Fear Some. Better than Fear Less??

I read this morning that the NYPD have developed a scanning gun that will tell if you’re carrying a gun in your pants from 16 feet off.

My first thought was to google: terahertz wave scanner dangers…

And Voila…

From Scotty Starnes’ Blog:

MIT: Terahertz Waves Tear Apart DNA (Same Waves Used In NYPD Gun-Scanning System)

I published a story yesterday about the NYPD, and the Department of Defense, using new body scanners to conduct “virtual frisks” on the citizens of New York using Terahertz Imaging Detection. These new scanners use terahertz waves to detect if someone may be carrying a weapon. MIT published information that shows these waves can tear apart DNA.

From Technology Review:

…But what of the health effects of terahertz waves? At first glance, it’s easy to dismiss any notion that they can be damaging. Terahertz photons are not energetic enough to break chemical bonds or ionise atoms or molecules, the chief reasons why higher energy photons such as x-rays and UV rays are so bad for us. But could there be another mechanism at work?

The evidence that terahertz radiation damages biological systems is mixed. “Some studies reported significant genetic damage while others, although similar, showed none,” say Boian Alexandrov at the Center for Nonlinear Studies at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico and a few buddies. Now these guys think they know why.

Alexandrov and co have created a model to investigate how THz fields interact with double-stranded DNA and what they’ve found is remarkable. They say that although the forces generated are tiny, resonant effects allow THz waves to unzip double-stranded DNA, creating bubbles in the double strand that could significantly interfere with processes such as gene expression and DNA replication. That’s a jaw dropping conclusion.

And it also explains why the evidence has been so hard to garner. Ordinary resonant effects are not powerful enough to do do this kind of damage but nonlinear resonances can. These nonlinear instabilities are much less likely to form which explains why the character of THz genotoxic effects are probabilistic rather than deterministic, say the team.

This should set the cat among the pigeons. Of course, terahertz waves are a natural part of environment, just like visible and infrared light. But a new generation of cameras are set to appear that not only record terahertz waves but also bombard us with them. And if our exposure is set to increase, the question that urgently needs answering is what level of terahertz exposure is safe.

I don’t think I’ll be the first to say it. I miss the good old New York of the 80′s where stabbings and shootings were the norm. This brave new world of nut cancer guns is too much….

Avoid Ambiguity

I’ve been diving head first into iOS 5 since I switched over to the iPhone and I have to admit I’m hooked. It’s a steep learning curve but with iTunes U and Stanford’s Paul Hegardy helping me very strongly along the way it’s…dare I say… fun?

Also, benefiting greatly from being able to watch the same lecture over and over again is actually better than taking them live on campus and then struggling through the homework later that night under some low-wattage bulb. Of course, I will miss all the active feedback and great sweatshirts that are a part of college life, but I also would have missed the whole thing altogether if it wasn’t for iTunes and their partnership with Stanford.

In the future I hope there’ll be a way for more people to take more classes like this online and for qualified individuals to teach them from their own homes. It won’t be free, but it will be affordable.

But wait, you say, Jabberlope, you can do all that and more today at something like Phoenix; but what I’m envisioning is actually being able to turn all that self-study into a degree that matters. I’m talking about certification. Which, in the long run, is all that anyone should care to check if we’re serious about playing fair. It’s also incredibly capitalist. It says, I don’t care how you came about this knowledge, but you seem to have a mastery of it, so in that case I’m going to trust you enough to pay you some money to do a task that is integral to my own making of money. I’m talking about something like the Bar exam, but for Sociology, English, Copy-Editing, everything…

Did you know you never have to go law school to be a lawyer? Of course, it would sure help; but how cool is that? Something that a majority of the leaders of our nation started out as and you don’t have to go to college to do it. Having a great set of instructional videos is all I got at the moment, so I’m considering that a leg up from what I had last week, which was nothing. And I’m tired of whining about having no one to code my ideas.

So definitely check out those lectures if you’re at all interested in learning how to build iOS apps. They’re FREE!!

Also, some choice words I cam came along which are responsible for the title and the genesis of this report. They also prove that coders have some of the driest wit in the Northern Hemisphere.

Avoid Ambiguity (pg. 2)

Bugs are scarce where code doesn’t leave questions unanswered.

Ambiguous Messages

• -sortInfo
• -refreshTimer
• -update
• -fetchInfo:

On the surface, these methods may seem good. For example, they all have vowels. But what they share is the potential for different interpretations because of the language used.

sortInfo – returns sort info, or sort something called “info”?
refreshTimer – return a timer used for refreshing, or refresh a timer?
update – a verb? what is updated and how?
fetchInfo- fetch info about something or give info about a fetch?This is all fixed by slightly modifying the phrases.

Clear Messages:

• -currentSortInfo // “current” obviously describes the noun “sort info”
• -refreshDefaultTimer // refresh is now clearly a verb
• -updateMenuItemTitle // an action is taking place
• -infoForFetch: // now we know info is returned for a fetch

By just adding a few characters to each method, we’ve removed almost all ambiguity. And there was much rejoicing.

PS – for those just interested in just getting my bloggy blog updates at More People Like Us, feel free to join up for that list on Facebook instead of this stream which will continue to feature both MPLU and coding updates from the Jabberlope.

Top Search Terms Today

black leg hair
wake boards

Innovative RoundTail Bike Frame Cuts Vibrations 50-Fold

Wow. Now that’s some good “outside the loop” thinking.

I hate to say it looks a bit odd, but I’m sure once I rode that thing over the bump and grind of Oakland central I’d be sold…

Them're Road-bearing Hips, Mama!!

Source: http://inhabitat.com/innovative-roundtail-bike-frame-smooths-out-bumps-in-the-road/

Fix MAMP’s Sticky FTP Problem with Local WordPress Installs Quick

Time to fix: 2 mins
Time spent looking for a fix: 8 hours

WordPress User electronicink has the perfect solution for getting the FTP working on your local WordPress install, which is all the more important now that WordPress has gone to automatic updates. Just follow the instructions below and you’ll be in the clear.

http://wordpress.org/support/topic/automatic-plugin-updates-not-working-with-xampp-on-osx-needs-ftp-login#post-1644021

How to get around the auto plug in issues with MAMP:

You need to activate your ‘File Sharing’ in sys prefs.
Select ‘Options…’ button and tick ‘Share files and folders using FTP’.
Make a note of the FTP address (00.0.0.0 format).
Click ‘Done’.

Return to MAMP Pro.
Highlight your ‘wordpress’ site folder in ‘Hosts’ ‘General’ tab.
Select ‘Permissions…’ button.
Change ‘Owner’ popup button to ‘www’.
Change ‘Group’ popup button to ‘www’.
Click ‘Set’.

Finally get back to the plug in page where it asks you for your FTP details.
Enter your FTP details.
FTP Host will be just the number you noted earlier 00.0.0.0
Username and password is the database Username and password you set up in phpmyadmin for your wordpress site

I hope it works for you all now.

Electronicink

Yahoo! And it works, just like that!

Web Dev’n A’int Exactly Heaven, But I Like It…

Things have been pretty stagnant over here at the old Jabberlope. Not much moving besides the occasional prairie dog or two, and the tinkling of a web query for the photo of the homeless man popping up here and there in several google image searches.

always remember to close your head...

Which is not to say I haven’t been busy. Website design has become my salaried bread and butter; and while I’m feeling a bit tired and overworked, it’s not half bad, honestly; I’m actually learning something. Still, being the lone internet cowboy in a small outfit is tough, and boy would it be great to have a HUMAN mentor to bounce things off of. In lieu of that, I’ve got Google, and I kind of muddle along,  And sometimes, in IT, that huge particular problem comes down to a very helpful tweak of a setting or two.

So, in the interest of keeping this this space alive, and perhaps saving a few lone gun slingers on far flung shores from scratching their heads for longer than they have to, I’m going to be posting a few quick tips to things that blew my brain’s circuits out the wrong way first before I figured out it was a simple binary solution.

I hope you enjoy the change of content.

I’m always blogging for fun over at “More People Like Us”, so come check me out and leave a comment or two.

Namaste,
BT Burton

Rationalope: or, the Japperlope gets Technical

Dear Readers and Visitors to this Humble Web Space,

I have left this blog long languishing in limbo, and feeling somewhat guilty for cheating on it with my newer, sleeker Tumblr URL (which has since become my favorite residence for new fiction), have been thinking about what indeed I should do with this space, as I have been for so long operating under this handsome pseudonym, the Jabberlope.

Does one strip the redirect off and paste it to the new blog? No, I thought, that just doesn’t sound right. I can’t  slap Jabberlope onto More People Like Us, that wouldn’t be fair to either domain.

So it hit me: why not bring back the old Jabberlope as an arena for more science and less fiction? And so it will be. I hope to lend my take on the Fukushima disaster by way of an introduction, but if that doesn’t come to fruition it will certainly be something interesting.

Stay tuned, then, and don’t fret. You can always find more of my new fiction over at “More People Like Us”, my new “travel” blog, which resides at http://morepeoplelikeus.tumblr.com Here, then, will be a place to sit back and really nerd out.

Dark lasers, fast breeders, suction cups made of living organisms.
That’s only the beginning.

So strap on your strap-on’s and your goggles, and let’s get educated!

Sincerely,
The Jabberlope

Check out My Tumblr: More People Like Us

For those looking for new fresh jabberlope, swing over to my new blog, “More People Like Us”.

http://morepeoplelikeus.tumblr.com

It’s a fresh look but the same old bullshit; and for once that a’int what you dread on Monday morning.

Hope to see ya there!

A Night at the Farmhouse

Oh to skip and sing and smile in the frost frozen rural Miami landscape at 3+AM and not a car in sight. I wouldn’t have traded it for the world. Stumbling and singing to the sun porch and there’s the barn cat purring his lovies into your lap, his soft paws kneading as you sit to take a breather. Brother passed out on the sofa, ok… it’s time for bed, I said.

Happy Hunting in the Fresh Season, and may You find yourself in that perfect spot where time coalesces like a soft pudding and all the happy things rain down on you though the weather (and the weathering) may be, at times, tads inclement.

–The Jabberlope / 2011

Or Maybe I Just Needed Glasses

Riding the Bart out of Oakland I see the houses on the hill bathed in that resplendent orange sunset light and I remember that they used to look like far away forest fires from my rooftop lookout in San Francisco.

The world is on fire all around you, but here you’re safe, it seemed to say.

Or, maybe, I just needed glasses.

10.19.2010