Brain wave passwords

Wired News: Your Thoughts Are Your Password

Imagine a world where your brain waves could replace the bazillion passwords you've got to remember! Sounds like a fairy tale, doesn't it? Or science fiction. Believe it or not, if scientists from Carleton University in Ottawa have their way, it could be science fact. Every single person has their own distinct brain "signature," as distinct as our DNA. These scientists want to harness that distinctness so we might one day be able to simply use our brain waves to authenticate our identities.
It might involve actually having to think about something specific or it could be as simple as measuring your brains response to a certain stimulus. Granted both of these options are a long way off at best. Some scientists aren't convinced it could work at all, but others think it might be possible in about 20 years or so.
If it's even remotely possible, oh my goodness... What a relief that would be! I have way too many passwords to remember - PIN numbers, passwords to get into a huge number of websites, other passwords for all my email accounts... The list goes on and on. I used to keep a master list of all my passwords on my computer, but the guy who is probably the world's leading Macintosh forensics experts told me that's a bad idea. That guy just so happens to be my cousin who is the Chief Technical Officer for a company called BlackBag Technologies. When he does forensics investigations on people, their computers are the first place he looks for passwords. Forensics experts like him even have a way to search keywords in your personal files to test those out as possible passwords. When I heard that I just thought, "crap!" Needless to say, since that conversation I've changed all my passwords and I no longer keep a master list in my computer. When my cousin left Apple as the head of their IT security to go into business for himself, he wrote a goodbye letter to his former colleagues that leaked onto the Internet and has since been spread around widely. It was basically a friendly reminder for them to create good passwords and to change them often. In this letter, he told them just how long it takes to crack passwords. For instance, he wrote, "A 6 character password has about fifty six billion (56,800,235,584) possibilities and the average computer (the G5 is even faster) can try all combinations (crack them) in 2.5 hours." That was back in 2003! Practically eons ago in computer terms.
So... All this to say that I would totally welcome the use of my brain waves as passwords. It'll be one less thing to remember and all it might require is a little thought. Bring it on!!!

What? Two suns?!?!?!

Evidence mounts for sun's companion star

I knew there was something fishy about Sedna. Both it and Xena are threatening Pluto's planetary status because since their discovery, scientists have been questioning what makes a planet a planet? It turns out Xena (not its "official" name) is actually larger than Pluto.
Now scientists from the Binary Research Institute are thinking that Sedna's unusual elliptical orbit might be some kind of clue that we're actually part of a binary star system. That's when two suns are so close to each other they're bound by gravity.
Imagine if this idea had of come up hundreds of years ago. The Christian Church persecuted Galileo when he proposed that the earth revolves around the sun rather than our earth being the center of the universe. It's funny now to think what might have happened if someone, like Galileo, had suggested what would have sounded like such a preposterous idea - that our sun, and therefore our solar system, might be part of a binary star system. It sounds pretty far out now. That's only because we were raised to believe our sun was a solitary star.
It turns out more than half the stars in our galaxy have a stellar companion.
And it wasn't that long ago either that scientists wrote off possibilities of binary star systems being able to harbor earth-like planets in their orbits. Luckily, that thought process has changed in the scientific community. Although, not all binary star systems would make good candidates to have earth-like planets around one of their suns. Whether or not there might be habitable planets in a binary system depends on the distance between the two suns.
Now if it turns out our sun does indeed have a gravitational flirtation going on with another sun, that's all the more reason SETI scientists and planet hunters should try to search around good candidate binary stars... Even if it does mean we've got to change the way we view our solar(s) system.

Sexual difference for a reason.

Emotional Wiring Different in Men and Women - Yahoo! News


Women are the only ones who are able bear children. We as a species are driven to procreate. It makes sense that we women would need to be more in tune with our bodies than men. Everyone spends the first nine months of their lives inside their mother's belly. If something's off, a mother needs to know. This is where I think the difference between men and women's emotional wiring originates.
This study focuses on the amygdala. That's an almond-shaped structure found on both sides of the brain. Its primary function is to process memories for emotions. The scientist who did this current study published another one a few years ago demonstrating how when people face an emotionally-charged situation, men and women brains respond to it differently. Men process those emotional memories in the amygdala on the right side of the brain and women on the left. Fine. We deal to emotional situations differently.
Now it turns out the amygdala also acts differently between the sexes when it's not facing an emotional traumatic situation. A man's right hemisphere amygdala is more connected to sensors that respond to external events outside of the body. Whereas a woman's left hemisphere amygdala communicates with sensors that respond to what's going on inside the body. To me, this strongly suggests that men's primary emotional responsibility was for keeping an eye out for external dangers that could threaten the main evolutionary purpose of being human - to procreate. But for women, our emotional responsibility turned within to ensure a safe and healthy abode for offspring.
So while I've always joked about how it's too bad men can't help out and share the child bearing responsibility, the truth of it is they just don't have the right head space for that kind of job even if it were a remote biological possibility.
That's all right. Women are tough. And we're the only ones emotionally built to do the toughest around - having children.

Luck is a state of mind

Science & Technology at Scientific American.com: As Luck Would Have It -- Are some people really luckier than others, or is it all in their heads? Both

Luck is a perfect example of how you can create your own reality by choosing your state of mind. This article talks about one British scientist's efforts to explain luck. Why do some people feel lucky while others don't? Are those people actually more lucky? Yes. In many ways they are luckier, but it's not the type of luck that'll win anyone big bucks in the lottery. It's the luck that's self-made as a result of choosing your state of mind and how you want to view the world you live in. For example, say something crappy happens to you. You lose what you think of as a major opportunity in life. An "unlucky" person will see that as a defeat and might want to lament about how unlucky they are. Whereas a "lucky" person will look at why the opportunity didn't happen, learn from it, then find another and sometimes better opportunity. When the new opportunity comes along, people with that particular outlook with count their lucky blessings.
The psychologist who did this luck research actually tried running a Luck School to see if he could turn around people's perspectives so they too could feel lucky. He says his success rate is ~80 per cent. That's pretty damn good, even if it doesn't count for a penny at the slot machines, crap tables, or the like... But then again, maybe it's luckier for those people in the long run that random luck doesn't count. Too much money just brings problems anyway, right? Doesn't it? Whatever... There is such thing as carrying that lucky, positive attitude a bit too far.

Replacing sex is easy. But love?

Sex with a robot? Maybe not yet, but ... - Innovation - MSNBC.com

I want to ask a totally female question. Is it possible to love a robot? Not just sex, but love.... It's easy to get those two things mixed up, but they're two very different things. Sex can be just sex. Love can exist without sex. Love can develop from sex. Sex can be an expression of love. But sex isn't love. Now that that's clear, I want to bring in "the female complication." Women's orgasms can be complicated - to say the least. I'd like to bring in a piano analogy here. From a woman's perspective, there are generally two major kinds of orgasms.
By the way... If you're under 18, ask your parents if it's okay if I give you a bit of Sassy Sonya style Sex Ed 101 before you continue reading. If you're over 18, read on.
There is the sexual intercourse style orgasm sometimes generated by hitting the infamous and illusive G-spot. On the orgasm scale of the piano, hitting this orgasm is like banging on the lower keys.
The second major type is all about clitoral stimulation. That can be equated to hitting the higher keys on a piano.
The goal is to play the entire piano beautifully, which it can be done very well by an amateur. Or it can be done by a true musical genius. When that happens, it's magic. More often than not, that magic can only happen for women when love is involved.
So getting back to the topic at hand about scientists, engineers, and video game builders developing robotic sexual devices to be substitutions for the real thing. There is no doubt they can duplicate hitting the low keys on the piano, the high keys, and an amateur playing a tune. Advances in technology can definitely be good for that, but there's no way any of that stuff can replace a virtuoso creating a piece of music that'll ever take your breath away.

Ferocious dino gets wimpy name

ABC News: Huge Meat-Eating Dinosaur Discovered

Check out these headlines.
Meat-eating mega-dinosaur species found in Argentina
Scientists Find New Meat-Eating Dinosaur Bigger Than T-Rex
Jurassic Bad Boys
Pack your bags T-Rex, a new giant is movin' in
A Bigger, Badder Prehistoric Beast
After reading these headlines, you'd think they'd be about some new dino with a name to suit it - like Megasaurus or Beastosaurus or BloodDrippingBigTeethosaurus. You get the picture. I don't pretend to be any good at naming things like these, but what's with the name Mapusaurus? That's what they named it. Seriously! What? It makes me wonder if the dinosaur had some navigation system where they could develop some extremely detailed mental map in its head. That simply is not the case. It stands for earth lizard. I'm sorry, but when I think of "earth lizard" I think of cute little lizards that run around the desert or inside aquariums. This thing is much more massive than any earth lizard, not to mention what's thought to be its blood thirsty nature. Tyrannosaurus stands for tyrant lizard and Rex stands for king. Now that's an appropriate name. T-Rex = Tyrant lizard king. Sure! I can buy that. Even the Giganotosaurus. That name is self-explanatory. It was huge. Fine. Those names I can deal with, but Mapusaurus? This dino is bigger than the T-rex and probably even bigger than Giganotosaurus, but yet it gets a name that stands for earth lizard. What gives?

Reality check for global warming

ABC News: Is This Humanity's First Planetary Emergency?

The simple answer to that question is "Yes." This journalist makes a really good point in this article. So many people are raising the alarm about global warming that the message tends to get lost in the sounds of the alarm. It's good to take a step back and think about that message. Have we gone beyond the point of no return with our elevating greenhouse gases? Most say we can still turn things around. Some say it's too late. Either way, we need to remind ourselves over and over again that we're talking about our freakin' planet! It's not just about the weather changing. It's the entire planet's climate. Humans will have one helluva time trying to survive in a future of extreme storms and rising sea levels. And that's putting it mildly. Sometimes it makes me wonder if it's worth having kids if we're just bringing them into a world that will change beyond recognition - for the worse. It's a scary prospect. It's one I know other friends of mine around the child bearing age are considering as well. What kind of world will our kids inherit once all is said and done? Or more realistically - said Yes, we'll keep talking about it until we're blue in the face, but done? Maybe not in time.

Two more to bite the lunar dust

RedOrbit - Space - NASA Chooses New Spacecraft to Search for Water on Moon

NASA's got quite the mission planned for the moon coming up in 2008. They're sending up the Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite, or LCROSS, and the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter. First the LCROSS will smash into the south pole creating a massive plume of debris. Then the Sensing Satellite portion of it will fly through that debris to collect all sorts of interesting data. If that wasn't enough, once that's sent its information back to earth from its flyby it too is going to slam into the moon's surface creating yet another plume of debris. That moon dust explosion will be NASA's second chance to try and get a glimpse into what's lurking beneath the surface of the moon. Is it ice water? That's what they really want to know. If there is, then this could be the spot that'll become a permanent moon base. Many other nations stated their intentions to go back to the moon, so of course the U.S. wants to beat everyone to the punch to make sure they're first to establish themselves in the good spot - should they find one.
These two new robotic lunar tools, may their souls rest in peace post the 2008 mission, will become the newest alumnists that'll make the moon their final resting place. Check out what else is on the moon.
At least one thing is for sure, these future moon relics won't be without many other leftover earth-based relics once they die up there. Junk. Junk. And more junk. At least it's distinguished junk though. All of it represents close to 40-years of moon exploration and research. Then there's the company, TransOrbital Inc., which is the first commercial venture with plans to head to the moon. That'll add to the earth-junk up there, especially since they're taking orders to send your mementos to the moon.
A few years ago, there was a scientist who was rallying to try and designate the moon a World Heritage Site. When I spoke with him back in 2002, he was doing everything he could to preserve the moon as the near-pristine site that it is to prevent all of this development. I tried to get a hold of him again yesterday because I knew I wanted to write this post. He's away until June, so I don't know how far he got in his efforts. My guess is: not far.
Now this new lunar mission is set to accomplish its pretty spectacular maneuvers so we can find out exactly what's underneath the dusty surface of the moon. Water ice or not, soon these robotic components will most likely become somewhat buried underneath the dust as they join the many other earthly relics up there that have also bitten the dust.

Science looking into Gospel of Judas

In Ancient Document, Judas, Minus the Betrayal - New York Times

It is extraordinary how much people are starting pry open the history box to openly question the status quo of Christianity. The bestselling novel The Da Vinci Code questions whether or not Jesus might have married and had children with Mary Magdalene. Whether there's any truth to that notion is another matter. Now there's this documentary, The Gospel of Judas on National Geographic Channel, that aired last night. We know Judas as the biggest traitor in biblical history - the traitor who turned Jesus in to die. Or was he? That's the big question in this investigative documentary. This alleged Gospel says Jesus gave Judas the mission of betrayal, that He asked Judas to turn Him in. If that is the case, then Jesus would have indirectly prescribed his own death. Call that what you will. The Gnostics, early Christian mystics, who are thought to have written this text believed Judas would be a hero for spiritually freeing Jesus from His body. To them, that's exactly what Judas was - a hero. Scientists and scholars might be able to confirm these documents are authentic, written in approximately the third or fourth century. They think it was a translation of the original. No one will ever be able to prove if what that Gospel says is true or not. It was denounced as heresy back when it was first found. It will be now as well. The repercussions are too huge - Jesus asked Judas to bring on his own death? Judas as a hero rather than a traitor? Regardless, at the very least this recent wave of questioning is a refreshing alternative to the fundamentalist idea that all there is to know about a Man and those who surround him is limited to what's written in four books.

Punishing as a means to morality

People Prefer Belonging To Groups In Which Members Can Punish Freeloaders

People like to exert morality. That's what this story is about. We are moral beings, whether we choose to act as one or not is a matter of free will. Most of these test subjects, in the beginning, chose to be part of a group where there is no punishment. It reminds me of my old hippy days when I was a bit more idealistic, thinking there could be such a place where everyone lives harmoniously in equality. Whatever. I've grown up since then. Now I know that kind of idea could never really exist. There are always going to be people who use any situation to their advantage to get ahead of the group. In this study, people freeloaded. They took advantage of the fact that there was no method of punishment in that group. Everyone in the study quickly realized this and that's why they chose to switch over to the group where they could punish the freeloaders. Funny enough though, when the freeloaders moved over to that group, they started dishing out punishments as well. After a while, everything evened out and there was no need to punish. Just the threat of punishment in that group was enough of a deterrent for the freeloaders to curb their initial impulses and become one of the group exerting their morality. What's unfortunate is that people can't just act morally without a threat of punishment. My idealistic side might have grown up, but it's not dead all together...

Save beauty in this universe... Save Hubble!

New ring around Uranus is blue, scientists find - Yahoo! News

Read that Yahoo! News headline again, but this time out loud. "New ring around Uranus is blue." (tee! hee!) Am I the only one who gets a really nasty mental image coming to mind? Oh the poor soul... He just found out he had a ring around his anus! And it's a blue ring! Silly, eh? A bit immature of me too... Anyway, let me switch gears and wipe that picture right out of your brain. This story is about how scientists just found out there is a ring of blue around the planet Uranus. When I was growing up, Saturn was the only planet in our solar system with rings. Now this picture of Uranus is emerging thanks to the Hubble and Keck telescopes. Up close, I bet this planet's rings could actually rival the beauty of Saturn's. Scientists can barely detect its blue ring from earth, but it is there in all its glory. What a spectacular place we live in... this solar system, this universe. We should all fill our heads with such mental images as these. It's much prettier than the picture that first came to mind when I read Yahoo's headline. Don't 'ya think? This is just one of the many scientific findings that's come from Hubble. Now this workhorse of a telescope is expected to go out of commission in a while because its servicing missions were scrapped. Some of the most majestic images that exist of our universe are thanks to this hardworking space telescope. If you love them as much as I do and want to do something about it, check out this site. You can let the powers that be know how you feel. Then maybe we can continue to fill our minds with the beauty and wonder the universe and let scientists continue their work with what they call, "the most significant tool in the history of astronomy."

Another nail in creationism coffin

My Way News - Fossil Fish Sheds Light on Transition

The idea of creationism should just die. It's a silly idea to believe that man walked the earth with dinosaurs. There is no evidence for it. It makes no sense especially with proof of Darwinian evolution like this that keeps coming out. I was glad to read this story. Every time scientists discover another fossil like this I just picture them hammering another nail in a coffin where creationism lies. It's dark in there. Real enlightenment comes from learning about the world around you and you're place in it. Our world, our universe is amazing. There is no denying there is intelligent design in our world, especially when you look at the marvels of molecular biology. But it's intelligence that's developed over millions and millions of years. This link these guys found between our sea and land dwelling ancestors existed approximately 375-million years ago when there were no men or women around. There are probably so many other fossils still stuck in the earth waiting to be found to so they too can become further reinforcements for the nails that are already in that coffin. So does finding mean creationism will bite the dust? Probably not. To them, people who believe in science are ignorant. I am a journalist. I look at my sources. I need proof. Science gives proof. Evolution might not be totally iron-clad, but getting there. That's more than I can say for creationism. My opinion? It's time creationists evolve so their prehistoric ideas don't come across as dinosaur-like. It's 2006. It's time for all women and men to get their heads out of the water and open their minds to the scientific discoveries happening all around them - mostly on land.

Hold judgment on cell phone headlines

Long-term mobile phone use raises brain tumor risk: study - Yahoo! News

You can't trust headlines like these. Limited studies say electromagnetic fields (EMFs) coming from cell phones could cause adverse health consequences. Fine. But for every one of those studies, there are many more saying there are no problems with cell phones. Which scientific resource should we believe?
Look around on the street the next time you're out. So many people look like they're glued to their phones. If there is a chance cell phones could raise the risk of bringing on tumors then yes, it's something we should all be worried about.
You do what you want, but I'll tell you what I'm going to do. I'm going to sit tight until with my cell phone until the World Health Organization weighs in on this. They've asked 13 countries to take part in the be all and end all of EMF health risk studies. It's called the International EMF Project. We're probably never going to get conclusive proof about the risk, but this international effort will get us pretty darn close. The Canadian epidemiologist from the University of Ottawa who's leading up our country's efforts says they're going to come out with their results within a few months. Just a few weeks ago he said there's no real scientific evidence that we should be worried about our cell phones.
So... I wouldn't bother ditching your cell phone yet just because of headlines like these. Although it might be a good idea to invest in a handsfree system just in case. That way the radio frequency EMFs won't be transmitting right beside your brain, but then you run the risk of damaging your hearing... and so on. and so on.