Congress is Messing with the Internet

I (at least mostly) try to keep politics out of what I write because I want to be read by people who disagree with me as well as people who agree with me.  However, Congress is about to launch into some truly non-partisan stupidity.  The Stop Online Piracy Act in the House and the PROTECT IP Act in the Senate give Big Content the ability to shut down Web sites through administrative action without any requirement to prove that a law was even broken.

By making the operators of Web sites responsible for user-created content, these bills threaten the existence of sites like reddit, Wikipedia, and Facebook.  They may also make it impossible for individuals in the United States to legally import prescription drugs from legitimate, licensed pharmacies in Canada and elsewhere.

The Senate bill includes blocking the domain names of sites that are alleged to have promoted illegal copying.  (The House bill did, too, but our Representatives seem to be backing down in the face of an increasingly loud outcry.) The Domain Name System (DNS) is at the heart of how the Internet and the World Wide Web work, and the Senate bill proposes to interfere with the operation of DNS.  You can see an amusing animated description of DNS, with a glimpse into the ignorance of our lawmakers, here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E7mNcgqQcPw (2:38)  Happily, both of the lawmakers shown in the video are out of public office.

If you'd like to see a somewhat longer (4:20) video describing what these bills purport to do and what they're really likely to do check this: http://sopablackout.org/learnmore/

These bills are so oppressive that reddit and Wikipedia plan to go offline on Wednesday, January 18 to protest them.

What dismays me is that both of Georgia's senators and one of our representatives (Congressman John Barrow, a Democrat from Georgia's twelfth district) are co-sponsors of these toxic bills.

I wrote to both of our Senators today.  I urge you to do the same.  "Blackout Day," Wednesday, January 18, would be a really good day to do so.  I didn't wait because I'll be in class all day on Wednesday.

You can read what the Electronic Frontier Foundation has to say about these bills and write to your senators and representative here: https://action.eff.org/o/9042/p/dia/action/public/?action_KEY=8173

My letter is below and you should feel free to borrow from it, but you will have more impact of you compose your own.

Dear Senators:

I am dismayed to find that you are a co-sponsor of the so-called PROTECT IP Act.  This is a toxic piece of legislation, written without an understanding of the issues and without regard to the American idea of due process.

I am a computer scientist by education and a teacher of computing at the university level.  As such, I can assure you that I do understand the technical issues, and that what I have written in the previous paragraph is not an exaggeration.

Copyright violation is already illegal and juries have imposed substantial penalties on egregious violators. This legislation seeks to replace due process with administrative solutions.  "Big content" has already demonstrated its willingness to abuse such administrative solutions under the DMCA.

Beyond the fundamental problem of due process and the myriad technical problems, PROTECT IP appears to have the effect of preventing individual Americans from importing prescription drugs from legitimate, licensed foreign pharmacies.  That will impose a hardship on the poor and those living on fixed incomes.

No amount of amendment or rewriting can rescue this toxic bill, so I urge you to withdraw your sponsorship and to vote against this ill-considered legislation.

I am a fiscal conservative and so I am likely to vote for Republican candidates over others.  However, this single issue is very important to me and I will remember your position on it when you run for re-election in a couple of years.

Best regards,
Bob Brown

Lights Out for Lightning Bugs

Memorial Day is behind us, summer is ahead of us, and, if we're lucky, lightning bugs (or fireflies) are all around us on the long summer evenings in Atlanta. Of course, they aren't really flies, they're winged beetles of the order Coleoptera. And for many of us, they're the highlight of a summer's evening.

Thirty years ago the trees and fields of suburban Atlanta were full of fireflies in the early summer. There are many fewer now, possibly because of the drought of a couple of years past. Fireflies like to breed in dark, moist places, and those have been few and far between until last year. It is also possible that light pollution has reduced the population. The fireflies we see flying around are usually males. The flashes are to attract mates, and if there's bright artificial light, young fireflies in love may not be able to find each other.

Even with those barriers, Georgia has more species of fireflies than any other state.

Larval fireflies are predators; they feed on the larvae of other insects, on snails, and on slugs. So, having fireflies around is good for lawn and garden.

Encouraging Fireflies

One of the easiest things you can do to encourage fireflies to inhabit your yard is to reduce outdoor lighting to the minimum necessary. Keep lights out from Memorial Day to about midsummer... as long as you see fireflies blinking in the dusk.

Reducing or eliminating outdoor use of insecticides, especially in early summer, will help give the fireflies a chance.

Female fireflies like to stay on or near the ground. Mowing infrequently and setting aside some part of your property that can grow a little wild gives fireflies a place to shelter.

Fireflies like moisture. If you are lucky enough to live by a stream or pond, try to keep that area dark in the evening and mow it infrequently.

Kids, Fireflies, and Fun

About fifty-five years ago when I was a child, we'd catch fireflies in a mason jar with holes poked in the lid and pretend the jar gave enough light to let us find our way through the dark woods. That wasn't a good idea then, and it still isn't. You will end up explaining to your child why all the fireflies died over night, and that won't be a fun time. It's also possible that children might put fireflies in their mouths. They taste really nasty; it's a defense against predators like birds. Or small children!

There are plenty of things to do that don't involve catching or eating fireflies. Different species flash different colors from green through yellow to pale red. Ask your child to see whether there are different colored flashes, and if so, explain that those are different kinds of fireflies.

Have your child look for two or more fireflies that are flashing simultaneously and see how long they stay in step.

Try to count the number of fireflies in two different areas of your yard and speculate about why there's a difference.

Time the flashes of one firefly by counting one-Mississippi, two-Mississippi and see whether they are all flashing at the same rate. Differences may indicate different species.

Have your child lift the back of her hand underneath a close-by firefly. It will likely land there and continue to flash for several seconds before taking off again in search of a mate.

The sun's been down for a while. Dusk is coming on, and those sound like so much fun I think I'll go outside and try them out!

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This article also appears on the Elite Property Maintenance site.  Photograph by roguewriter3 on Photobucket.

Shiny Things

A couple of years ago I wrote about warm things.  I also like shiny things, and over the years I've acquired a few items of sliver plate.  I also have a pair of sterling candlesticks, although the silver is foil-thin over a plaster base.  Unhappily, keeping shiny things shiny takes a fair amount of work.  Lacking a butler to polish the family silver, I'm afraid I haven't done a very good job of that.

A few weeks ago a friend gave me a pair of lacquered brass candlesticks.  They're nice, old, and well-made.  However, the years had not been good to the lacquer.  I couldn't just put them away somewhere because my friend is over for dinner frequently, and she gave me a couple of candles, too.  I am clearly expected to use these at Emory Cottage, and besides, they're nice!  The situation was desperate; I resolved to do work.  Here's what I did...

The first task was to remove the lacquer.  A few minutes with Google and I found that I needed to boil the candlesticks for 15 minutes in a solution of one tablespoon of baking soda per quart of water and then rinse with hot water.  That worked, and also removed the wax that had built up in the hollow core of the candlesticks over the years.  (But cleaning the pot afterwards was a challenge.)  If you do this yourself, please remember that the candlesticks you're rinsing with hot water have just been boiled for 15 minutes and are hot as blazes.  I used tongs.

The next step is to clean with acetone.  You get acetone at the hardware store.  Use an open-weave cloth (I used a disposable surgical towel) and do this outside.  Acetone is volatile and vaporizes easily.  It's also very flammable.  No smoking, fire, flames, sparks, etc.

Next, polish with Brasso and more open-weave cloth.  This step is hard work because the little dark spots where the lacquer had flaked off years ago take substantial polishing.  When there are no more dark spots and everything is shiny, rinse with water and dry.

You're still not done.  The last step is to polish with a Blitz cloth and then with the piece of flannel that's packaged with the Blitz cloth.  You get the Blitz cloth at an Army-Navy store or uniform shop.  It's a soft cloth that's been pretreated with an oily polish.  There are several flavors.  You want the brass polishing cloth.  Polish with the treated cloth, then with the dry cloth.  The surface will be slightly oily even after you've used the dry cloth. 

After you've completed the two-step Blitz cloth polish, you're done.  The difference will amaze you.  I wish I'd done these one at a time so I could have shown before and after pictures.

Of course, you've taken off the lacquer, so the brass will tarnish with time.  Maintenance involves using the Blitz cloth about once a month and your brass stays shiny forever.

Having shined up the candlesticks, I was inspired to take better care of my other  shiny things.  I've been using Wright's Silver Cream since the beginning of time.  I decided to try something new: 3M Tarnishield.  The idea is that it polishes the silver, but also leaves a coating that resists tarnish.  I can't tell about the latter yet, but it does an outstanding job of polishing.  I've cleaned up many, but not all, of my shiny things.

While checking around for polishes and such, I discovered anti-tarnish strips.  These are paper strips which have a chemical coating that binds the sulfur molecules that cause tarnish.  I've popped one into the chest that holds the silver plate flatware.  We shall see whether it stays shiny.  I also bought a Blitz silver cloth.  This one isn't oily like the brass polish, but it did a fine job on the flatware.

Now that everything is shiny again, it's time for a nap!

The TSA Must Go (An Open Letter to My Representative and Senators)

Enough is enough, and the recent intrusive searches by the Transportation Security Administration have exceeded the limit.

Past security measures have clearly been ineffective.  The TSA has caught not one shoe bomber after x-raying billions of shoes.  The TSA has caught not one liquid bomber after confiscating tons of shampoo and toothpaste.  They do find a few guns and knives; as far as a citizen can tell from news reports, all fall into the “Oh, no!  I forgot that was in there,” category.  Now we have underwear checks despite the fact that ten months have gone by without another attempted underwear bombing.

Every time some plot fails, Secretary Napolitano tells us, “The system worked.”  That is true only if “the system” involves depending upon inept terrorists who can’t set off their own bombs, and upon tips from others.

Her assertion that “naked x-ray” machines are safe is about as believable as “the system worked.”  In a news conference last week, Secretary Napolitano listed the agencies who had declared her machines to be safe, including the “U.S. Science and Standards Association.”  As far as I can tell, there is no such organization.  (I think the Secretary of Homeland Security must mean the National Institute of Standards and Technology, a government agency, which, with the FDA, assessed these machines in 2006.  If so, she has shown appalling ignorance in a very important area.)

The FDA and TSA, in an October 12, 2010 letter to Dr. John P. Holdren, Assistant to the President for Science and Technology, characterized the machines not as “safe” but as “presenting no more than a miniscule risk to people being scanned…”  I suppose that is somewhat like the miniscule risk of being killed by an underwear bomber, in other words, a risk the avoidance of which justifies extreme measures!

Regardless of who might have declared these machines to be safe, there is good evidence that the damage done by ionizing radiation (as is used in the backscatter x-ray machines) is cumulative.  The British Medical Journal, BMJ, published an article, “Risk of cancer after low doses of ionising radiation: retrospective cohort study in 15 countries” in their July 9, 2005 edition.  The New England Journal of Medicine published “Exposure to Low-Dose Ionizing Radiation from Medical Imaging Procedures” in their August 27, 2009 edition.  In the latter study, the authors worried that, “The growing use of imaging procedures in the United States has raised concerns about exposure to low-dose ionizing radiation in the general population.”

No matter how low the radiation dose from these machines may be, it covers the entire body by design, and the effects, according to medical experts, are cumulative.

Of course, travelers can refuse the naked x-ray procedure.  The alternative is a “pat-down” that people have likened to sexual assault.  This applies to children as well as adults.  One cannot even decide to forget the whole thing and go home without being threatened with a civil lawsuit!

Enough is enough!  I have stopped flying for pleasure and will reduce my business flying to the absolute minimum.  That’s two airline trips I won’t be taking in the next three weeks.  That will not bankrupt Delta, but making people detest flying will certainly not help the airline industry.

If enhanced searches of passengers will not improve airline security, what will?  Solid investigative and intelligence work, such as that which caught the “liquid bombers” in Britain before they could do any harm.

I call upon Congress to stop the funding of increasingly intrusive measures by the TSA and transfer the funds to the FBI for counterterrorism investigations.

And, in the meantime, I call upon Congress to require all TSA employees to undergo advanced imaging screening at the beginning of every shift.  After all, they are “on the front lines” according to John Pistole, and it is important to be certain they don’t bring any contraband into secure areas of airports, right?

Competing with China

I do a little work with the Girl Scouts, and we give the girls event patches when they come to the University campus for activities.  There's a group coming in two weeks for a "CSI" activity, and I discovered last week that I'm low on CSI event patches.

We buy the patches from a company in Pennsylvania, but they're manufactured in China, presumably on a numerical-control cutting and embroidery machine.

Last Wednesday we gave the folks in Pennsylvania a credit card number for a reorder of 350 of our custom CSI patches.   The process seems to be that the programming is sent electronically to the factory in China, the patches are made, coated with heat-seal backing, and packaged.  Then they're air-freighted along with a bunch of other orders, from China to Pennsylvania, and finally shipped by UPS to me.

This noon I got email from UPS telling me my patches had been shipped from Pennsylvania.  That's two full working days, plus about two half-days from the time we placed the order.

I'll have my custom-embroidered patches less than a week after I ordered them, even though they were manufactured halfway around the world.  They'll be here faster and cost less than if they'd been made right here in Marietta, Georgia.

That's what we have to compete with if we are to compete against China for light manufacturing.

I'm glad I'll have the event patches so my Girl Sprouts won't be disappointed, but I am not a little worried.

Junk Phone Calls and the Battle to be Let Alone

I'll probably be the last person in Atlanta to have a land-line phone.  I've had the same number since it was DRake 3 instead of 373.  That's more than 40 years.

Over those forty years, I've fought a battle of wits and technology to keep my phone free for my friends and neighbors, and to keep it free of junk phone calls of all sorts.  The Federal do-not-call list has helped, although the politicians exempted themselves and certain others.  Grrrr...  Laws regulating automated phone calls with recorded messages have also helped.  But, as with the do-not-call list, there are exceptions.  There's also very little enforcement.  Some companies simply ignore the law.

A somewhat newer threat is the predictive dialer.  It's a computer system that uses statistical models to predict how many calls are likely to be answered at a given time.  It also uses statistics to try to predict when human "agents" will be available to be connected to an auto-dialed call.  The idea is that the computer dials calls and detects when a call is answered.  It then connects that call to an agent, thereby getting around laws against recorded announcements and keeping the agents busy talking instead of dialing.

So, if you get a call and say something like, "Hello? Bob Brown speaking," and there's silence, then a click, then someone saying, "May I speak to Bob Brown?" you've been called by a predictive dialer.  The "agent" never heard you identify yourself because he or she wasn't connected until after you answered.  (Hilton Hotels is infamous for this.  They think the time of their telemarketing agents is more valuable than the time of their guests.  Remember that the next time you need a hotel!)

There's an even worse evil in predictive dialers: hang-up calls.  The financial imperative in a predictive dialer operation is to keep the agents busy.  So, the machinery is adjusted to place more calls than there are agents to answer them.  What happens when the computer has an answer but no agent to put on the line?  You guessed it in one!  The computer hangs up in your ear.  There's a Federal regulation that says they can't "abandon" more than 2% of dialed calls, but guess what... there's no way to measure that from the outside looking in, and so that regulation is even more likely to be ignored than others.

If you're getting a lot of "hang-up calls," it's more likely predictive dialers than someone deliberately trying to harass you.  Grrrrr...

There are even more legitimate wrong numbers than there used to be.  Fifty years ago, the phone company assigned telephone numbers carefully, and in a way that meant a single mis-dialed digit was more likely to reach a fast busy signal than a wrong number.  (That fast busy is called a reorder tone by the phone company, and unassigned numbers, called "vacant numbers," were connected to the reorder tone.)

Now we're so short of phone numbers that almost all available numbers are in use.  It got so bad that we kicked Mexico out of the North American Numbering Plan in 1991.  Area code 706, which used to be northwest Mexico, is now assigned to Georgia, roughly north of the fall line.  So, even with the same number of mistakes in dialing, there are more wrong numbers because there are more numbers in use.

The last source of annoying calls I want to gripe about is debt collectors.  I pay my bills on time, but I also have a very common name, and debt collectors troll through the phone listings, hoping to hit upon the person they're looking for.  So, I get calls for Richard Brown and Rachael Brown and Roger Brown and Rosa Brown.  Not to mention calls for the innumerable other Robert Browns who might be behind on a bill or two.  AAaarrgghh!

I had a non-published number for a long time, which kept it out of the hands of trolling debt collectors.  When the economy went down the tubes, Georgia began to furlough college teachers, and I gave up the non-published number to save a few bucks each month.  Big mistake!  As soon as my name appeared in the book, I started getting more junk calls.  (It's non-published again, but it'll take years to undo the damage done by letting it be listed.)

What to do?  What to do?

Well, the first line of defense is that non-published number.  That'll keep you off a bunch of lists and stop the debt-collector trolls in their tracks.  Do not believe you can become anonymous by using just an initial or two.  Listing myself as "Brown, R." got me calls for Rosa and Roger and Richard and Rachael.  Unless your name is Theophilus McNulty (yes, I actually did know someone of that name) you probably want to keep it out of the phone book.  Maybe even if it is Theophilus McNulty.

Next, get anonymous call rejection from the phone company.  That'll intercept calls that don't send caller ID at all.  Your phone will never ring.  (No, I don't own stock in AT&T, but maybe I should buy some!)

That's about all the phone company can do for you.  Now it's time for self-help.  I have a few old telephones; they're not true antiques, they work on modern phone lines, but I like showing them off.  Some years ago I bought a little phone system (Panasonic KX-TA824) to supply dial tone to my old phones.  When my answering machine died, I bought an inexpensive Panasonic voice mail system.  (This was before budget cuts and furloughs.)  It turns out that you can make these gadgets do automated attendant and custom call handling based on caller ID.

So, now my friends (if I've programmed in their numbers) hear, "Please wait a moment" and my phone rings.  Others hear, "If you know the extension number you wish to reach..."  Of course, there aren't any extension numbers in Emory Cottage, but the message concludes, "Otherwise, please press two."  Any human being can get through to me by pressing two.  Automated calling systems are defeated.  Some predictive dialers are defeated, too.  Those that detect a recording just hang up.  As for the others, often by the time they connect a human, the "please press two" has already passed.  I've wasted their time and my phone never rang.  Good!

That was the good news about caller ID.  There's some bad news, too. Any company big enough to need 23 or more phone lines can get a "primary rate interface" circuit from the phone company.  If you have a PRI, you, not the phone company, decide what will be sent for caller ID.  Legally, it has to be a number that you control.  But, a collection agency in New York can get a cheap Atlanta cell phone and legally send a 404 number in the caller ID, making it look like a local call.  And, as with the other laws pertaining to bothersome phone calls, not everyone bothers to obey the law.

The bill collector types are serious about trying to find out whether "R. Brown" is the Rudy Brown they're looking for.  They'll have a real person on the line who will press two, and they'll send you bogus caller ID information to try to trick you into answering.  About the best you can do is note the number and try to block future calls.

The phone company's call block service often doesn't work because it won't block out-of-area calls, and the phone company knows the "real" phone number, not what's sent as caller ID.  Just telling them to buzz off doesn't work (although the law says it should) because, for each call, they're looking for a different R. Brown deadbeat and hoping it's me.  Aha! My little phone system gadget can do tricks with caller ID.  I've now programmed in the (mostly bogus) caller ID numbers of the most egregious callers.  They get a message telling them their calls will not be connected because of misleading caller ID information, and that the best way to reach me is through a letter to my home address.  The thought is that someone who really needs to reach me will actually have my home address, and if it's important enough, will drop a stamp to get in touch.  The dweeb who's looking for Raymond Brown is frustrated and looks elsewhere.  I hope.

That's the current state of the battle, and at the moment I'm winning.  I'm sure the turkeys who want to interrupt my dinner will come up with some new way do do it and I'll have to come up with a new defense.

One last thing... you can do some call screening like I've described without buying the kind of phone gear I bought for another purpose.  Type "call screener" into Google for a look at the possibilities.  And, either list your full name in the phone book or have a non-published number.  Listing just an initial will get you those bill collector calls.

An Open Letter to the Georgia General Assembly

If you've read my blog before, you know that the subjects dear to my heart are education and food.  Today I am writing an open letter to the members of Georgia's General Assembly on the more important of those two subjects.

Dear Senators and Representatives:

We are at a critical moment in the future of higher education in Georgia.

I’m sure you know that Governor Perdue has recommended in his budget for the coming fiscal year a cut of nearly $300 million in the appropriation to the University System of Georgia.  According to the Atlanta Constitution last week, you who are elected to the General Assembly are considering cuts of an additional $385 million.

This cannot be allowed to happen because a cut of this magnitude threatens Georgia’s economic future.

Some of you may not know that a study conducted by Georgia Tech in 2003 determined that University System of Georgia students who graduated from 1993 to 1997 contributed $1.25 billion to the state’s economy in 1998 alone, solely because of increased earnings due to their USG degrees.  Imagine how much more University System graduates are contributing to Georgia's economy today.

Although I am a teacher in the University System, I’m not particularly worried about my own job because I’m old enough to retire and spend the rest of my days reading and writing if I need to.  I am worried about our students.  Cuts of the magnitude proposed will mean reductions in faculty and staff throughout the University System.  That, in turn, will mean larger and fewer classes.  Fewer classes will mean delayed graduation, suspended job searches, postponed weddings, and, for some, the end of the dream of a college degree.  Those people won’t be making the contributions to Georgia’s economy that our graduates have made in the past, or their contributions will be delayed, perhaps for years.

Declines in tax income are a grim reality, and cuts have to come from somewhere to keep Georgia’s budget in balance.  I understand that.  I also understand that the General Assembly has a harder job than ever this year to find the cuts necessary to balance the budget.

However, I hope those of you elected to the General Assembly will consider the future implications of this year’s budget and find a way to continue the investment in Georgia’s economic future that is represented by the University System.

With best regards,
Bob Brown

If you want to let your elected representatives know what you think of their plans to decimate higher education in Georgia, you can find information on your elected representatives by starting here: http://www.congress.org/ and put in your ZIP code.  Then fill in your complete address on the next page.  You'll find links to your state senator and state representative just below the information about the governor's office.

Write an actual letter... yes, on paper... and send it to them by fax or even {gasp!} by postal mail.  Do it soon, Monday or Tuesday, because they'll likely be voting on this matter next week.

In your letter, tell your elected representatives how such cuts will affect you personally and those whom you know.  Express politely that you believe education is an investment in Georgia's future, and ask politely that they reconsider priorities in setting the budget for the University System.  (And remember, all they can do is "reconsider priorities."  They cannot borrow money or otherwise make this problem go away.  Be sympathetic to the difficult job they're doing.)

You might also consider writing to Representative Earl Ehrhart, Chairman of House Appropriation Subcommittee on Higher Education, email: earl@ehrhart.4emm.com, and Senator John Wiles, Senate Appropriations Committee – Higher Education, fax: (404) 657-0459.

If you're on Facebook, there's a Facebook group, USG Students for Quality Education, devoted to this issue.  The link is http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=355956350406 or just type "USG Students for Quality Education" into the search block.