Security

Los Altos Jewelry Burglary

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The San Jose Mercury News suggests police are dealing with professional criminals in a jewelry heist:

Someone forced entry into an adjoining business that did not have an alarm and then broke into the jewelry store by smashing through a common wall, [Los Altos police Detective Sgt. John] Korges said.

He said that, due to the amount of labor the burglary required, it appears more than one person was involved.

Once in the jewelry store, the suspect or suspects used commercial-grade tools to penetrate the safe, taking between $350,000 and $400,000 of loose precious stones and jewelry left for service and repair.

It reads like there are no leads yet other than it was someone who knew what they were doing with the safe.

Energy, Security

2009 Jetta TDI

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W00t. The TDI is coming to America again in 2009. Hybrid Cars has a review:

By most accounts, clean diesel is beginning to make its run into the automotive mainstream in the United States. So, we decided to take the 2009 Volkswagen Jetta TDI out for a test drive to judge for ourselves.

“If any car is going to wake America up to the diesel movement, it’s this one,” Ben Davis, road test producer for PBS’s MotorWeek, told Hybridcars.com. The Jetta TDI’s combined benefits—high performance, high fuel economy, and small carbon footprint—come at the right price: about $22,000.

Very cool.

We achieved 36.4 miles per gallon with the Jetta TDI in a 181-mile mixed driving loop in an around the Baltimore-Washington metropolitan area. The test was comprised of approximately 70 percent highway driving, and 30 percent city driving. The results put this compact diesel ahead of most subcompact cars, and on par with many hybrids currently on the market.

The Jetta TDI is powered by a 2.0-liter common rail turbocharged engine—producing 140 horsepower and an eye-opening 236 pound-feet of torque. The high torque output is characteristic of a diesel powertrain, resulting in very fast launches from zero, and effortless acceleration on the highway.

Couldn’t agree more. These new diesels are phenomenal. Old diesel is like driving a cart pulled by a horse. The new diesels are peppy and fun to drive; no comparison to any diesel made before 2004.

I posted a comment on the Hybrid Cars site too after I read some of the disinformation written by others.

Security

Brain Fingerprinting

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Now that fingerprinting has come under pressure for being unreliable and often the cause of false convictions, a new generation of technology is emerging to take its place. Take for example Brain Fingerprinting Laboratories, which promises to find terrorists by reading their brain waves:

How do we determine if a person is a terrorist or spy? There is a new technology, that for the first time, allows us to measure scientifically if specific information is stored in a person’s brain. Brain Fingerprinting technology can determine the presence or absence of specific information, such as terrorist training and associations.

Here is the key to the new technology:

One fundamental difference between a terrorist and an innocent suspect is that the terrorist has detailed knowledge of terrorist activities and an innocent person does not. A terrorist has either committed a crime, received training in terrorism or worked with others in planning terrorist attacks. The innocent suspect does not have this type of information stored in his brain.

The fundamental problem with this is that the person being scanned has to have advance knowledge. When it comes to many terrorist cells, especially suicide bombers, the perpetrators could know little or nothing at all before the day of their mission. Also, this system seems to depend on the operators having the right pattern to match with terrorist information within a suspect’s brain.

That brings us back to the need for detailed intelligence of the terrorists and arrest of their inside planners, at which point the technology only provides a marginal gain, no? My guess is that someone will try to use this in the opposite scenario with mixed or even unjust results — trying to build a case for conviction on information that is unreliable by claiming infallibility in the technology.

What will a Brain Fingerprint look like when we watch news about terrorist plots, or read spy novels? Will it mark us as indistinguishable from someone planning or actively engaged in a terrorist plot? How would Tom Clancy’s Brain Fingerprint look?

Food

Italian Beer Artisans

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The Italian beers have arrived:

“I think this will go well, because it matches the sweetness of the pumpkin,” he said, setting down a glass not of wine, but of a slightly oxidized golden ale, which, he explained, had been fermented with wine yeast and had spent four years aging in the bottle.

Mmmm, pumpkin.

Around Italy, a craft beer scene has sprung up, bringing well-made specialty brews into haute cuisine dining rooms and elevating the fare served in brew pubs, creating an attractive destination for beer lovers who also love great food.

“Italian brewers have done a wonderful job of making it clear that they are the same sort of artisans as chefs and others involved in food,” said Stan Hieronymus, the author of “Brew Like a Monk,” who is making his own trip to the region this fall. “That makes a trip to Italy to find more of these beers and to experience them, along with local cuisine, particularly appealing.”

As if people needed another reason to visit Italy.

I like that they call it “craft beer”. It sounds much better than “micro brew”, which always made me think of automated and computerized beer rather than hand made or small batches.

Today I tasted watermelon beer from San Francisco and it was actually quite good. Don’t get me wrong, I love Italy, but sometimes one only has to look in the back yard to find something equally appealing.