Isn’t it good to know that your government is keeping tabs on you by means of something called an Automated Targeting System, or ATS?
ATS is one big funky profiling system that profiles you as a terrorist based on a whole range of information about you gleaned from your flights in and out of the country. Let’s say you never get the pork for the in-flight meal. If you are always coming in from Tel Aviv, that might get you a low score. But if you are always flying in from Shiraz, Iran, that might dramatically raise your score. But if you are always also drinking the Shiraz, that might lower your score once more. And so on.
Fare Thee Well, in all your travels, and good luck on getting a low terrorist score! Remember it’s not personal – you’re being targeted by a heartless, mindless, soulless, automated data cranking system. What can go wrong?
But why should the government stop at collecting data about you from your flights in and out of the country? Well, I could tell you why, but it doesn’t matter – they WON’T stop! So let’s see what that will look like.
Fortunately my mathematics skills are still keen enough that I know exactly what it will look like. It will look like Netflix. Netflix’s founder Reed Hastings, who, like me and my homie Florence Nightingale, is/was also a mathematician, was just the other day telling Lesley Stahl how Netflix automatically knows how to recommend movies to you based on what you have already rented. I forget the exact words he used, but it boils down to this: the more you know about everybody, the more you know about anybody. The system simply learns what you will like from what the other clients currently like who have recently liked what you like now.
How will that work in practice? The government probably won’t mine Netflix’s data because it isn’t democratic enough. A potential domestic terrorist might not be willing to spend $5.99/month on DVDs when he could be using that money to stock up on fertilizer. Instead, our government will track things we get for free. Like YouTube videos.
Don’t kid yourself. All potential terrorists, even poor domestic terrorists nonfunded by foreign governments, enjoy YouTube. Because of that it will be very easy for Homeland Security to find terrorists by assembling a YouTube preferences terrorist score. In fact, it would be so easy they’re probably already doing it.
Think about it. If you think your personal iPod music list tells everybody everything they need to know about you, how much more will your YouTube video favorites do the trick? Just wait until Homeland Security’s computers get wind of your passion for 1930’s Soviet propaganda films featuring the Russian Internationale, with subtitles, or for 23-second clips of buskers in Budapest, annotated in Polish by someone who evidently speaks Polish but nevertheless chooses to call attention to her knowledge of English by calling herself tongue_lust.
What do you think it will mean to Homeland Security when their computer bank finds out you can’t resist scratchy videos of Uyghur lute players performing against backgrounds of Xinjiang Province landscapes? What it means depends on what all the other freaks out there with the exact same tastes do with their lives, and how often they get suspected of being a terrorist. If they (people you don’t know) are suspected of being terrorists, you will be too.
Here’s a stupid joke I just made up. How many Russians does it take to poison a light bulb? Answer: You are asking too many questions. Finish your soup!
Depending on whether you think my stupid joke is funny, the Bush administration can rate you on how trustworthy you are. It’s easy. I think my joke is a hoot, and the government knows I can’t be trusted. So if you like my joke, you can’t be trusted either.
Be beyond suspicion. Don’t do anything I would do.
Showing posts with label Nightingale. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Nightingale. Show all posts
Wednesday, December 6, 2006
Wednesday, November 30, 2005
Every Cloud Is Lined
Have you ever wondered how often Albert Einstein thought, “Gee, who am I kidding? I’m no Einstein.” Or how often any of his kids thought it? I wonder about things like that all the time.
The other day I saw a report that said, according to a study commissioned by some charity in England, the life expectancy of homeless people in London is lower than for people in the Victorian era.
Now, Einstein was born in the Victorian era, and he truly was an Einstein, so I’ll bet he would have known what all that meant right away, but I had to look it up.
One of the things I found out was that the life expectancy of a British guy during the “Victorian era” (a British way of saying “the years 1837 to 1901”) was around 50. Whereas the average age of homeless Londoners at death these days is around 42.
Such factoids present interesting possibilities for political interpretation, or spin, or whatever you choose to call it. A former acquaintance once told me that she hated living in the present and wished she could travel back to simpler times, when scientists weren’t screwing life up. She said she thought that the 14th century would be “idyllic.” I think she picked the 14th century because the number 14 is big in the Kabala. It couldn’t be because of the actual 14th century, what with the Black Death and the Hundred Years War lowering life expectancy to 25 or less (in all the countries where she could speak the language.)
Here’s one way we could spin the news: Homelessness isn’t so bad. No, really. It’s better to be homeless than to live through the Black Death and the Hundred Years War. It’s almost as good as living during such an enlightened time as had telegraphs and trains and Florence Nightingale.
Now that every community in the land has to have a Ten Year Plan to End Homelessness (Philip Mangano, Bush administration “Homelessness Czar,” isn’t into the Kabala, he’s into the number of fingers on his hands) I look forward to the new creative ways that people will assess progress on this front when the homelessness that was supposed to have ended hasn’t. “Being homeless was always better than living in the 14th century, but worse than living during the Victorian era. But it’s now as good as life under Edward VII. Give us another ten years and being homeless could get as good as living through the Great Depression.”
Unfortunately, it turns out that being homeless is a lot worse than that British news report would indicate. There’s a problem with the conclusion of the study it mentions, having to do with averages.
Recently I said I love averages. This is one of those times when the appearance of averages makes me all tingly and excited.
It turns out that when folks work out the life expectancy of people in the Victorian era, or the 14th century, or any other period in history, the number they crank out refers to the life expectancy of anyone born. That means high rates of childhood deaths drive the average life expectancy way down.
It turns out that if you survived childhood during the Victorian era you could actually expect to live well past 60. In fact, even during the dreaded 14th century, if you were a member of the British aristocracy and you made it to 21 by around 1340 you could expect to live an additional 24 years to age 45, beating out our present day London homeless by 3 years, in spite of the Black Death!
“So what are you trying to say, Wes?” What I’m trying to say is, looking at things on the bright side gets harder every day. What I’m trying to say is, maybe the Black Death wasn’t so bad.
What I’m trying to say is, when you see everything in perspective, you really begin to appreciate modern anesthetics.
The other day I saw a report that said, according to a study commissioned by some charity in England, the life expectancy of homeless people in London is lower than for people in the Victorian era.
Now, Einstein was born in the Victorian era, and he truly was an Einstein, so I’ll bet he would have known what all that meant right away, but I had to look it up.
One of the things I found out was that the life expectancy of a British guy during the “Victorian era” (a British way of saying “the years 1837 to 1901”) was around 50. Whereas the average age of homeless Londoners at death these days is around 42.
Such factoids present interesting possibilities for political interpretation, or spin, or whatever you choose to call it. A former acquaintance once told me that she hated living in the present and wished she could travel back to simpler times, when scientists weren’t screwing life up. She said she thought that the 14th century would be “idyllic.” I think she picked the 14th century because the number 14 is big in the Kabala. It couldn’t be because of the actual 14th century, what with the Black Death and the Hundred Years War lowering life expectancy to 25 or less (in all the countries where she could speak the language.)
Here’s one way we could spin the news: Homelessness isn’t so bad. No, really. It’s better to be homeless than to live through the Black Death and the Hundred Years War. It’s almost as good as living during such an enlightened time as had telegraphs and trains and Florence Nightingale.
Now that every community in the land has to have a Ten Year Plan to End Homelessness (Philip Mangano, Bush administration “Homelessness Czar,” isn’t into the Kabala, he’s into the number of fingers on his hands) I look forward to the new creative ways that people will assess progress on this front when the homelessness that was supposed to have ended hasn’t. “Being homeless was always better than living in the 14th century, but worse than living during the Victorian era. But it’s now as good as life under Edward VII. Give us another ten years and being homeless could get as good as living through the Great Depression.”
Unfortunately, it turns out that being homeless is a lot worse than that British news report would indicate. There’s a problem with the conclusion of the study it mentions, having to do with averages.
Recently I said I love averages. This is one of those times when the appearance of averages makes me all tingly and excited.
It turns out that when folks work out the life expectancy of people in the Victorian era, or the 14th century, or any other period in history, the number they crank out refers to the life expectancy of anyone born. That means high rates of childhood deaths drive the average life expectancy way down.
It turns out that if you survived childhood during the Victorian era you could actually expect to live well past 60. In fact, even during the dreaded 14th century, if you were a member of the British aristocracy and you made it to 21 by around 1340 you could expect to live an additional 24 years to age 45, beating out our present day London homeless by 3 years, in spite of the Black Death!
“So what are you trying to say, Wes?” What I’m trying to say is, looking at things on the bright side gets harder every day. What I’m trying to say is, maybe the Black Death wasn’t so bad.
What I’m trying to say is, when you see everything in perspective, you really begin to appreciate modern anesthetics.
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