Coming together

I’ve been reading a bit about faults and noticing how disparate things serendipitously come together to form new patterns of thought. I’m not talking about the faults of people, though I may get around to that some day soon. I’m talking about fault lines and tectonic plates, geology and anthropology, and the coming together of ideas about far away places.

My next-door neighbor is a widely known geophysicist and a fascinating guy in a conversation. He was going on about two books he just read and loaned them to me. One is Krakatoa The Day the World Exploded: August 17, 1883 by Simon Winchester. Winchester is a fascinating writer who spins a tale around the development of geology as a science, how it relates to the famous volcano, and the effects on people, both native to the area and the colonials who moved to Indonesia.

Krakatoa was, and still is, a volcano which blew itself completely apart, shrouding the planet with enough dust to affect climate around the earth. It killed over 30,000 people in nearby areas which, until 2004, accounted for half of all the people known to have been killed in tsunamis. Krakatoa is re-growing today in the center of the Sunda Strait, 15 miles west of Java and 15 miles east of Sumatra. It sits on the boundary where the Australian plate is subducting under the Eurasian plate along a line just west of Sumatra. On this fault line, at the other end of Sumatra, December 26, 2004, a major earthquake initiated another tsunami the results of which are still being tallied. So far I have read numbers like 150,000 people killed and recently seen estimates that put the number above 200,000.

Last night I was reading in Scientific American for February 2005 about the discovery of Hobbit bones in Liang Bua cave at Flores, Indonesia, just east of Java. Okay, Hobbit is only a nickname for what appears to be a new species of homo, at least for now called H. Fiorensis. These are the tiny humans which have been in the news lately. Based on the skeletons found so far, these people were only about three feet tall with very small skulls. It appears that they may have made and used complex tools, and how they did that with such small brains is one of several conundrums about these little people. Other questions include how these people got there, and how they lived there until only 15,000 years ago.

All of this comes together in Indonesia, a place which until recently was largely a mystery to me. Isn’t coincidence wonderful?

Waiting for Baudot

Once upon a time, oh, a very long time ago, while living in another galaxy altogether, I had a very dear friend, a student at another university from where I was laboring. She was, of course, poor as a pauper, that being the proper state for a student and all that. She had no telephone.

Now I, good geek that I was, found that hard to imagine, but my pleas fell upon poverty burdened ears and no phone materialized. I was bereft because, although this was well before the time of email, and the USPS really was able to deliver my ever so important words to her, I was impatient. If I wanted to say, “I’ll be passing through your town on Thursday,” there was no way to do that. At least, no way before Thursday. In the process, I discovered that I really don’t like waiting for communications. I mean, I REALLY don’t like waiting for words or bits to travel.

Eventually, email was invented, cell phones were created, networks proliferated, and when I want to make contact over something not so trivial (in my mind, of course), it is usually possible to find a way to get the word out. Yes, I do see an advantage to store and forward messaging, where one can read the mail at a convenient time, not interrupting a conversation with the boss about the raise so desperately needed. A wait of hours, days, eons, really still gets me in the nervous system. The brain sends out “Warning! Warning! Person not responding.”

I mutter, “Yeah, sure, so shut up about it. I got that message.”, but the yammering goes on.

My, we do get spoiled, don’t we.

... and if you don't know Baudot, look here.

On a clear day ...

You can’t see forever, but on a day like today, the mountains 90 miles south of my deck look like they are in the back yard. These are not little hills; they are part of the Alaska Range which includes Denali (sometimes known as Mt. McKinley), the tallest mountain in North America. When I drive home alongside the Tanana River, Denali rises over the intervening ridges like the master of mountains, clearly visible straight ahead, 160 miles to the southwest. From my house, and from the approach to it coming down from the ridge instead of along the river, it is the Alaska Range itself that dominates the view.

The views are much better in the winter, when the air is clear and cold. Temperature layers in the air, which diffract light toward warmer air, act as a lens to magnify the mountains and they really stand up to be counted. If is daylight here (Alaska time is GMT -9 hours), there is a view of the range from a local webcam [Link] and explanations of the magnifying effect [Link].

Trust

I found myself this week looking around the internet for web sites with information about a contentious topic. In particular, I wanted to separate the sites where I could rely on the information from those with their own agenda, often not explicit, which would bias the viewpoints expressed there. This is, of course, a difficult issue. Anyone can publish nearly anything, on the internet, with ease, or elsewhere with a bit more cost and trouble. Whom do we trust, why do we trust them, and how do we decide among the alternatives.

My first criteria were fairly simple. Sites obviously published by those supporting the cause in question were eliminated. I scanned some of them, read some of the material, and reached some conclusions about credibility. Beyond that, however, I discarded their viewpoints, assuming them to be biased in favor of the cause I was investigating, perhaps even blind to faults. I also found sites with an obvious axe to grind. I read some of this material to see what they had to say, but generally discarded their views as also biased. That left startlingly few web sites to review. I began looking at local agencies or organizations where assistance might be available. Again, there were few.

I finally settled on the state troopers after looking into assorted crisis lines, NGOs, and other groups here. Since the issue did not involve an apparent crime -- perhaps any crime -- the trooper could provide limited help. His one most interesting recommendation was to call the local police in the relevant big city (out in the 48), suggesting that they deal with far more oddities than either local or state agencies in Alaska. That seemed pretty sensible to me.

All this led me to a broader consideration. Just where does one go for independent, unbiased, reliable assistance in a situation of concern which is not a crisis? Whom can we trust?

Once upon a time, I believed that I could turn to defenders of the law: FBI, local and state police, leaders in industry and government, newspapers or other news organizations, educational institutions, and other information providers. After living through Enron and other scandals in industry including the collapse of auditing firms, assorted scandals in government including obvious fabrications in our national administration and congress, fabricated stories in major news media like the New York Times, CBS and ABC news, corruption and abuse in police agencies, and a few arrests in local educational institutions, I've come up against a real wall. I simply don't know whom to trust.

It has also dawned on me that this may be the essence of the American resistance to legislation like the patriot act. I really don't have a problem with a federal agency, even a secret court, investigating me, since I don't think there is anything to investigate, provided I can trust that the investigation is confidential and legitimate. I also believe that federal, state, and local data bases should be linked and extended across law enforcement. It's sensible to make the best use of our communications resources. But I once managed a law enforcement information system. I caught a trusted programmer, one who maintained a judicial information system, dinking with data for himself, friends, and those who paid him. Do I trust these systems? Well, no. I was there. I saw that we could not rely on our existing methods of vetting and trusting people to do "the right thing", meaning to be trustworthy and reliable.

So, to me, trust of those in positions of responsibility is in doubt. I am simply afraid that people cannot be trusted with important data. Were it used for the stated causes -- catching and prosecuting criminals -- I wouldn't object. But to put it in the hands of people who will misuse it for their own benefit or, for whatever reason, to my detriment, whether by intent or simply through ineptness, just leaves me with a chill in my spine.

I believe that we as a nation need to pay attention to the issues of trust and reliability, both in those we put in charge and in those who do the grunt work down in the guts of our support systems. This may be far more important than those grand plans of the guy who is so enamored of the title Commander-in-Chief. We ought to be able to trust SOMEONE out there. I just have to wonder who.

[Republished from my former blog site.]