What's all this Fox vs. daily KOS stuff?

Here's an interesting take on it:

FOX: time to fight back

By Rick Perlstein on July 26, 2007 - 4:44pm.

Debra Bowen comes through for us

physorg.com

Review finds potential flaws in voting systems

Flaws that leave electronic voting machines vulnerable to security attacks were discovered by University of California researchers as part of an unprecedented "Top-to-Bottom Review" of the systems commissioned by California Secretary of State Debra Bowen.

The review, begun May 31, was designed to restore the public's confidence in the integrity of the electoral process and to ensure that California voters are being asked to cast their ballots on machines that are secure, accurate, reliable and accessible. Bowen released key findings of the "Red Team" part of the review on July 27. Other sections of the review dealing with source code, voting system documentation and accessibility are to be made public later.

The red teams were able to compromise the physical and software security of all three systems tested. The researchers noted, however, that protecting the security of the voting process entails more than ensuring the security of the voting machines.

"Our task was to analyze the machines, but those machines are just one piece of what makes an election secure," said Matt Bishop, professor of computer science at UC Davis, who led the Red Team review. "In my 30 years in this field, I've never seen a system that was perfectly secure, but proper policies and procedures can substantially improve the security of systems. Paper ballots aren't perfect, either, but we've been working with them longer so we know more about how to control the weaknesses in a paper-based system."

Bishop will testify today, Monday, July 30, at a public hearing on the review at the Secretary of State's office in Sacramento.

The three electronic voting systems examined were made by Diebold Elections Systems, Sequoia Voting Systems and Hart InterCivic, respectively. The voting systems are used in 43 of the 58 counties in California by 9 million of the state's 15.7 million registered voters.

The researchers said that many of the security problems they encountered were fairly similar across the three systems.

"The problem with the systems should have been detected early in their development," said Bishop. "There are ways to develop and implement systems that resist compromise much better than the systems we examined. Many of these safeguards are taught in undergraduate and graduate computer security courses, but it was clear they were not used effectively in the electronic voting systems we evaluated."
The Red Team testers were able to bypass the machines' tamper-resistant seals and locks, physically gaining access to the memory cards that store the votes. Such a vulnerability could potentially be exploited on Election Day, the researchers said.

"In many cases, this could be done in less than a minute, and in a way that would not necessarily be noticed by poll workers, particularly if there are privacy shields and curtains blocking their view of the voter," said Bishop.

Once inside the machine, the researchers noted that an individual could then switch out the memory cards. Such a breach might be detected if procedures are in place to compare the memory cards with the votes stored in the machine's internal memory and with the paper trail that is required in California, the researchers said.

While the Red Team benefited from the work by the source code team, led by David Wagner, associate professor of computer science at UC Berkeley, the researchers emphasized that knowledge of a voting system's source code, while helpful, is not critical to breaking down its security barriers.

"Keeping the source code and other system information secret provides a false sense of security for the systems," said Bishop. "We really only had five weeks to try to penetrate the machines' defenses, but people intent on breaking through the security would spend as much time as necessary to find holes to exploit."

The review also notes that all systems are vulnerable to tampering by people who have access to the machines when votes are tabulated. However, this requires a high level of access, and most counties have careful controls over the people who have access to voting equipment.

Another problem is the potential for the sabotage of machines before an election. Technical glitches in electronic voting machines can take hours to fix, leading to long lines and potentially disenfranchised voters who might be unable to wait, the researchers said.

The 42 members of the UC Davis and UC Berkeley research teams included internationally recognized experts in computer science, computer security, electronic voting, law and public policy. Team members included faculty, post-doctoral scholars, graduate students, and other experts from UC Santa Barbara, Princeton University and other universities, as well as experts from industry, including Consilium, LLC.

Other components of the project include a review of electronic voting system documentation to determine whether those materials are complete and consistent, and an evaluation of system accessibility for voters with disabilities and with special language requirements. The entire report is available online at http://www.sos.ca.gov/elections/elections_vsr.htm.

Source: University of California - Davis

Tricorder invented - again!

Scientists Invent Real-life 'Tricorder' For Chemical Analysis

Science Daily — Purdue University researchers have created a handheld sensing system its creators liken to Star Trek's "tricorder" used to analyze the chemical components of alien worlds. But the system could have down-to-earth applications, such as testing foods for dangerous bacterial contaminants including salmonella, which was recently found in a popular brand of peanut butter.

Researchers at Purdue have created a miniature mass spectrometer that promises to have applications in everything from airport security to medical diagnostics. Pictured here is a prototype, the Mini 10 portable mass spectrometer, which is roughly the size of a shoebox and can easily be carried with one hand. The instrument is 13.5 inches long by 8.5 inches wide by 7.5 inches tall and weighs 10 kilograms (22 pounds), compared to about 30 times that weight for a conventional mass spectrometer. It also can run on battery power. (Credit: Purdue News Service photo/David Umberger)

Oddly enough, I blogged about a similar invention March of last year (and the news release came out a year before that)...that one was a variation of what's known as a Raman Spectroscope, supposedly just larger than a cell phone, and projected to be available June of last year for a few thousand dollars.

I spent a few minutes cruising through the pipes of the internet and found that

the Tricorder is available NOW!

Innovative Chemical Identification Products for Security and Safety

The rapid identification of potentially hazardous materials including toxic industrial chemicals (TICs), toxic industrial materials (TIMs), explosives, drugs and narcotics is becoming increasing critical to military and civilian first responders.

http://www.ahuracorp.com/first_defender.html

FirstDefender is an all-optical system based on Raman spectroscopy. Key benefits include: Vast sample library including: explosives, toxic chemicals, white-powders, narcotics, contraband and forensics Mixture analysis software identifies the components of mixtures in seconds, extending the library to billions of combinations Lightweight – Less than 4 lbs, including battery and internal computer 5 Hour operational battery life Rugged, waterproof and chemically resilient Operates over wide temperature range (-20C to 40C) Dual mode (in sample vials or directly onto sample) No calibration and no consumables Operates through glass bottles and plastic bags without opening them 24/7 support Integrated NIOSH and CAMEO database for on-the-spot reference

Organic farming better all the way around

University of Michigban News Service:

July 10, 2007

Organic farming can feed the world, U-M study shows

ANN ARBOR, Mich.—Organic farming can yield up to three times as much food on individual farms in developing countries, as low-intensive methods on the same land—according to new findings which refute the long-standing claim that organic farming methods cannot produce enough food to feed the global population.

Researchers from the University of Michigan found that in developed countries, yields were almost equal on organic and conventional farms. In developing countries, food production could double or triple using organic methods, said Ivette Perfecto, professor at U-M's School of Natural Resources and Environment, and one the study's principal investigators. Catherine Badgley, research scientist in the Museum of Paleontology, is a co-author of the paper along with several current and former graduate and undergraduate students from U-M.

"My hope is that we can finally put a nail in the coffin of the idea that you can’t produce enough food through organic agriculture," Perfecto said.

In addition to equal or greater yields, the authors found that those yields could be accomplished using existing quantities of organic fertilizers, without putting more farmland into production.

The idea to undertake an exhaustive review of existing data about yields and nitrogen availability was fueled in a roundabout way, when Perfecto and Badgley were teaching a class about the global food system and visiting farms in Southern Michigan.

"We were struck by how much food the organic farmers would produce," Perfecto said. The researchers set about compiling data from published literature to investigate the two chief objections to organic farming: low yields and lack of organically acceptable nitrogen sources.

Their findings refute those key arguments, Perfecto said, and confirm that organic farming is less environmentally harmful yet can potentially produce more than enough food. This is especially good news for developing countries, where it’s sometimes impossible to deliver food from outside, so farmers must supply their own. Yields in developing countries could increase dramatically by switching to organic farming, Perfecto said.

While that seems counterintuitive, it makes sense because in developing countries, many farmers still do not have the access to the expensive fertilizers and pesticides that farmers use in developed countries to produce those high yields, she said.

After comparing yields of organic and non-organic farms, the researchers looked at nitrogen availability. To do so, they multiplied the current farm land area by the average amount of nitrogen available for production crops if so-called "green manures" were planted between growing seasons. Green manures are cover crops which are plowed into the soil to provide natural soil amendments. They found that planting green manures between growing seasons provided enough nitrogen to replace synthetic fertilizers.

Organic farming is important because conventional agriculture—which involves high-yielding plants, mechanized tillage, synthetic fertilizers and biocides—is so detrimental to the environment, Perfecto said. For instance, fertilizer runoff from conventional agriculture is the chief culprit in creating dead zones—low oxygen areas where marine life cannot survive. Proponents of organic farming argue that conventional farming also causes soil erosion, greenhouse gas emission, increased pest resistance and loss of biodiversity.

For their analysis, researchers defined the term organic as: practices referred to as sustainable or ecological; that utilize non-synthetic nutrient cycling processes; that exclude or rarely use synthetic pesticides; and sustain or regenerate the soil quality.

Perfecto said the idea that people would go hungry if farming went organic is "ridiculous."

"Corporate interest in agriculture and the way agriculture research has been conducted in land grant institutions, with a lot of influence by the chemical companies and pesticide companies as well as fertilizer companies—all have been playing an important role in convincing the public that you need to have these inputs to produce food," she said.

Ethanol - the scam side of the story

marketoracle.co.uk:

Buy Feed Corn: They're about to stop making it…

Commodities / Ethanol Jul 25, 2007 - 08:51 AM

By: F_William_Engdahl

[. . .]

The green claims for bio-fuel as a friendly and better fuel than gasoline are at best dubious, if not outright fraudulent. Depending on who runs the tests, ethanol has little if any effect on exhaust-pipe emissions in current car models. It has significant emission, however, of some toxins including formaldehyde and acetaldehyde, a suspected neurotoxin which has been banned as carcinogenic in California .

Ethanol is not some benign substance as we are led to think from the industry propaganda. It is highly corrosive to pipelines as well as to seals and fuel systems of existing car or other gasoline engines. It requires special new gas pumps. All that conversion costs money.

But the killer-diller about ethanol is that it holds at least 30% less energy per gallon than normal gasoline, translating into a loss in fuel economy per gallon of at least 25% over gasoline for an Ethanol E-85% blend. No advocate of the ethanol boondoggle addresses the huge social cost which is beginning to hit the dining room tables across the US , Europe and the rest of the world. Food prices are exploding as corn, soybeans and all cereal grain prices are going through the roof because of the astronomical—Congress-driven—demand for corn to burn for bio-fuel.

This year the Massachusetts Institute of Technology issued a report concluding that using corn-based ethanol instead of gasoline will have no impact on greenhouse gas emissions, and would even expand fossil fuel use due to increased demand for fertilizer and irrigation to expand acreage of ethanol crops. And according to MIT “natural gas consumption is 66% of total corn ethanol production energy,” meaning huge new strains on natural gas supply, pushing prices there higher.

The idea that the world can “grow” out of oil dependency with bio-fuels is the PR hype being used to sell what is shaping up to be the mist dangerous threat to the planet's food supply since creation of patented genetically manipulated corn and crops.

[. . .]

Prof. M.A. Altieri of Berkeley University estimates that dedicating all USA corn and soybean production acreage to bio-fuels would only meet 12% of gasoline and 6% of diesel needs. He notes that though one-fifth of last year's corn harvest went to bio-ethanol, it met a mere 3% of energy needs. But the farmland is converting at a record pace. In 2006 more than 50% of Iowa and South Dakota corn went to ethanol refineries. Farmers across the Midwest , desperate for more income after years of depressed corn prices, are abandoning traditional crop rotation to grow exclusively soybeans or corn with dramatic added impact on soil erosion and needs for added chemical pesticides. In the US some 41% of all herbicides used are already applied to corn. Monsanto and other makers of glyphosate herbicides like Roundup are clearly smiling on the way to the bank.

[. . .]

Big oil is also driving the bio-fuels bandwagon. Prof. David Pimentel of Cornell University and other scientists claim that net energy output from bio-ethanol fuel is less than the fossil fuel energy used to produce the ethanol. Measuring all energy inputs to produce ethanol from production of nitrogen fertilizer to energy needed to clean the considerable waste from bio-fuel refineries, Pimintel's research showed a net energy loss of 22% for bio-fuel—they use more energy than they produce. That translates into little threat to oil demand and huge profit for clever oil giants that re-profile themselves as “green energy” producers.

So it's little wonder that ExxonMobil, Chevron and BP are all into bio-fuels. This past May, BP announced the largest ever R&D grant to a university, $500 million to the University of California-Berkeley to fund BP-dictated R&D into alternative energy including bio-fuels. Stanford's Global Climate and Energy Program got $100 million from ExxonMobil; University of California-Davis got $25 million from Chevron for its Bio-energy Research Group. Princeton University 's Carbon Mitigation Initiative takes $15 million from BP.

Let's plug into the trees

This looks bogus, but it sure is interesting...

from Mass High Tech

Plugged in: Startup hopes to tap electricity from trees

Mass High Tech: The Journal of New England Technology - January 6, 2006

by Christopher Calnan

Don't tell MagCap Engineering's president he's barking up the wrong business model.

His Canton company claims to be developing a process of generating electricity from living trees and is working with an unidentified business in The Netherlands as a possible investor.

But local energy experts have questions about the concept behind the proposal. MagCap Engineering LLC wants to patent a process that converts the natural energy of a tree to usable direct-current electricity, company President Chris Lagadinos said.

He expects to find investors to help pay for the research needed to figure a way to increase the tree power from less than 2 volts to 12 volts sometime this year, creating an alternative to fossil fuels.

Jim Manwell, director of the University of Massachusetts Amherst's Renewable Energy Resource Laboratory, questioned the potential of MagCap's plans. "I'm wildly skeptical," he said. "I would need to see proof before I believed it. It strikes me as pretty questionable for a number of reasons."

MagCap announced the project Dec. 20 and was subsequently inundated with inquiries, Lagadinos said.

"It's been a zoo, the e-mails we've been getting - (we've) been swamped with contacts (from) all over the world. Most of them verified our results to find out we're for real," he said.

Lagadinos declined to name the potential investor. But he said the Dutch company is in the energy-storage business.

Lagadinos said he didn't know how much it would cost to develop the technology nor how long it would take to produce the 12-volt electricity. "I'm hoping within 2006," he said.

MagCap is developing the system with an Illinois-based inventor named Gordon Wadle. Wadle was not available for comment.

Dwayne Breger, manager of the renewable energy and climate change group at the Massachusetts Division of Energy Resources, said he has questions about the source of the energy and whether the process would damage trees.

"My reaction is that it sounds too good to be true," he said. "But I'm interested in seeing what they're able to come up with. What they need to demonstrate is that there's a sustainable energy source over time without a degradation to the tree." MagCap, which was founded in 1969, lists Raytheon Co., Thales Broadcast & Multimedia, Lockheed-Martin Corp. and British Aerospace as some of its customers.

Wadle became interested in the concept while studying lightning coming from the ground, "which led him to believe that there's some type of power emanating from earth, which led him to trees," Lagadinos said.

He said Wadle has worked on the project about one year and enlisted MagCap nine months ago. Lagadinos wasn't sure why Wadle selected MagCap for the project.

Boston-based law firm Mintz, Levin, Cohn, Ferris, Glovsky and Popeo PC filed a patent application with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, Lagadinos said.

Mintz Levin patent attorney Jason Mirabito said he wouldn't have filed the application if he didn't have a reasonable amount of confidence in MagCap's concept. He filed the patent application in early December and expects the approval process to take about three years. Mirabito acknowleged the uniqueness of MagCap's proposal.

"This is really something out of left field," he said. "In my 25 years of practicing patent law, I've never seen anything like this."

Lagadonis said tests have generated 0.8 volts to 1.2 volts by driving an aluminum roofing nail half an inch into a tree attached to a copper water pipe driven 7 inches into the ground. But the electricity is useless because it's unstable and fluctuates.

The trick will be to learn how to filter and stabilize the electricity so it can be used to charge batteries, Lagadinos said.

"It's a renewable source and it's an unlimited source," he said. "It's virtually untapped. The issue is clean energy and it's readily available. There are trees everywhere."

Manwell said his skepticism is science-based.

"There's a fundamental law of physics," he said. "The energy has to come from somewhere."

Meat as a major energy drain and source of CO2

from New Scientist: Environment:

Meat is Murder on the Environment
18 July 2007
Newscientist.com news service
Daniele Fanelli

A kilogram of beef is responsible for more greenhouse gas emissions and other pollution than driving for 3 hours while leaving all the lights on back home.

This is among the conclusions of a study by Akifumi Ogino of the National Institute of Livestock and Grassland Science in Tsukuba, Japan, and colleagues, which has assessed the effects of beef production on global warming, water acidification and eutrophication, and energy consumption. The team looked at calf production, focusing on animal management and the effects of producing and transporting feed. By combining this information with data from their earlier studies on the impact of beef fattening systems, the researchers were able to calculate the total environmental load of a portion of beef.

Their analysis showed that producing a kilogram of beef leads to the emission of greenhouse gases with a warming potential equivalent to 36.4 kilograms of carbon dioxide. It also releases fertilising compounds equivalent to 340 grams of sulphur dioxide and 59 grams of phosphate, and consumes 169 megajoules of energy (Animal Science Journal, DOI: 10.1111/j.1740-0929.2007.00457.x). In other words, a kilogram of beef is responsible for the equivalent of the amount of CO₂ emitted by the average European car every 250 kilometres, and burns enough energy to light a 100-watt bulb for nearly 20 days.

The calculations, which are based on standard industrial methods of meat production in Japan, did not include the impact of managing farm infrastructure and transporting the meat, so the total environmental load is higher than the study suggests.

Most of the greenhouse gas emissions are in the form of methane released from the animals' digestive systems, while the acid and fertilising substances come primarily from their waste. Over two-thirds of the energy goes towards producing and transporting the animals' feed.

Possible interventions, the authors suggest, include better waste management and shortening the interval between calving by one month. This latter measure could reduce the total environmental load by nearly 6 per cent. A Swedish study in 2003 suggested that organic beef, raised on grass rather than concentrated feed, emits 40 per cent less greenhouse gases and consumes 85 per cent less energy.

"Methane emissions from beef cattle are declining, thanks to innovations in feeding practices," says Karen Batra of the National Cattlemen's Beef Association in Centennial, Colorado. "Everybody is trying to come up with different ways to reduce carbon footprints," says Su Taylor of the Vegetarian Society in the UK: "But one of the easiest things you can do is to stop eating meat."

From issue 2613 of New Scientist magazine, 18 July 2007, page 15

This is not the NASA I grew up with

I had to check to make sure this wasn't an April Fools story...

Agence France-Presse:

Security scare, drunkeness report, hit US space shuttle program

27/07/2007 06h40

WASHINGTON (AFP) - NASA's space shuttle program was once again in crisis as officials found a sabotaged computer meant for an imminent mission, and a trade magazine reported astronauts had been drunk on duty.

The tampered computer was due to be installed on the US space shuttle Endeavour for an August mission to work on the International Space Station.

"One of our subcontractors noticed that a network box for the shuttle had appeared to be tampered with," NASA spokeswoman Katherine Trinidad told AFP on Thursday. "It is intentional damage to hardware."

She said workers who discovered the computer damage at the subcontractor's facility -- not at NASA's -- had notified the space agency "several days ago," adding: "There is an ongoing investigation."

She gave no details of who the subcontractors were nor exactly where the damage was.

"What we are trying to do now is repair that unit and try and fly it when possible," she added.

Endeavour and a crew of seven were due for launch on August 7 from NASA's base at Cape Canaveral, Florida, for a mission aimed at continuing work on building the orbiting space laboratory.

Safety is a major concern in shuttle missions after damage sustained by the Columbia craft on launch caused it to break up on re-entry in February 2003, killing all seven astronauts on board.

Also on Thursday, the trade magazine Aviation Week & Space Technology, citing an internal NASA panel, said astronauts had been allowed to fly spacecraft while drunk on at least two occasions. It did not specify which missions had been affected.

The panel also reported "heavy use of alcohol" inside the standard 12-hour "bottle to throttle" abstinence period applied to NASA flight-crew members, the magazine said.

A NASA spokesman was not immediately available for comment, but NASA has scheduled a press conference detailing the panel findings for Friday afternoon.

In anticipation of the report's formal release, one US lawmaker was primed to seek answers from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

"If the reports of drunken astronauts being allowed to fly prove to be true, I think the agency will have a lot of explaining to do," said Bart Gordon, chairman of the House of Representatives' science and technology committee.

"That's not the 'right stuff' as far as I'm concerned," he said, alluding to a 1983 film about early NASA crews, "The Right Stuff", based on Tom Wolfe's 1979 book.

The internal NASA panel was set up to review astronaut health after astronaut Lisa Nowak in February was arrested and charged with trying to kidnap a woman who was dating another astronaut. NASA fired her in March.

NASA faced more heartbreak in April, when contractor Bill Phillips sneaked a revolver past security at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas, and barricaded himself inside a building.

He duct-taped a female co-worker to a chair and shot a male colleague dead before turning the gun on himself.

The agency also faced political pressure in May when NASA chief Michael Griffin drew fire for comments on the hot topic of harmful climate change. He publicly questioned the need to tackle global warming.

A rare bit of good news came with the successful Atlantis mission to the ISS in June, although it had been delayed three months after hail damaged the shuttle's external fuel tank as it stood on its launch pad.

The delay forced NASA to cut the number of planned shuttle flights this year from five to four.

On the August mission, Endeavour astronauts are to deliver a giant truss to be attached to the ISS, along with an external stowage platform and a Spacehab module -- a pressurized cargo carrier.

Britain AND the US...don't forget the US...

from the Daily Mail via the Iguana:

Britain is protecting the biggest heroin crop of all time

By CRAIG MURRAY - More by this author » Last updated at 20:45pm on 21st July 2007

This week the 64th British soldier to die in Afghanistan, Corporal Mike Gilyeat, was buried. All the right things were said about this brave soldier, just as, on current trends, they will be said about one or more of his colleagues who follow him next week.

The alarming escalation of the casualty rate among British soldiers in Afghanistan – up to ten per cent – led to discussion this week on whether it could be fairly compared to casualty rates in the Second World War.

Killing fields: Farmers in Afghanistan gather an opium crop which will be made into heroin

But the key question is this: what are our servicemen dying for? There are glib answers to that: bringing democracy and development to Afghanistan, supporting the government of President Hamid Karzai in its attempt to establish order in the country, fighting the Taliban and preventing the further spread of radical Islam into Pakistan.

But do these answers stand up to close analysis?

There has been too easy an acceptance of the lazy notion that the war in Afghanistan is the 'good' war, while the war in Iraq is the 'bad' war, the blunder. The origins of this view are not irrational. There was a logic to attacking Afghanistan after 9/11.

Afghanistan was indeed the headquarters of Osama Bin Laden and his organisation, who had been installed and financed there by the CIA to fight the Soviets from 1979 until 1989. By comparison, the attack on Iraq – which was an enemy of Al Qaeda and no threat to us – was plainly irrational in terms of the official justification.

So the attack on Afghanistan has enjoyed a much greater sense of public legitimacy. But the operation to remove Bin Laden was one thing. Six years of occupation are clearly another.

Head of the Afghan armed forces: General Abdul Rashid Dostrum

Few seem to turn a hair at the officially expressed view that our occupation of Iraq may last for decades.

Lib Dem leader Menzies Campbell has declared, fatuously, that the Afghan war is 'winnable'.

Afghanistan was not militarily winnable by the British Empire at the height of its supremacy. It was not winnable by Darius or Alexander, by Shah, Tsar or Great Moghul. It could not be subdued by 240,000 Soviet troops. But what, precisely, are we trying to win?

In six years, the occupation has wrought one massive transformation in Afghanistan, a development so huge that it has increased Afghan GDP by 66 per cent and constitutes 40 per cent of the entire economy. That is a startling achievement, by any standards. Yet we are not trumpeting it. Why not?

The answer is this. The achievement is the highest harvests of opium the world has ever seen.

The Taliban had reduced the opium crop to precisely nil. I would not advocate their methods for doing this, which involved lopping bits, often vital bits, off people. The Taliban were a bunch of mad and deeply unpleasant religious fanatics. But one of the things they were vehemently against was opium.

That is an inconvenient truth that our spin has managed to obscure. Nobody has denied the sincerity of the Taliban's crazy religious zeal, and they were as unlikely to sell you heroin as a bottle of Johnnie Walker.

They stamped out the opium trade, and impoverished and drove out the drug warlords whose warring and rapacity had ruined what was left of the country after the Soviet war.

That is about the only good thing you can say about the Taliban; there are plenty of very bad things to say about them. But their suppression of the opium trade and the drug barons is undeniable fact.

Now we are occupying the country, that has changed. According to the United Nations, 2006 was the biggest opium harvest in history, smashing the previous record by 60 per cent. This year will be even bigger.

Our economic achievement in Afghanistan goes well beyond the simple production of raw opium. In fact Afghanistan no longer exports much raw opium at all. It has succeeded in what our international aid efforts urge every developing country to do. Afghanistan has gone into manufacturing and 'value-added' operations.

It now exports not opium, but heroin. Opium is converted into heroin on an industrial scale, not in kitchens but in factories. Millions of gallons of the chemicals needed for this process are shipped into Afghanistan by tanker. The tankers and bulk opium lorries on the way to the factories share the roads, improved by American aid, with Nato troops.

How can this have happened, and on this scale? The answer is simple. The four largest players in the heroin business are all senior members of the Afghan government – the government that our soldiers are fighting and dying to protect.

When we attacked Afghanistan, America bombed from the air while the CIA paid, armed and equipped the dispirited warlord drug barons – especially those grouped in the Northern Alliance – to do the ground occupation. We bombed the Taliban and their allies into submission, while the warlords moved in to claim the spoils. Then we made them ministers.

President Karzai is a good man. He has never had an opponent killed, which may not sound like much but is highly unusual in this region and possibly unique in an Afghan leader. But nobody really believes he is running the country. He asked America to stop its recent bombing campaign in the south because it was leading to an increase in support for the Taliban. The United States simply ignored him. Above all, he has no control at all over the warlords among his ministers and governors, each of whom runs his own kingdom and whose primary concern is self-enrichment through heroin.

My knowledge of all this comes from my time as British Ambassador in neighbouring Uzbekistan from 2002 until 2004. I stood at the Friendship Bridge at Termez in 2003 and watched the Jeeps with blacked-out windows bringing the heroin through from Afghanistan, en route to Europe.

I watched the tankers of chemicals roaring into Afghanistan.

Yet I could not persuade my country to do anything about it. Alexander Litvinenko – the former agent of the KGB, now the FSB, who died in London last November after being poisoned with polonium 210 – had suffered the same frustration over the same topic.

There are a number of theories as to why Litvinenko had to flee Russia. The most popular blames his support for the theory that FSB agents planted bombs in Russian apartment blocks to stir up anti-Chechen feeling.

But the truth is that his discoveries about the heroin trade were what put his life in danger. Litvinenko was working for the KGB in St Petersburg in 2001 and 2002. He became concerned at the vast amounts of heroin coming from Afghanistan, in particular from the fiefdom of the (now) Head of the Afghan armed forces, General Abdul Rashid Dostum, in north and east Afghanistan.

Dostum is an Uzbek, and the heroin passes over the Friendship Bridge from Afghanistan to Uzbekistan, where it is taken over by President Islam Karimov's people. It is then shipped up the railway line, in bales of cotton, to St Petersburg and Riga.

The heroin Jeeps run from General Dostum to President Karimov. The UK, United States and Germany have all invested large sums in donating the most sophisticated detection and screening equipment to the Uzbek customs centre at Termez to stop the heroin coming through.

But the convoys of Jeeps running between Dostum and Karimov are simply waved around the side of the facility.

Litvinenko uncovered the St Petersburg end and was stunned by the involvement of the city authorities, local police and security services at the most senior levels. He reported in detail to President Vladimir Putin. Putin is, of course, from St Petersburg, and the people Litvinenko named were among Putin's closest political allies. That is why Litvinenko, having miscalculated badly, had to flee Russia.

I had as little luck as Litvinenko in trying to get official action against this heroin trade. At the St Petersburg end he found those involved had the top protection. In Afghanistan, General Dostum is vital to Karzai's coalition, and to the West's pretence of a stable, democratic government.

Opium is produced all over Afghanistan, but especially in the north and north-east – Dostum's territory. Again, our Government's spin doctors have tried hard to obscure this fact and make out that the bulk of the heroin is produced in the tiny areas of the south under Taliban control. But these are the most desolate, infertile rocky areas. It is a physical impossibility to produce the bulk of the vast opium harvest there.

That General Dostum is head of the Afghan armed forces and Deputy Minister of Defence is in itself a symbol of the bankruptcy of our policy. Dostum is known for tying opponents to tank tracks and running them over. He crammed prisoners into metal containers in the searing sun, causing scores to die of heat and thirst.

Since we brought 'democracy' to Afghanistan, Dostum ordered an MP who annoyed him to be pinned down while he attacked him. The sad thing is that Dostum is probably not the worst of those comprising the Karzai government, or the biggest drug smuggler among them.

Our Afghan policy is still victim to Tony Blair's simplistic world view and his childish division of all conflicts into 'good guys' and 'bad guys'. The truth is that there are seldom any good guys among those vying for power in a country such as Afghanistan. To characterise the Karzai government as good guys is sheer nonsense.

Why then do we continue to send our soldiers to die in Afghanistan? Our presence in Afghanistan and Iraq is the greatest recruiting sergeant for Islamic militants. As the great diplomat, soldier and adventurer Lieutenant-Colonel Sir Alexander Burnes pointed out before his death in the First Afghan War in 1841, there is no point in a military campaign in Afghanistan as every time you beat them, you just swell their numbers. Our only real achievement to date is falling street prices for heroin in London.

Remember this article next time you hear a politician calling for more troops to go into Afghanistan. And when you hear of another brave British life wasted there, remember you can add to the casualty figures all the young lives ruined, made miserable or ended by heroin in the UK.

They, too, are casualties of our Afghan policy.

Welcome, returning visitors!

So, who do I know in Lake Forest, California, or Mt. Laurel, New Jersey?




Just wondering, that's all. It's an indication of the utter obscurity of this blog that I actually now recognize the addresses of the handful of regulars who stop by here. I will attempt to continue to be entertaining enough to warrant your continued curiosity.

Paint-on solar cells a step closer to reality

more from Physorg.com:

Researchers at New Jersey Institute of Technology have developed an inexpensive solar cell that can be painted or printed on flexible plastic sheets.

NJIT researchers develop inexpensive,
easy process to produce solar panels.
Credit: New Jersey Institute of Technology

“The process is simple,” said lead researcher and author Somenath Mitra, PhD, professor and acting chair of NJIT’s Department of Chemistry and Environmental Sciences. “Someday homeowners will even be able to print sheets of these solar cells with inexpensive home-based inkjet printers. Consumers can then slap the finished product on a wall, roof or billboard to create their own power stations.”

“Fullerene single wall carbon nanotube complex for polymer bulk heterojunction photovoltaic cells,” featured as the June 21, 2007 cover story of the Journal of Materials Chemistry published by the Royal Society of Chemistry, details the process.

The science goes something like this. When sunlight falls on an organic solar cell, the energy generates positive and negative charges. If the charges can be separated and sent to different electrodes, then a current flows. If not, the energy is wasted. Link cells electronically and the cells form what is called a panel, like the ones currently seen on most rooftops. The size of both the cell and panels vary. Cells can range from 1 millimeter to several feet; panels have no size limits.

The solar cell developed at NJIT uses a carbon nanotubes complex, which by the way, is a molecular configuration of carbon in a cylindrical shape. The name is derived from the tube’s miniscule size. Scientists estimate nanotubes to be 50,000 times smaller than a human hair. Nevertheless, just one nanotube can conduct current better than any conventional electrical wire. “Actually, nanotubes are significantly better conductors than copper,” Mitra added.

Mitra and his research team took the carbon nanotubes and combined them with tiny carbon Buckyballs (known as fullerenes) to form snake-like structures. Buckyballs trap electrons, although they can’t make electrons flow. Add sunlight to excite the polymers, and the buckyballs will grab the electrons. Nanotubes, behaving like copper wires, will then be able to make the electrons or current flow.

“Using this unique combination in an organic solar cell recipe can enhance the efficiency of future painted-on solar cells,” said Mitra. “Someday, I hope to see this process become an inexpensive energy alternative for households around the world.”

Really really high speed Wifi

from the invaluable Physorg.com:

Scientists at the Georgia Electronic Design Center (GEDC) at Georgia Tech are investigating the use of extremely high radio frequencies (RF) to achieve broad bandwidth and high data transmission rates over short distances.

Within three years, this “multi-gigabit wireless” approach could result in a bevy of personal area network (PAN) applications, including next generation home multimedia and wireless data connections able to transfer an entire DVD in seconds.

The research focuses on RF frequencies around 60 gigahertz (GHz), which are currently unlicensed -- free for anyone to use -- in the United States. GEDC researchers have already achieved wireless data-transfer rates of 15 gigabits per second (Gbps) at a distance of 1 meter, 10 Gbps at 2 meters and 5 Gbps at 5 meters.

“The goal here is to maximize data throughput to make possible a host of new wireless applications for home and office connectivity,” said Prof. Joy Laskar, GEDC director and lead researcher on the project along with Stephane Pinel.

GEDC’s multi-gigabit wireless research is expected to lend itself to two major types of applications, data and video, said Pinel, a GEDC research scientist.

Very high speed, peer-to-peer data connections could be just around the corner, he believes – available potentially in less than two years.

Devices such as external hard drives,laptop computers, MP-3 players, cell phones, commercial kiosks and others could transfer huge amounts of data in seconds. And data centers could install racks of servers without the customary jumble of wires.

“Our work represents a huge leap in available throughput,” Pinel said. “At 10 Gbps, you could download a DVD from a kiosk to your cell phone in five seconds, or you could quickly synchronize two laptops or two iPods.”

The input-output (I/O) system of current devices cannot approach such speeds.

Moreover, Pinel said, users of multi-gigabit technology could wirelessly connect to any device that currently uses Firewire or USB.

Wireless high-definition video could also be a major application of this technology. Users could keep a DVD player by their side while transmitting wirelessly to a screen 5 or 10 meters away.

(. . .)

Even when sitting on a user’s desk, Pinel stresses, a multi-gigabit wireless system would present no health concerns. For one thing, the transmitted power is extremely low, in the vicinity of 10 milliwatts or less. For another, the 60 GHz frequency is stopped by human skin and cannot penetrate the body.

The fact that multi-gigabit transmission is easily stopped enhances its practicality in an office or apartment setting, he adds. The signals will be blocked by any wall, preventing interference with neighbors’ wireless networks.

New particle in cuprate ceramics helps expain superconductivity

The more we learn, the stranger things get.
It turns out that an electron is not always just an electron...

from Physorg.com

New fundamental particles aren’t found only at Fermilab and at other particle accelerators. They also can be found hiding in plain pieces of ceramic, scientists at the University of Illinois report.

The newly formulated particle is a boson and has a charge of 2e, but does not consist of two electrons, the scientists say. The particle arises from the strong, repulsive interactions between electrons, and provides another piece of the high-temperature superconductivity puzzle.

. . .

“When this 2e boson binds with a hole, the result is a new electronic state that has a charge of e,” Phillips said. “In this case, the electron is a combination of this new state and the standard, low-energy state. Electrons are not as simple as we thought.”

The new boson is an example of an emergent phenomenon – something that can’t be seen in any of the constituents, but is present as the constituents interact with one another.

The Theoretical Idea of writing information on Atoms

In a most circuitous web-path I came across this remarkable page from, I guess, 1999:

SEARCH AIP

	Search Physics News Graphics:

Writing Words on an Atom

This computer simulation of a hydrogen atom shows an electron cloud sculpted to read the word "optics," a feat that is within the realm of possibility in the near future by using lasers to manipulate electrons within atoms.

According to quantum mechanics, electrons often don't occupy a single definite position but a cloud of possible positions around the nucleus. Only until the act of measurement does the electron assume a definite position. Until then, each point on the cloud represents a place where you might find the electron after measurement.

Shining an ultrashort UV laser pulse and lower-frequency electromagnetic waves on an atom can send one of its electrons to a high-lying "Rydberg state," in which it no longer exists as a cloud of charge enshrouding the nucleus but instead becomes a "wavepacket" that circles the atomic nucleus like a planet around a sun. Applying a series of pulses can create a set of wavepackets that combine with each other like water waves and cancel each other out at specific places to form patterns around the atom, such as the word "optics," in which points on each letter correspond to possible places for finding the electron after measurement.

Although neither this feat, nor the act of accurately measuring such spatial patterns, can yet be achieved technologically, Carlos Stroud of the University of Rochester and Michael Noel of University of Virginia point out that an electron in an n=50 Rydberg state (49 energy levels higher than the lowest state) has 2,500 possible states of angular momentum, and have shown that the states can be combined in many ways.

In recent computer simulations, researchers formed the word "optics" by calculating the electron cloud for a specially prepared n=50 state. In the image above, the intensity of the letters represents the relative probability for finding the electron at that place, and the color denotes the phase (relative point in the cycle) of the electron wave associated with that point in the cloud. (Image courtesy Carlos Stroud, University of Rochester, and Michael Noel.) This research is described by Carlos Stroud and Michael Noel in the April 1999 issue of Optics and Photonics News.

---

• Link to related Physics News Update item
  
• Link to the Carlos Stroud group's Wavepackets Home Page, with images, tutorials, and animations.

An interesting factoid about the English presence in Iraq

From the midst of a post by Chris Floyd quoting from a John Banville book report in the Guardian about John Gray's Black Mass: Apocalyptic Religion and the Death of Utopia:

Gray's critique of the war on Iraq, and especially of Blair's part in it, is devastating. His contempt is palpable in these measured and meticulously argued pages. As usual, it is the details that snag in the mind's fabric. British security firms, he writes, are reported to have some 48,000 personnel in Iraq, "outnumbering British troops by a factor of six to one". The war has been privatised, and "the ragtag army of crooks and shysters that followed in the wake of American troops is not greatly different from that which trailed behind the colonial armies of earlier times".

Feinstein's dangerous voting bill, S.1487

This is stolen direct from Mark Crispin Miller's great site:

ALERT! Hearing on Feinstein's Senate bill scheduled for 7/25!

Senate Rules Committee has scheduled hearing to receive testimony on S. 1487, "The Ballot Integrity Act of 2007"[sic]

Wednesday, July 25, 2007 at 10:00 a.m.

http://rules.senate.gov/hearings/

Sen. Feintein is apparently NOT waiting to see what happens with HR 811-or maybe the House bill will be voted on beforehand.

Now is the time to call-again-both the House, to vote NO on H.R. 811, and the Senate, to vote NO on S 1487.

Also: Call those presidential candidates who are co-sponsors of S 1487-Clinton, Obama and Dodd. Call Kennedy and Sanders, too.

Ask how they can support a bill that gives unprecedented power to private vendors and Bush/Cheney's EAC.

Mary Ann Gould

Voice of the Voters

MCM here.

As I've noted before, S 1487 is so bad it even makes Holt's bill look good.

So that you'll be armed w/ specifics when you call your representatives, those Democratic presidential candidates and Kennedy and Sanders, here, again, is the eye-opening analysis of S 1487, from John Gideon that I sent out recently:

From John Gideon:

Mark,

This deconstruction of S-1487 is very well done and we are proud to feature it on VotersUnite.Org. Here is just a small part of what Robert Bancroft has to say about Sen. Feinstein's gift to Corporate America:

http://www.votersunite.org/info/S1487Deconstruction.asp

>>snip<<>Votes are less safe, and less likely to be counted, in S.1487:

o S.1487 replaces most references to "paper ballot" with "paper record", a stinging reminder that the two are not equal.

o S.1487 removes the test of "clear and convincing evidence" with regards to tampering, making the paper records easier to ignore.

o S.1487 allows the paper ballots of an entire precinct to be ignored, if there is any hint of "mischief", while H.R.811 suggests that any tampering be considered on a machine-by-machine basis

o S.1487 deletes language in H.R.811 that requires prominent reminders for voters to double-check their paper records before casting the vote.

o S.1487 adds dangerously racist "residual benchmarks", and deletes accuracy standards established by HAVA.

o S.1487 alters disclosure requirements, to offer improved protection for corporate "trade secrets", at the expense of vote integrity.

o S.1487 permits some machines used in vote tabulation to be connected to the internet, while H.R.811 does not.

o S.1487 deletes language in H.R.811 that would require polling stations to offer real, paper ballots, as an alternative to electronic voting.

H.R.811 makes some minimal effort to constrain the role of the Commission, but S.1487 goes hog-wild:

o H.R.811 relies on the Director of the National Institute of Standards and Technology to develop best practices, but S.1487 hands that responsibility over to the Commission.

o H.R.811 would like States to play a role in the certification process. S.1487 hands control to the Commission. It even permits the Commission to break its own rules on a whim ("emergency
certification").

o H.R.811 requires disclosure between manufacturers, labs and state election officials, but S.1487 makes the Commission the central command.

o H.R.811 mandates that the Commission shall select labs at random "to the greatest extent practicable", but S.1487 weakens the language.

o H.R.811 requires the Commission to inform the public if it has "credible evidence of significant security failure at an accredited laboratory", but S.1487 deletes this, preferring such knowledge remain a secret between the lab and the Commission.

o H.R.811 tries (albeit timidly) to define some limits on the role of the Commission, but S.1487 has all such limitations deleted.

o H.R.811 allows the Director of the National Science Foundation to determine who is eligible to receive grants for research, but S.1487 gives this responsibility to the Commission.

H.R.811 has a lot more to say about audits:
o H.R.811 requires that States may not give any advance notice as to which precincts will be selected for audit. S.1487 has this line deleted.

o H.R.811 allows audits to be skipped if the winning candidate received 80% or more of the total votes, S.1487 does not.

o H.R.811 requires the entity conducting the audit to "meet the standards established by the Comptroller General to ensure the independence" of all parties, and requires that audits be performed "under generally accepted government accounting standards." S.1487 deletes all of this.

o H.R.811 attempts to outline several additional requirements for the audit, including that at least 10% of all precincts be audited in the case of a particularly close race. S.1487 suggests 2%.
o H.R.811 provides States the opportunity to develop their own audit standards, so long as the National Institute of Standards and Technology verifies the proposed method is at least as accurate as the method that H.R.811 outlines. S.1487 deletes this; why consult NIST when one can simply defer all judgment to the Commission?

o H.R.811 requires random audits, but also insists that at least one precinct from each county be audited. S.1487 deletes this safeguard.

o H.R.811 insists that the Commission adopt model audit procedures before the next Presidential election. S.1487 is content to wait until 2010.

o H.R.811 appropriates $100,000,000 to assist states in paying the cost of a rigorous audit regime. S.1487 tells States to go lay an egg.

Other assorted differences:
o S.1487 deletes several legal protections for "aggrieved persons", who have been disenfranchised, to seek remedy.

o S.1487 cuts the total research spending by $2,000,000.

o S.1487 cuts the total grants for purchase of equipment by $400,000,000.

o While H.R.811 bases funding allocation on voting age population, S.1487 bases it on the number of precincts.

o S.1487 expands and clarifies the protection of voters who speak certain languages other than English, referring to 1965 Voter Protection Act.

o S.1487 pushes back most deadlines, many not effective until after the next Presidential election.

Coelacanths in the news

I knew something was up when my statcounter page said there'd been four hits in one day on my tune, "Jeremy the Coelacanth." Sure enough, there was a news story published today that a coelacanth was caught off Zanzibar. So someone in Malaysia ( as well others in Delhi, India, Washington, and Wisconsin) read the story and, wondering what a coelacanth is, googled it and came up with my tune. I hope they are now enlightened...!

Update: More curious folk have checked in from the Philippines, Illinois, Ohio, Wisconsin, Louisiana... my, but the pipes of these internets go everywhere....!

The ruler of my own domain

I finally did it. I got my own domain.

The incentive was really Grad Nite. I had so much fun doing portraits of the kids. One of the caricaturists has done the gig there right next to me for years, Doug Shannon. He said since he got his web page up his business had gone from nearly marginal to almost more than he could handle. That inspired me to try to get my own domain and web page about doing portraits.

I've done "art web pages" before, but this time I got a domain to go with it:

http://www.stevedellamaggiora.com.

I hope I can get some work from it. I love doing my one gig each year, but it would be nice to get more!

How the Internet can take you from a scooter to a war

In the first two hours after Bush gave Scooter a "Get Out Of Jail" card, these official statements were made, in this order (from Talking Points Memo):

John Edwards:

"Only a president clinically incapable of understanding that mistakes have consequences could take the action he did today. President Bush has just sent exactly the wrong signal to the country and the world. In George Bush's America, it is apparently okay to misuse intelligence for political gain, mislead prosecutors and lie to the FBI. George Bush and his cronies think they are above the law and the rest of us live with the consequences. The cause of equal justice in America took a serious blow today."

Barack Obama:

"This decision to commute the sentence of a man who compromised our national security cements the legacy of an Administration characterized by a politics of cynicism and division, one that has consistently placed itself and its ideology above the law. This is exactly the kind of politics we must change so we can begin restoring the American people’s faith in a government that puts the country’s progress ahead of the bitter partisanship of recent years."

Harry Reid:

"The President's decision to commute Mr. Libby's sentence is disgraceful. Libby's conviction was the one faint glimmer of accountability for White House efforts to manipulate intelligence and silence critics of the Iraq War. Now, even that small bit of justice has been undone. Judge Walton correctly determined that Libby deserved to be imprisoned for lying about a matter of national security. The Constitution gives President Bush the power to commute sentences, but history will judge him harshly for using that power to benefit his own Vice President's Chief of Staff who was convicted of such a serious violation of law."

Nancy Pelosi:

The President’s commutation of Scooter Libby’s prison sentence does not serve justice, condones criminal conduct, and is a betrayal of trust of the American people.

The President said he would hold accountable anyone involved in the Valerie Plame leak case. By his action today, the President shows his word is not to be believed. He has abandoned all sense of fairness when it comes to justice, he has failed to uphold the rule of law, and he has failed to hold his Administration accountable.

Joe Biden:

Last week Vice President Cheney asserted that he was beyond the reach of the law. Today, President Bush demonstrated the lengths he would go to, ensuring that even aides to Dick Cheney are beyond the judgment of the law.

It is time for the American people to be heard.

I call for all Americans to flood the White House with phone calls tomorrow expressing their outrage over this blatant disregard for the rule of law.

Chuck Schumer:

“As Independence Day nears, we are reminded that one of the principles our forefathers fought for was equal justice under the law. This commutation completely tramples on that principle.”

John McCain's spokesman Danny Diaz, asked if he wanted to comment:

"Nope."

comment to the above statement from Schumer:
(http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/003582.php)

Posted by: deRougemont
Date: July 2, 2007 6:53 PM
Bush's commutation of Libby's prison time is a prime example of this Admin's complete disregard for the law, but as infuriating as the act was, beware of the next several days.... This morning Bush's spokesmen came out with charges that "Hizboullah" is in Iraq at the behest of Iranian government...all without proof other than "US Intell". And Bush met with Putin at Bush's Daddy's compound. (So all the players will be clear as to future actions.) We'll be at war with Iran within days and everyone will forget about Libby and the politization of law, and the fired attorneys, etc completely. (Anyone remember the Congressman and the intern's body found in the park? Which Congressman? which park?....)

This comment made me scratch my head. Intern? Congressman? sounds familiar, but the faint memories failed to congeal into any substance. Google to the rescue.

from Wikipedia:

"Condit disappeared from the news after 9/11. In spite of the allegations against him, which supposedly amounted to the worst political scandal since President Clinton's impeachment, Condit was allowed to keep his seat on the Intelligence Committee, and he did not lose his security clearance. Condit was in fact one of just a handful of members of Congress who was cleared to see the most sensitive information on the attacks."

For a splash of cold water, read the whole Wikipedia piece. You'll read about Gary, his brothers, his children, his fellow "gang of five" from the California Legislature, each and every one of them in trouble with the law. And all now completely out of the spotlight of the media.

Condit even lost his two Baskin-Robbins franchises -- they claimed he owed them money -- and then used the franchise name after it was revoked. And that was just last year.

That comment is obvious but ominous — media distractions are a given for this administration. I hope that post is not prophetic.

Spending Time in the Past with the World Wide Wait

Bonnie's Sbcglobal DSL modem died last week. We're going to experiment with Sonic.net for a year, but things don't get up to speed for another day or so. In the interim we're poking along, from 14K to 44K/second, (whoops, only one computer online at a time, thank you!) just like we did for years before the insidious pleasure of DSL entered our lives, lo, a couple of years ago.

Perhaps everyone should be forced, say once a month, to spend some time on dialup, simply to appreciate the virtue of text and recognize the bandwidth needed for graphics. Pictures are pretty, but only broadband renders them nearly instantly. There's a certain nostalgic charm to watching graphics slowly scroll into existence, but it's a charm that wears thin.

I know we got along fine on dialup when that's all we had. But now even daring to blog on dialup feels like tempting fate. I certainly won't take the time to add any photos.

Coincidentally, as DSL went out, so did my back. I awkwardly lifted my ~70 pound bass speaker one too many times into and out of the back seat of my Echo. Last weekend I watched ace keyboard guy Wayne De La Cruz load his 300 pound B-3 into the back of his van unaided. I now have an idea for a simple wooden insert that would allow me to similarly load my speaker into the car without ever having to lift more than half its weight. Why didn't I think of it sooner?