Lo, a quantum cryptographer at the University of Toronto in Canada. Their apparatus destroys the photon by measuring its momentum. So in this setup, the detector has to measure both polarization and momentum simultaneously, giving one bit of information to the eavesdropper and the other bit to the receiver. This means both people have to be sitting in the same room, using the same photon detector, notes Lo. That might just give the eavesdropper away.
To grab the information en-route would require a 'quantum non-demolition box' — a theoretically possible but as-yet-unbuilt device that could measure the photon and pass it along. "What they have done is a simulation of an attack, not a real one," says Lo.
Shapiro and Wong agree. And they add that a quantum cryptographic network can be simply tweaked to beat their attack. By making the key out of a lot of photons instead of just a few, the sender and receiver could ensure that the eavesdropper never got enough of the key to use it. Still, they say, the work shows that secrets — even quantum ones — are never entirely safe."
Quantum cryptography uses the laws of quantum mechanics to encode data securely. Most researchers consider such quantum networks to be nearly 100% uncrackable. But a group from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge was able to 'listen in' using a sort of quantum-mechanical wiretap. The trick allowed them to tease out about half of the data, in a way that couldn't be detected by those transmitting or receiving the message.
The group admits that their hack isn't yet capable of eavesdropping on a real network. "It is not something that currently could attack a commercial system," says Jeffrey Shapiro, a physicist at MIT and one of the authors on the study.
But they expect that one day it will be able to do so, if quantum encryption isn't adequately adapted to stop such hackers from succeeding.
Tangled message
Most quantum networks send secret data in the polarization of photons. The sender encodes each photon's polarization such that the receiver who tries to measure it will only get the right information out about half of the time. When this information does come through, the duo can agree to use that particular bit of data as a key to encode and decode a message.
The system ensures secrecy because anyone intercepting a transmitted photon will disrupt its polarization, and affect the rate at which the receiver can correctly measure it. So the sender and receiver can detect the eavesdropper by noticing a spike in the transmission error rate. They can then stop communicating or try again on a different network.
Shapiro and his co-authors have successfully executed a trick that gets at least part-way around this. To listen in, the team used a quantum-mechanical principle known as entanglement, which can link together two different traits of a particle. Using an optical setup, the team was able to entangle the transmitted photon's polarization with its momentum. The eavesdropper could then measure the momentum in order to get information about the polarization, without affecting the original polarization.
But the tap isn't perfect, says co-author Franco Wong. The entanglement does sometimes perturb the polarization, and Wong says that the team can only extract about 40% of the transmitted data without causing the error rate to rise noticeably.
The idea for this cunning trick has been around since 1998, but nobody had put it into practice until now. The team's experimental proof-of-concept is published in the 25 April issue of the journal Physical Review.
Simulated attack
Aside from the occasional perturbation to the polarization, there is a more important reason why the team's particular setup wouldn't work in the real world, says Hoi-Kwong Lo, a quantum cryptographer at the University of Toronto in Canada. Their apparatus destroys the photon by measuring its momentum. So in this setup, the detector has to measure both polarization and momentum simultaneously, giving one bit of information to the eavesdropper and the other bit to the receiver. This means both people have to be sitting in the same room, using the same photon detector, notes Lo. That might just give the eavesdropper away.
To grab the information en-route would require a 'quantum non-demolition box' — a theoretically possible but as-yet-unbuilt device that could measure the photon and pass it along. "What they have done is a simulation of an attack, not a real one," says Lo.
Shapiro and Wong agree. And they add that a quantum cryptographic network can be simply tweaked to beat their attack. By making the key out of a lot of photons instead of just a few, the sender and receiver could ensure that the eavesdropper never got enough of the key to use it. Still, they say, the work shows that secrets — even quantum ones — are never entirely safe."
Thursday, April 26, 2007
Hawking Flies Weightless Aboard Jet
"Free of his wheelchair and tethered only to heart rate and blood pressure monitors, astrophysicist Stephen Hawking on Thursday fulfilled a dream of floating weightless on a zero-gravity jet, a step he hopes leads to further space adventures.
The modified jet carrying Hawking, a handful of his physicians and nurses, and dozens of others first flew up to 24,000 feet over the Atlantic Ocean off Florida. Nurses lifted Hawking and carried him to the front of the jet, where they placed him on his back atop a special foam pillow.
The jet then climbed to around 32,000 feet and made a parabolic dive back to 24,000 feet, allowing Hawking and the other passengers to experience weightlessness for about 25 seconds.
Hawking, a mathematics professor at the University of Cambridge who has done groundbreaking work on black holes and the origins of the universe, has the paralyzing disease ALS, also known as Lou Gehrig's disease.
The 65-year-old was the first person with a disability to experience the flight by Zero Gravity Corp., which has flown about 2,700 people out of Florida since late 2004 and began offering the flights in Las Vegas this week.
"As you can imagine, I'm very excited," Hawking told reporters before the flight. "I have been wheelchair bound for almost four decades. The chance to float free in zero-g will be wonderful."
Unable to talk or move his hands and legs, Hawking can only make tiny facial expressions using the muscles around his eyes, eyebrows, cheek and mouth. He uses a computer attached to his wheelchair to talk for him in a synthesized voice by choosing words on a computer screen through an infrared sensor on a headpiece that detects motion in his cheek.
He raises an eyebrow to signal "yes" and tenses his mouth to the side to indicate "no."
"I want to demonstrate to the public that anybody can participate in this type of weightless experience," Hawking said Thursday.
Hawking's personal physicians were on hand to make sure nothing went wrong. The physicist was attached to heart, blood pressure and oxygen-measuring monitors during the flight. Medical equipment sufficient for a mini-intensive care unit also was on board, said Dr. Edwin Chilvers, Hawking's personal physician.
"I'm anticipating everything to nothing," Chilvers said before the flight.
Others on the flight included financial backers of Zero Gravity and passengers who bid a total of $150,000 toward charities to go on the flight.
The jet's interior is padded to protect the weightless fliers and equipped with cameras to record their adventure. Normally, the plane conducts 10 to 15 plunges for its passengers, who pay $3,750 for the ride, although that fee was waived for Hawking.
On Hawking's flight, the jet made eight parabolic dives.
"We had a wonderful time. It was incredible, far beyond our expectations," said Peter H. Diamandis, the chairman and CEO of Zero Gravity, after he exited the jet with Hawking at his side.
As a further safety precaution, Zero Gravity founders Peter H. Diamandis and Byron Lichtenberg, who has flown on the space shuttle, were on either side of Hawking so they could lower him to the ground gently at the end of the parabola. Hawking also took a motion sickness pill as a precaution.
The astrophysicist hopes the zero-gravity flight is a step toward going on a suborbital flight, which may be offered by private space companies by the end of the decade.
"It's a test to see how well he can handle the g-forces that would be necessary in order to leave the atmosphere," said Sam Blackburn, Hawking's assistant. 'That is very much one of the major purposes of this flight.'"
The modified jet carrying Hawking, a handful of his physicians and nurses, and dozens of others first flew up to 24,000 feet over the Atlantic Ocean off Florida. Nurses lifted Hawking and carried him to the front of the jet, where they placed him on his back atop a special foam pillow.
The jet then climbed to around 32,000 feet and made a parabolic dive back to 24,000 feet, allowing Hawking and the other passengers to experience weightlessness for about 25 seconds.
Hawking, a mathematics professor at the University of Cambridge who has done groundbreaking work on black holes and the origins of the universe, has the paralyzing disease ALS, also known as Lou Gehrig's disease.
The 65-year-old was the first person with a disability to experience the flight by Zero Gravity Corp., which has flown about 2,700 people out of Florida since late 2004 and began offering the flights in Las Vegas this week.
"As you can imagine, I'm very excited," Hawking told reporters before the flight. "I have been wheelchair bound for almost four decades. The chance to float free in zero-g will be wonderful."
Unable to talk or move his hands and legs, Hawking can only make tiny facial expressions using the muscles around his eyes, eyebrows, cheek and mouth. He uses a computer attached to his wheelchair to talk for him in a synthesized voice by choosing words on a computer screen through an infrared sensor on a headpiece that detects motion in his cheek.
He raises an eyebrow to signal "yes" and tenses his mouth to the side to indicate "no."
"I want to demonstrate to the public that anybody can participate in this type of weightless experience," Hawking said Thursday.
Hawking's personal physicians were on hand to make sure nothing went wrong. The physicist was attached to heart, blood pressure and oxygen-measuring monitors during the flight. Medical equipment sufficient for a mini-intensive care unit also was on board, said Dr. Edwin Chilvers, Hawking's personal physician.
"I'm anticipating everything to nothing," Chilvers said before the flight.
Others on the flight included financial backers of Zero Gravity and passengers who bid a total of $150,000 toward charities to go on the flight.
The jet's interior is padded to protect the weightless fliers and equipped with cameras to record their adventure. Normally, the plane conducts 10 to 15 plunges for its passengers, who pay $3,750 for the ride, although that fee was waived for Hawking.
On Hawking's flight, the jet made eight parabolic dives.
"We had a wonderful time. It was incredible, far beyond our expectations," said Peter H. Diamandis, the chairman and CEO of Zero Gravity, after he exited the jet with Hawking at his side.
As a further safety precaution, Zero Gravity founders Peter H. Diamandis and Byron Lichtenberg, who has flown on the space shuttle, were on either side of Hawking so they could lower him to the ground gently at the end of the parabola. Hawking also took a motion sickness pill as a precaution.
The astrophysicist hopes the zero-gravity flight is a step toward going on a suborbital flight, which may be offered by private space companies by the end of the decade.
"It's a test to see how well he can handle the g-forces that would be necessary in order to leave the atmosphere," said Sam Blackburn, Hawking's assistant. 'That is very much one of the major purposes of this flight.'"
Tuesday, April 24, 2007
Potentially Habitable Planet Found
"For the first time astronomers have discovered a planet outside our solar system that is potentially habitable, with Earth-like temperatures, a find researchers described Tuesday as a big step in the search for "life in the universe."
The planet is just the right size, might have water in liquid form, and in galactic terms is relatively nearby at 120 trillion miles away. But the star it closely orbits, known as a "red dwarf," is much smaller, dimmer and cooler than our sun.
artist's rendering
There's still a lot that is unknown about the new planet, which could be deemed inhospitable to life once more is known about it. And it's worth noting that scientists' requirements for habitability count Mars in that category: a size relatively similar to Earth's with temperatures that would permit liquid water. However, this is the first outside our solar system that meets those standards.
"It's a significant step on the way to finding possible life in the universe," said University of Geneva astronomer Michel Mayor, one of 11 European scientists on the team that found the planet. "It's a nice discovery. We still have a lot of questions."
The results of the discovery have not been published but have been submitted to the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics.
Alan Boss, who works at the Carnegie Institution of Washington where a U.S. team of astronomers competed in the hunt for an Earth-like planet, called it "a major milestone in this business."
The planet was discovered by the European Southern Observatory's telescope in La Silla, Chile, which has a special instrument that splits light to find wobbles in different wave lengths. Those wobbles can reveal the existence of other worlds.
What they revealed is a planet circling the red dwarf star, Gliese 581. Red dwarfs are low-energy, tiny stars that give off dim red light and last longer than stars like our sun. Until a few years ago, astronomers didn't consider these stars as possible hosts of planets that might sustain life.
The discovery of the new planet, named 581 c, is sure to fuel studies of planets circling similar dim stars. About 80 percent of the stars near Earth are red dwarfs.
The new planet is about five times heavier than Earth. Its discoverers aren't certain if it is rocky like Earth or if its a frozen ice ball with liquid water on the surface. If it is rocky like Earth, which is what the prevailing theory proposes, it has a diameter about 1 1/2 times bigger than our planet. If it is an iceball, as Mayor suggests, it would be even bigger.
Based on theory, 581 c should have an atmosphere, but what's in that atmosphere is still a mystery and if it's too thick that could make the planet's surface temperature too hot, Mayor said.
However, the research team believes the average temperature to be somewhere between 32 and 104 degrees and that set off celebrations among astronomers.
Until now, all 220 planets astronomers have found outside our solar system have had the "Goldilocks problem." They've been too hot, too cold or just plain too big and gaseous, like uninhabitable Jupiter.
The new planet seems just right - or at least that's what scientists think.
"This could be very important," said NASA astrobiology expert Chris McKay, who was not part of the discovery team. "It doesn't mean there is life, but it means it's an Earth-like planet in terms of potential habitability."
Eventually astronomers will rack up discoveries of dozens, maybe even hundreds of planets considered habitable, the astronomers said. But this one - simply called "c" by its discoverers when they talk among themselves - will go down in cosmic history as No. 1.
Besides having the right temperature, the new planet is probably full of liquid water, hypothesizes Stephane Udry, the discovery team's lead author and another Geneva astronomer. But that is based on theory about how planets form, not on any evidence, he said.
"Liquid water is critical to life as we know it," co-author Xavier Delfosse of Grenoble University in France, said in a statement. "Because of its temperature and relative proximity, this planet will most probably be a very important target of the future space missions dedicated to the search for extraterrestrial life. On the treasure map of the Universe, one would be tempted to mark this planet with an X."
Other astronomers cautioned it's too early to tell whether there is water.
"You need more work to say it's got water or it doesn't have water," said retired NASA astronomer Steve Maran, press officer for the American Astronomical Society. "You wouldn't send a crew there assuming that when you get there, they'll have enough water to get back."
The new planet's star system is a mere 20.5 light years away, making Gliese 581 one of the 100 closest stars to Earth. It's so dim, you can't see it without a telescope, but it's somewhere in the constellation Libra, which is low in the southeastern sky during the midevening in the Northern Hemisphere.
Before you book your extrastellar flight to 581 c, a few caveats about how alien that world probably is: Anyone sitting on the planet would get heavier quickly, and birthdays would add up fast since it orbits its star every 13 days.
Gravity is 1.6 times as strong as Earth's so a 150-pound person would feel like 240 pounds.
But oh, the view. The planet is 14 times closer to the star it orbits. Udry figures the red dwarf star would hang in the sky at a size 20 times larger than our moon. And it's likely, but still not known, that the planet doesn't rotate, so one side would always be sunlit and the other dark.
Distance is another problem. "We don't know how to get to those places in a human lifetime," Maran said.
Two teams of astronomers, one in Europe and one in the United States, have been racing to be the first to find a planet like 581 c outside the solar system.
The European team looked at 100 different stars using a tool called HARPS (High Accuracy Radial Velocity for Planetary Searcher) to find this one planet, said Xavier Bonfils of the Lisbon Observatory, one of the co-discoverers.
Much of the effort to find Earth-like planets has focused on stars like our sun with the challenge being to find a planet the right distance from the star it orbits. About 90 percent of the time, the European telescope focused its search more on sun-like stars, Udry said.
A few weeks before the European discovery earlier this month, a scientific paper in the journal Astrobiology theorized a few days that red dwarf stars were good candidates.
"Now we have the possibility to find many more," Bonfils said."
The planet is just the right size, might have water in liquid form, and in galactic terms is relatively nearby at 120 trillion miles away. But the star it closely orbits, known as a "red dwarf," is much smaller, dimmer and cooler than our sun.
There's still a lot that is unknown about the new planet, which could be deemed inhospitable to life once more is known about it. And it's worth noting that scientists' requirements for habitability count Mars in that category: a size relatively similar to Earth's with temperatures that would permit liquid water. However, this is the first outside our solar system that meets those standards.
"It's a significant step on the way to finding possible life in the universe," said University of Geneva astronomer Michel Mayor, one of 11 European scientists on the team that found the planet. "It's a nice discovery. We still have a lot of questions."
The results of the discovery have not been published but have been submitted to the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics.
Alan Boss, who works at the Carnegie Institution of Washington where a U.S. team of astronomers competed in the hunt for an Earth-like planet, called it "a major milestone in this business."
The planet was discovered by the European Southern Observatory's telescope in La Silla, Chile, which has a special instrument that splits light to find wobbles in different wave lengths. Those wobbles can reveal the existence of other worlds.
What they revealed is a planet circling the red dwarf star, Gliese 581. Red dwarfs are low-energy, tiny stars that give off dim red light and last longer than stars like our sun. Until a few years ago, astronomers didn't consider these stars as possible hosts of planets that might sustain life.
The discovery of the new planet, named 581 c, is sure to fuel studies of planets circling similar dim stars. About 80 percent of the stars near Earth are red dwarfs.
The new planet is about five times heavier than Earth. Its discoverers aren't certain if it is rocky like Earth or if its a frozen ice ball with liquid water on the surface. If it is rocky like Earth, which is what the prevailing theory proposes, it has a diameter about 1 1/2 times bigger than our planet. If it is an iceball, as Mayor suggests, it would be even bigger.
Based on theory, 581 c should have an atmosphere, but what's in that atmosphere is still a mystery and if it's too thick that could make the planet's surface temperature too hot, Mayor said.
However, the research team believes the average temperature to be somewhere between 32 and 104 degrees and that set off celebrations among astronomers.
Until now, all 220 planets astronomers have found outside our solar system have had the "Goldilocks problem." They've been too hot, too cold or just plain too big and gaseous, like uninhabitable Jupiter.
The new planet seems just right - or at least that's what scientists think.
"This could be very important," said NASA astrobiology expert Chris McKay, who was not part of the discovery team. "It doesn't mean there is life, but it means it's an Earth-like planet in terms of potential habitability."
Eventually astronomers will rack up discoveries of dozens, maybe even hundreds of planets considered habitable, the astronomers said. But this one - simply called "c" by its discoverers when they talk among themselves - will go down in cosmic history as No. 1.
Besides having the right temperature, the new planet is probably full of liquid water, hypothesizes Stephane Udry, the discovery team's lead author and another Geneva astronomer. But that is based on theory about how planets form, not on any evidence, he said.
"Liquid water is critical to life as we know it," co-author Xavier Delfosse of Grenoble University in France, said in a statement. "Because of its temperature and relative proximity, this planet will most probably be a very important target of the future space missions dedicated to the search for extraterrestrial life. On the treasure map of the Universe, one would be tempted to mark this planet with an X."
Other astronomers cautioned it's too early to tell whether there is water.
"You need more work to say it's got water or it doesn't have water," said retired NASA astronomer Steve Maran, press officer for the American Astronomical Society. "You wouldn't send a crew there assuming that when you get there, they'll have enough water to get back."
The new planet's star system is a mere 20.5 light years away, making Gliese 581 one of the 100 closest stars to Earth. It's so dim, you can't see it without a telescope, but it's somewhere in the constellation Libra, which is low in the southeastern sky during the midevening in the Northern Hemisphere.
Before you book your extrastellar flight to 581 c, a few caveats about how alien that world probably is: Anyone sitting on the planet would get heavier quickly, and birthdays would add up fast since it orbits its star every 13 days.
Gravity is 1.6 times as strong as Earth's so a 150-pound person would feel like 240 pounds.
But oh, the view. The planet is 14 times closer to the star it orbits. Udry figures the red dwarf star would hang in the sky at a size 20 times larger than our moon. And it's likely, but still not known, that the planet doesn't rotate, so one side would always be sunlit and the other dark.
Distance is another problem. "We don't know how to get to those places in a human lifetime," Maran said.
Two teams of astronomers, one in Europe and one in the United States, have been racing to be the first to find a planet like 581 c outside the solar system.
The European team looked at 100 different stars using a tool called HARPS (High Accuracy Radial Velocity for Planetary Searcher) to find this one planet, said Xavier Bonfils of the Lisbon Observatory, one of the co-discoverers.
Much of the effort to find Earth-like planets has focused on stars like our sun with the challenge being to find a planet the right distance from the star it orbits. About 90 percent of the time, the European telescope focused its search more on sun-like stars, Udry said.
A few weeks before the European discovery earlier this month, a scientific paper in the journal Astrobiology theorized a few days that red dwarf stars were good candidates.
"Now we have the possibility to find many more," Bonfils said."
Sunday, April 22, 2007
Termites actually social cockroaches
"Scientists had long known that cockroaches and termites were related to each other and to praying mantises. Features they all share include specialized cases that enclose their eggs and perforations in the internal parts of their heads.
What researchers have debated for decades is whether or not termites evolved from cockroaches. Evidence suggesting this possibility included symbiotic microbes that certain termites and wood roaches had in common, as well as physical similarities between their young.
After conducting the most exhaustive genetic analyses yet into the subject, studying 107 different species of termites, cockroaches and mantises from across the globe, entomologist Paul Eggleton at the Natural History Museum in London and his colleagues now conclude termites are indeed a family of cockroaches, findings detailed online April 5 in the journal Biology Letters.
"This finally establishes where termites belong within the insects," Eggleton told LiveScience.
At first these results might appear unlikely, given the extraordinary differences in behavior and diet between these insects. Although cockroaches are somewhat convivial, they cannot hold a candle to the astonishingly complex societies termites can form, with colonies including up to millions of insects specialized into workers, soldiers, kings and queens. And termites are renowned for eating dead wood, while cockroaches are well-known coprophages, or feces-eaters.
Eggleton and his colleagues note, however, that ants and bees, which are likewise social, evolved from solitary wasps. They added that cockroach traits such as their gregariousness and their coprophagy might have set the stage for the evolution of termites.
When termite ancestors devoured each other's droppings, they could have shared the microbes that eventually led to a key termite feature, the ability to break down wood. Ensuring such wood-digesting microbes get passed on to offspring requires a close relationship between parents and their young, laying the groundwork for "their whole complex social system to have evolved," Eggleton said. "
What researchers have debated for decades is whether or not termites evolved from cockroaches. Evidence suggesting this possibility included symbiotic microbes that certain termites and wood roaches had in common, as well as physical similarities between their young.
After conducting the most exhaustive genetic analyses yet into the subject, studying 107 different species of termites, cockroaches and mantises from across the globe, entomologist Paul Eggleton at the Natural History Museum in London and his colleagues now conclude termites are indeed a family of cockroaches, findings detailed online April 5 in the journal Biology Letters.
"This finally establishes where termites belong within the insects," Eggleton told LiveScience.
At first these results might appear unlikely, given the extraordinary differences in behavior and diet between these insects. Although cockroaches are somewhat convivial, they cannot hold a candle to the astonishingly complex societies termites can form, with colonies including up to millions of insects specialized into workers, soldiers, kings and queens. And termites are renowned for eating dead wood, while cockroaches are well-known coprophages, or feces-eaters.
Eggleton and his colleagues note, however, that ants and bees, which are likewise social, evolved from solitary wasps. They added that cockroach traits such as their gregariousness and their coprophagy might have set the stage for the evolution of termites.
When termite ancestors devoured each other's droppings, they could have shared the microbes that eventually led to a key termite feature, the ability to break down wood. Ensuring such wood-digesting microbes get passed on to offspring requires a close relationship between parents and their young, laying the groundwork for "their whole complex social system to have evolved," Eggleton said. "
The Inseide Dope: Sweets for the sweet … oldies for the …
The following is excerpted from a piece in the Adirondack Daily Enterprise:
"For years, people have accused me of being a technophobe, and like many accusations, there’s some truth in it. But, also like many rumors, there’s falsehood in it as well. It all depends, of course, on what technology you’re talking about.
Some technologies are absolutely fabulous. For example, there’s modern medicine. Today, people routinely survive conditions and procedures that not all that many years ago routinely killed them. As for medicine’s sister art, dentistry? All I’ll say is, anyone who extols the virtues of old-time dentists and dentistry never dealt with either one.
Other technologies were always good but now are much improved. Two of my favorites are fountain pens and radios.
Fountain pens? Does anyone actually use them anymore? I sure do, and I’m not alone. Before ballpoint pens, fountain pens were the only game in town, if not the world. But once ballpoints came out, fountain pens pretty much went the way of walking sticks, smoking jackets and silk stockings. But it’s a shame, because nothing can compare with them.
First, they write incredibly smoothly, and second, they never skip. Now, I realize pen skippage may not mean much to most people, but to someone who writes every day, like me, it’s a huge issue. I think a pen skipping — even only a little bit now and then — aggravates me as much as an engine skipping would aggravate a racecar driver.
Plus, all the problems with the old fountain pens — that they leaked or their fill mechanisms malfunctioned — don’t happen with the new ones. Further, not only are fountain pens not disposable, but if properly cared for, they’ll write for generations.
And finally, let’s face it, fountain pens have class. Anyone who whips out a fountain pen can write with real flourish and panache. No one, however, can do it with a ball point."
Read the rest of Mr. Seidenstein's article by clicking the title above
"For years, people have accused me of being a technophobe, and like many accusations, there’s some truth in it. But, also like many rumors, there’s falsehood in it as well. It all depends, of course, on what technology you’re talking about.
Some technologies are absolutely fabulous. For example, there’s modern medicine. Today, people routinely survive conditions and procedures that not all that many years ago routinely killed them. As for medicine’s sister art, dentistry? All I’ll say is, anyone who extols the virtues of old-time dentists and dentistry never dealt with either one.
Other technologies were always good but now are much improved. Two of my favorites are fountain pens and radios.
Fountain pens? Does anyone actually use them anymore? I sure do, and I’m not alone. Before ballpoint pens, fountain pens were the only game in town, if not the world. But once ballpoints came out, fountain pens pretty much went the way of walking sticks, smoking jackets and silk stockings. But it’s a shame, because nothing can compare with them.
First, they write incredibly smoothly, and second, they never skip. Now, I realize pen skippage may not mean much to most people, but to someone who writes every day, like me, it’s a huge issue. I think a pen skipping — even only a little bit now and then — aggravates me as much as an engine skipping would aggravate a racecar driver.
Plus, all the problems with the old fountain pens — that they leaked or their fill mechanisms malfunctioned — don’t happen with the new ones. Further, not only are fountain pens not disposable, but if properly cared for, they’ll write for generations.
And finally, let’s face it, fountain pens have class. Anyone who whips out a fountain pen can write with real flourish and panache. No one, however, can do it with a ball point."
Read the rest of Mr. Seidenstein's article by clicking the title above
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