Category Archives: Security

Food, History, Security

What Smokers Really Smoke

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A humorous and well-written investigation of cigarettes has been posted by the Wall Street Journal.

Under “c” alone we find cardamom oil, carob bean extract, cinnamon oil, coffee extract, coriander oil, corn syrup and an oil made from camomile flowers. Gone, apparently, are some that appear in earlier lists: “civet absolute,” for example, which turns out to be a secretion from the anal gland of the civet cat, and castoreum, a comparable secretion from the Siberian beaver.

The real story here actually is that the massive amount of data generated by litigation over risk has allowed researchers to mine for historic ingredient information. Another way to look at it is that transparency forced by compliance upon product manufacturers and providers has led to some surprises.

Note: “secretion from the anal gland of the civet cat” might sound unusual but it also has been used by the sugar industry as an “ingredient in the food additives used to add butter, caramel, and rum flavorings to sweets”.

Food, Security

Drink Rate Control Through Visual Feedback

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A long time ago, although I don’t remember where, I read that the martini glass was invented during the American prohibition to get people to drink more quickly. Supposedly it opened up the rate of consumption so people could gulp and therefore reduce the risk of being caught with a drink in their hand.

The idea sounded strange (ever try to gulp out of a large martini glass?) and was stuck in my head until I read a recent study in ScienceMag that explained how it might actually work. The study describes an observed difference in drinking speeds with curved and straight glasses.

After watching video of both sessions and recording how much time it took for the drinkers to finish their beer or sodas, Attwood’s team found that one group consistently drank much faster than the others: The group drinking a full glass of lager out of curved flute glasses. In a paper published this month in PLoS ONE, the team reports that whereas the group with straight glasses nursed their 354 milliliters of lager for about 13 minutes, the group with the same amount of beer served in curved glasses finished in less than 8 minutes, drinking alcohol almost as quickly as the soda-drinkers guzzled their pop. However, the researchers observed no differences between people drinking 177 milliliters of beer out of straight versus fluted glasses.

Attwood believes that the reason for the increase in speed is that the halfway point in a curved glass is ambiguous. Social beer drinkers, she says, naturally tend to pace themselves when drinking alcohol, judging their speed by how fast they reach half-full. Another experiment in which participants were asked to judge different levels of fluid in photographs of straight and curved glasses showed that people consistently misjudge the volume in fluted glasses, Attwood says. A simple solution to this problem would be to mark beer glasses with the accurate halfway point, she says. “We can’t tell people not to drink, but we can give them a little more control.”

Straight glasses do not seem to include an angled glass like the martini shape. A better distinction might be between a vertically symmetrical glass where consumption has a constant rate versus shapes that make estimation difficult.

History, Poetry, Security

Don’t Move by Phantogram

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A pair of school friends from the rural countryside of upstate New York (near the old race track south of Lake George) have turned simple synth sounds serendipitously into an international music career.

Here’s “Don’t Move” from Phantogram‘s Nightlife EP released by barsuk records:

I’m not your nervous feeling
Each time we say goodnight
You picture buildings burning to the ground
From a basement in the street light
I’m not your drinking problem
A hole is in the sky
It’s not your heart that you’ve been thinking of,
Just the feeling like you’re gonna die

Chorus

I’m not your paranoia
When someone’s at the door
Vision fangs clawing out the throat of a body rising through the floor

I’m not your fortune teller
I’m not your spinning head
I’ll never make you uncomfortable too
This is starting to fuck with my head

All you know how to do is shake shake
Keep your body still
Keep your body still
All you do is shake shake shake
Keep your body still
Keep your body still

Don’t you realize you’re fine
Why can’t you see that you’re fine
You know that you’re still alive
You know that you’re still alive
Why don’t you know you’re alive
Don’t you know you’re alive
Buried in the sky

During times of unemployment and tough career-choices, especially in rural America, their story is an inspiration. They have managed to avoid the pressure for relocation to the big city to be discovered. Information technology not only brought easy access to information but also helped them gain fans quickly and reach a global audience. Hopefully they are not the exception but rather evidence of new rules being written.

In their music I sense a late 1980s revival of etherial melodies and lilting voices over prominent drum beats along the lines of Cocteau Twins, Siouxsie and the Banshees, Kate Bush…at the same time I can’t help but notice that Josh Carter captures perfectly the look and feel of the disenfranchised artists of late 1950s New York. Both periods are known for strong counterculture and youthful escape from the broken rules and fallen dreams of a prior generation. Interesting mashup.


James Franco plays Allen Ginsberg in Howl

Here’s the acoustic version of their single “When I’m Small”:

Lucy’s underground,
She’s got a mouth to feed
Am I underground,
Or am I in between

Lucy’s underground,
She’s got a mouse to feed
Am I underground,
Or am I in too deep

Show me love,
You’ve got your hand on the button now
Sure enough,
You’ve got your hand on the button now

Lucy’s underground,
She’s never coming back
Am I still alive,
Or has the light gone black

Take me underground,
Take me all the way
Bring me to fire,
Throw me in the flames

So show me love,
You’ve got your hands on the button now
Sure enough,
You’ve got your hand on the button now

I’d rather die,
I’d rather die,
Than to be with you

…and here’s the polished version as produced by barsuk records.

Sailing, Security

Wind Predictions for AC45 Races

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An America’s Cup meterologist has posted his weather prediction on the team blog

The strong w-sw sea breeze that caused the damage on Saturday moderated early in the week, but by Thursday – first race day for Dean Barker and crew – it will be back to its boat-breaking best.

Emirates Team New Zealand (ETNZ) meteorologist Roger (Clouds) Badham says that at this time of the year San Francisco weather comes in three to five day cycles. Locals say the best weather is in September/October.

I completely agree with his statement on the best weather months, but I guess I qualify as a local. Spring and Fall offer dry warm weather and moderation while the summer months bring humidity with chilly temperatures and big afternoon breeze.

As “Clouds” rightly suggests the driver of the big summer breeze is a temperature differential between the Bay Area getting cooled at night by the ocean and the heated inland area during the day.

I’ve heard it referred locally (among sailors) as proof how much Sacramento really “sucks”.

A quick look at forecasts shows nearly perfect conditions later this week, yet that’s not what ETNZ is predicting on their blog. So I downloaded a GRIdded Binary (GRIB) file to see if I could verify what “Clouds” sees.

GRIB is a format for meteorological data specified by the World Meteorological Organization’s Commission for Basic Systems. There are many choices of free software that will download, manipulate and display GRIBs. I tend to use zyGrib.

Below is a small subset of the latest images, which shows a solid wall of 30+ winds off-shore (!) but light winds of 10 knts around the Bay Area from 11am to 5pm on Thursday and on Friday. The problem when looking at these charts, however, is trying to factor in the dominant local/shore effects. The Golden Gate, for example, tends to be a funnel or convergence zone and that is where the races will be held.

Thursday morning:

Thursday afternoon:

Friday morning:

Friday afternoon:

A solid yellow can be nasty (25+ knts) to deal with. Turquoise (10 knts) is generally what you want to see. Great day to go for a sail, right? Not quite. The race venue will see some kind of variation from this high-level map. As I mentioned there’s a convergence near the Golden Gate Bridge.

When I sail in the Bay Area I know how dangerous it can be to rely on a GRIB view alone. A single day around the Bay can involve a dozen or more micro-climate areas with extremely variable and dangerous conditions at places like the “Slot” near Alcatraz, or the aptly named Hurricane Gulch and the unpredictable river of Raccoon Strait.

Fortunately there are many localized data sources. Last Saturday the wind sensor near Crissy Field (just inside the Golden Gate Bridge) posted rather high wind readings compared with the overall area. You can review it on SailFlow.com.

The AC45s will definitely be crashing if they see spikes into the 30 knt range like that. No wonder teams saw some major breakage this past weekend.

Since the Team NZ crew of six arrived in California late last week, the Bay has been dishing up 30 knot wind gusts and choppy seas, which have already claimed three of the 11 boats out practising.

Team NZ have come through the practice days unscathed, but not without a few hairy moments. Their training partner, Luna Rossa Swordfish, was not so fortunate – suffering a spectacular end-over-end capsize, destroying their AC45 wing. The Italians will need to use another wing if they are to be on the startline when racing begins in earnest on Wednesday (NZ time).

The strong sea breezes and wind against tide also flipped Artemis and Team Korea, and could cause more carnage in this first event of the 2012-13 World Series.

Photos from the team site show the boat bearing away downwind with hulls flat but the bows under heavy pressure. When you have so much spray in your face that you can’t see the sails, it’s time to reduce sail area.

ETNZ in wind
Source: ETNZ

The same Crissy Pier wind sensor predicts 7-12 knts in the morning on Thursday and 10-20 knts in the afternoon. That typically means it will blow 15 knts by noon and 25 knts by 2pm. As you can see a localized prediction can be quite different from the high-level area map view that indicates 10 knts.

Too Close for Comfort
Source: Team Puma. Look out Jimmy! Keep clear when an AC45 has to steer in 20+ knts. You definitely don’t want to meet a carbon blade doing 30 mph.

On top of wind predictions, racers also have to factor the tide. They should see a 1-2 knt flood tide (slack at noon on Thursday, 1 pm on Friday). Given that the races start when tide is almost slack, it seems someone was planning the event date with an eye on the tide charts (Bay water can flow over 5 knts).

Sailing obviously is a sport where Big Data analysis (e.g. many sensors reading variable data in real-time) has always been an essential part of success. A team simply can’t be a top performer without a mastery of wind and water instruments.

Events this week should be a great time to see the world’s best sailors on the world’s best sailing technology racing in fast conditions, right on the edge of control.

Sailing's New Look
Source: ETNZ. Helmets with radios and camera mounts, dry suits, low-profile life-vests, knives…ready for teamwork in any condition, it’s the look of high-performance sailing.