neonascent

The UK security site The Register reports that the Centrelink database was “routinely searched for personal reasons by government agency employees”.

There were 790 security breaches at government agency Centrelink involving 600 staff. Staff were found to have inappropriately accessed databases containing citizens’ information.

The Centrelink database is the planned repository for Australian “Access Card” data (in effect a National ID card under a different name). Though workers have been identified and sacked regarding this security break, the investigation to catch them took two years.

It is likely that once the stakes are higher, more targetted and mallicious use of the database than simple fraud and curiousity will arise.

I’d like to direct your attention to the extraordinary dancing going on in this music video (Armi ja Danny’s “I wanna love you tender”):

The BBC reports that Natascha Kampusch, the Austrian teenager abducted and kept captive for 10 years of her, life mourns the death of her captor. The journalist is quick to point out that

Police suspect she may have been suffering from “Stockholm Syndrome” - a condition where some abductees gradually begin to sympathise with their captors.

Of course, we cannot be allowed to entertain the idea that a “normal” or “positive” emotional attachment developed from such a criminal scenario as abduction! I think it’s interesting to examine the psychoanalytic explanation for Stockholm Syndrome, as presented in its Wikipedia entry:

According to the psychoanalytic view of the syndrome, the tendency might well be the result of employing the strategy evolved by newborn babies to form an emotional attachment to the nearest powerful adult in order to maximize the probability that this adult will enable - at the very least - the survival of the child, if not also prove to be a good parental figure.

With the institution of Family touted as the foundation of a civilized society, it would be devastating to concede that it is based on simply an evolved survival instinct - familiar bonds being a throwback to psychological necessity. However, I don’t think it should really come as a surprise that this is so. Natacha’s situation brings us up against the uncomfortable question of what makes an emotional response valid - was Wolfgang Priklopil an Abductor or Father?

Wolfgang Priklopil […] effectively brought her up. He provided her with clothes, food, helped her with her studies.

Two points that could be raised to disqualify the similarity between Natascha’s so-called Stockholm Syndrome and a socially accepted/validated parent-child emotional bond. One is that she is not genetically related. I would suggest that society is quite happy to accept love expressed within a foster family. A second, which has not yet been confirmed, is that there may have been sexual contact between the abductor and Natascha. Sadly this is not unheard of within a biologically related family unit, and significantly, the expression of loyalty, love, etc of a child within an physically/sexually abusive family is another locus of diagnosed Stockholm Syndrome.

I suggest that the Stockholm Syndrome categorization of any love and attachment within a socially unacceptable scenario is used to insulate “good love” from ‘bad love”. We would like to think that love towards someone who is abusive is the result of some “psychological condition” while the love within a (nice, atomic, idealised) family is out of choice. It is possible that I am being too critical of such double-standards however; while the emotional attachment known as love is a result of psychological evolution, the primacy and value of the family unit within our society is also the result of a much more recent social evolution.

The Raw Story reports on Bush’s apparent summer reading material:

He read Albert Camus’s The Stranger, triggering a discussion about existentialism with his aides. “He found it an interesting book and a quick read,” said Mr Snow. “I don’t want to go too deep into it, but we discussed the origins of existentialism.”

This is ridiculous. I’m actually quite glad we’re not given a deeper insight into any of his conversations, as I’ve a feeling they’d be cringeworthy.

The BBC reports on a Center for Global Development report putting the Netherlands first in helping the poor. The Netherlands leads over other rich nations due to “generous investment and aid as well as measures to curb greenhouse gases”.

Other countries of note:

1. America gives the most aid, but this is the smallest in relation to the country’s economy. It is also noted that US aid is most often contingent on political or economic agreements such as the purchase of US goods.
2. The UK’s positive technology investments in developing countries are outweighed by their sale of weapons to “undemocratic governments”.
3. Japan ranks lowest out of the world’s 21 richest nations, in consideration of factors such as low aid, high import barriers and excluding immigration policy.

Boing Boing links to a local Reading paper’s article on an Anti-terror raid in connection with the recent “liquid” airline plot. The raid was on a small internet café that may have been frequented by someone involved? We can only guess.

The significance to me is that the road the café is on, Wokingham Road, used to be a habitual feeding ground for uni denizens such as myself. It’s in the centre of a high concentration of shared student houses, and at one time I had about 20 friends within a minute’s walk of this place.

It’s not often that Reading shows up in the Internation news!

The BBC reports on the obvious doctoring of Reuters news images from a Beirut photog.

Of course it is extremely likely that this is the tip of the iceberg, as the image that aroused suspicion is the worst use of Photoshop I’ve seen in a non-comedy print context.

It would be unbelievably naive to believe that no editing whatsoever goes on between camera and print. Even factually “truthful” images can be emotively weighed in one direction or another simply by altering the brightness.

To any photog visitors this is obvious: Aside from any digital manipulation, photography as an objective information source is simply an illusion. Framing (if not actual staging) of images is not only common practice; it is an unavoidable part of taking a photograph.

With regards to a common set of practices by organizations such as Reuters, there is no doubt a pragmatic choice made to accept compressed digital images in lieu of unwieldy raw format. With no knowledge of the division of labour within them, digital touch-up, cropping, and colour correction may well be the photog’s job prior to submission. However, it is possible to detect even sophisticated manipulation of images by analysing the digital file.

Failing this sort of policing policy on images, I guess the cynical take-home message for budding Photojournalists is not to neglect Photoshop skills in place of producing verity of content.

Learning for learning’s sake?

“Men have entered into the desire of learning and knowledge,… seldom sincerely to give a true account of their gift of reason, to the benifit and use of men, but as if they sought in knowledge a couch whereon to rest a searching and wandering spirit; or a terrace for a wandering and variable mind to walk up and down with a fair prospect…” Francis Bacon, The Advancement of Learning

But then again, even Bacon was keen of the advancements to the world that the Arts produced, and of course I would neither have appreciated nor even come across this quote if I hadn’t been studying Philosophy.

Approaching rapidly is the 2006 CoFA grad show. My aim is to create a space allows intuative interactivity - without an overstated and distracting use of technology. I am currently working on the design of a structure built from modular (equilateral triangle) IR sensitive lights. These lights will have behaviour embedded in them via PICs (Programmable Intergrated Chips). One of the design considerations is to allow for easy transportation, and operation independant from 240v power. This will allow it to be set up just about anywhere. I have modelled a maquette of the structure using the 3D software Maya:

An idea of the shape.

Here is an idea of the shape and relative size of the structure. (roughly 3 metres high)
The interior is fully lit for illustration; in operation the segments will not all be activated at once.

Acess and Egress via this opening.

“look it is in a field!” The modular nature of the structure allows for easy transportation, and the electronic components can be run from a car battery.

Hollow rods (probably Aluminium, though maybe cheaper plastic tubing) allow very easy setup.

The modular tiles will most probably be velcroed onto the rod frame. Other methods have been considered (for example butterfly bolted onto the rods), but the velcro will give much higher tolerance to joint alignment in quick assembly.

More design shots soon…

Here are the geometric specs of the structure:

Faces: 40 modular triangles (minus the 2 missing for entrance), 4 distended base triangles.
Rods: 5 x 13 = 65 Rods
Convex, 5-rod joins: 6
6-rod joins: 10
Base, 5-rod joins: 5
Base triangle, 5-rod joins: 5

Initial pricing rundown:

Amplified IR receiver: 40 x $3.65
PIC12F629-I/P : 40 x ~$1.30 (from Microchip Direct)
5mm Ultrabright LED: 40 x $2.40

Power consumption rundown:

PIC chip PIC12F629-I/P: 8.5 - 100(1Mhz) mA
5mm Ultrabright LED: 30 - 100(peak) mA