Is Malaysian Airliner still up there on autopilot?

The Australian government has decided the Malaysian Airliner was still on autopilot when it disappeared. Was it this century’s “Flying Dutchman” or the second warning this week that technology is now the master, and doesn’t have to explain what it is doing.

Is humanity paying the cost of handing over too much control to computers?

Australia says the plane crashed. "I still think the plane may land on some island or land, there is still some hope for our relatives," Beijing businessman Liu Weije said Thursday.

It clearly will be a Wagnerian task to sort this all out, and it won’t be over until the fat lady sings.

In opera, the Flying Dutchman has been condemned to circle the seas forever because he tempted fate when he condemned God’s storms around the Cape of Good Hope. Unfortunately the Devil heard him. Now he is allowed to land once every seven years to look for a beautiful woman who will relieve him of his endless chore, pledging her faith.

Australian officials, during a visit Thursday to
Beijing, released a 64-page report on their findings.

Martin Dolan, chief commissioner of the Australian Transport Safety Bureau, told a news conference in Canberra that "certainly for its path across the Indian Ocean, we are confident that the aircraft was operating on autopilot until it ran out of fuel." There was no word on when the autopilot was engaged.

The National Transportation Safety Board announced this week that the crew of an Asiana jet that crashed into an airport seawall in San Francisco on July 6, 2013, was still using automated controls even as it was near the ground during landing.

"The flight crew over-relied on automated systems that they did not fully understand," acting NTSB chairman Christopher Hart said. in "As a result, they flew the aircraft too low and too slow and collided with the seawall at the end of the runway."

The world likely will never know but it would be the height of irony if there was no hijacking, attempted hijacking or any untoward crew activity of any kind. Could it have been simply that the plane’s computer systems were too complicated for mere man?

English scientist Stephen Hawking this month warned HBO comedy show host John Oliver that artificial intelligence had gone too far.

He told Oliver computers can no longer be defeated because they are as smart as man.

Hawking said the first question scientists asked an intelligent computer they had built: “Is there a God?” The computer replied, “There is now,” then a bolt of lightning struck the plug so it couldn’t be turned off.




Resources:

USA Today

Wikipedia Cape of Good Hope

BBC

Wagner and the Flying Dutchman

Stephen Hawking on Artificial Intelligence

Americans guarding their right to be poor

Perhaps there should a national lobby to zealously guard the right to be poor in the world’s richest nation. A federal appeals court thinks so.
Cities throughout the nation do not like the poor on their doorsteps, and pass laws to hide them. Such laws prevent homeless people from living on streets.
The US Court of Appeals in San Francisco says Los Angeles has gone too far by barring people from living in their cars.
Supporters of such laws say the issue is complicated because such people can become a public safety issue. Sometimes they may become threats police will not be able to respond too before crimes are committed.
Tristia Bauman, senior attorney at the Washington, D.C.-based National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty, told the Los Angeles Times the ruling would affect any city in California with a vague ban similar to Los Angeles.
"We're seeing a dramatic uptick in these type of laws. Cities have a goal of reducing visible homelessness rather than taking constructive actions,” she said.
There is no doubt that the lack of a fixed abode, to use a legal term, becomes a problem. That puts it in with mental illness as a problem that is going to ignored or dealt with haphazardly. Some poor people do not want to be inside, in some cases because they have mental problems. It is not an easy problem to solve.
Trying to find the source of the problem goes against the grain for many governments, and not just in the United States.
Los Angeles Civil rights attorney Carol Sobel said urban areas need to find new strategies.
"Honestly, these policies are bad,” she said. It raises questions about what that Hollywood sign above the city stands for.
Denver maintains it is trying. It has been a center for homelessness for decades, since the days Jack Kerouac [Unlink] was “On the Road,” because it is the largest metro area between the West Coast and Midwest. The city’s phone answering system is set up to connect the homeless with people who can help.
But in most cases it is only a makeshift solution that does not end the problem.
It may surprise people to know that Denver has found that a third of the area’s homeless have jobs.
The 9th Circuit said the Los Angeles response in barring people from living in cars was far too broad.
"The City of Los Angeles has many options at its disposal to alleviate the plight and suffering of its homeless citizens," wrote Judge Harry Pregerson. "Selectively preventing the homeless and the poor from using their vehicles for activities many other citizens also conduct in their cars should not be one of those options."
Resources:
Los Angeles Times
Denver Homeless Plan
National Coalition for the Homeless

Medical Marijuana's Untold Story

Perhaps the industry doesn’t want people to know that there are two types of medical marijuana generally available, one makes users high, the other does not.
Put in more precise terms, one is psychoactive. That one is medical marijuana that has a high THC content.
Many medical marijuana products are high in CBD, which is not psychoactive.
The distinction is rarely made in stories about the tide of medical marijuana legalization sweeping the country.
In New York, Gov. Andrew Cuomo, seems to think, wrongly, that the distinction between the two products has to do with whether they are smoked.
The New York Times reported Cuomo agreed to not veto a pilot medical marijuana program because “no smoking of the drug would be permitted, though a variety of other options — including edibles and tinctures — would be. Patients would also be allowed to inhale if the drug was vaporized, similar to e-cigarettes.”
Indeed, some CBD products are smoked, and the issue is not lung cancer.
The media, always willing to hype marijuana stories, would have Americans believe that edible marijuana can make you paranoid. New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd reported that she freaked out after eating much more than was ever intended by the seller. She said there were no instructions on the label.
She wrote that the edibles had effect immediately but in a short time: “… I felt a scary shudder go through my body and brain. I barely made it from the desk to the bed, where I lay curled up in a hallucinatory state for the next eight hours. I was thirsty but couldn’t move to get water. Or even turn off the lights. I was panting and paranoid, sure that when the room-service waiter knocked and I didn’t answer, he’d call the police and have me arrested for being unable to handle my candy.”
Dowd apparently survived this experience though we never found out what happened to the room service.

                                                      The gateway drug most used
It may not be in the interest of medical marijuana users for people to know too much. If they do, some might insist that there is no need for medical marijuana that can get you high.
Some insist they need such products. And clearly it has not been proven that only CBD-based products are needed. Little is certain where marijuana is concerned, other than it is not a gateway drug, does not lead to violence or brain damage.
According to some, CBD, because it does not get you high, is not the evil weed. In other words, not marijuana at all.
“According to this political pretzel logic, marijuana gets you high, but CBD-rich marijuana doesn’t get you high; therefore, CBD-rich marijuana is not marijuana.
“This is not medical marijuana. It’s just an oil derived from that plant,” according to Wisconsin GOP state representative John Spiros, a former police officer who voted to approve CBD-only legislation. Gage Froerer, a Utah state legislator, weighed in with similar rhetorical gimmickry about CBD: “It’s not a drug. It’s not medical marijuana,” reports Project CBD.
When Florida became the 23^rd state to legalize medical marijuana it specified that it only be strains with a low THC count. The District of Columbia also has legalized medical marijuana.
Sources:
CBD Only Stampede
Maureen Dowd Gets Stoned

The sky is falling, no it's just a drone

These days things that seem to be falling from the sky could be real: most likely drones or even wi-fi balloons.
This week was capped by a report from New Zealand that a Google wi-fi balloon had tumbled into the ocean, prompting a mistaken rescue attempt.
Earlier in the week, the Washington Post reported: “More than 400 large U.S. military drones have crashed in major accidents around the world since 2001, a record of calamity that exposes the potential dangers of throwing open American skies to drone traffic…”
The Post obtained 50,000 pages of drone accident reports the US Freedom of Information act.
So far, no one has died in a drone accident, including a mid-air collision with a US Air Force transport. But crashing drones have narrowly missed people on the ground.

Air Force jets have had to shoot down errant drones. A crowd celebrating the Stanley Cup victory of the LA Kings knocked down a drone that was observing. It is shown in a Youtube video.

“All I saw were tents, and I was afraid that I had killed someone,” Air Force Maj. Richard Wageman said. He lost control of a drone in November 2008 that crashed on a US base in Afghanistan. “I felt numb, and I am certain that a few cuss words came out of my mouth,” he told investigators.
Authorities in the US and other countries are being pressed to allow private companies to use the unmanned devices to make deliveries, view real estate or observe crops. The University of North Texas has built drones to help by providing communications in disasters. The United Nations wants to use them on peacekeeping missions.
In the military, drones were introduced to avoid risking lives of pilots in operations aimed at killing terrorists. For civilians, drones can save money both by avoiding paying wages to drivers, but by avoiding traffic congestion.
Google, meanwhile, has promised to pay a New Zealand rescue agency back for the cost of an unnecessary rescue operation.
The chopper was dispatched after a Google wi-fi balloon ditched in the ocean near Christchurch.
A pedestrian saw the 39-foot tall balloon plummeting and thought it was a plane. Some drones are much smaller, more like model airplanes.
Google is using balloons to provide high-speed wi-fi on remote areas. It has launched 30 in the New Zealand area alone. Usually Google says it is usually able to direct the balloons to landing areas when their 100-day life runs out.
More than 400 will be launched around the world. Hopefully none of them will be mistaken for one carrying a boy, as happened in Colorado in 2009 between Denver and Fort Collins. That turned out to be a hoax.

Vietnam redux

The Duffelblog said it this way: "This is not what we tortured Iraqis for."

President Barrack, acting against strong national opposition, is sending troops back to Iraq.
Obama’s decision goes against public opinion strongly opposed to rescuing the government of Shitte Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki.
Obama promised the troops would only be advisers
It all seemed like "Catch 22." The Americans would be embedded at command levels, away from the battlefields. The problem is the jihadists appear to be able to go anywhere they choose.
If the president believed support from Iran would help, Allvoices writer Saleh Sheik, based in Palestine, reported that support for the US was declared out of the question by Tehran.
“American forces will not be returning to combat in Iraq, but we will help Iraqis as they take the fight to terrorists who threaten the Iraqi people, the region and American interests as well,” Obama said, according to the New York Times.
In his statement Obama said, “… the United States will not pursue military actions that support one sect inside of Iraq at the expense of another. There’s no military solution inside of Iraq, certainly not one that is led by the United States.”
The opposition is made up of Sunnis and jihadists, including al-Qaida and many considered more radical.
“Ending the war in Iraq was one of the best decisions President Obama has made. The decision to send in even a limited number of Special Operations forces is a dangerous and troubling development that threatens to lead to broader military engagement,” said Anna Galland, executive director of MoveOn.org.
Opinion
Eleven years and 4,500 US soldiers lives later polling shows strong opposition in the US to rescuing the Baghdad regime. As many as three-quarters of the nation oppose putting US soldiers back in harm’s way.
Even right-wing Obama haters like Glenn Beck have said the invasion by Republican President George Bush was wrong and liberals were right to oppose it.
Obama himself had helped convince the US that the invasion of Iraq should never have launched in 2003.
The collapse of the Baghdad government is a bigger surprise than the fall of Saigon, and has proceeded at a much faster pace. Many critics of US policy had said it was inevitable.
It appears to be another “regime change,” with Obama hoping the Shite prime minister, nour al-maliki, can somehow persuade the Sunnis marching on Baghad to join his government and end the fighting.
Anti-war Americans will remember how the CIA engineered the assassination of Vietnamese President President Ngo Dinh Diem in 1963 to get a stronger and pliant leader. It was a colossal failure.
Chelsea Manning, in a federal penitentiary for 30 years for trying to blow the whistle on phony Iraqi elections and war crimes, has said the US Army got orders to help the Maliki faction.

Iraq: At last, something we can't agree on

It is often said that Republicans never met a war they didn’t like. That is usually said by Democrats.
Republicans say Democrats never met a war they like didn’t like.
Leon Trotsky [Unlink] says everyone says he hates war but war loves him.
Weapons can be seductive. Once you have them you want to use them.
Some viewers must have been confused the other night, no matter how they feel about war. No doubt they thought they were watching Jon Stewart [Unlink] on Comedy Central.
But it was Glenn Beck [Unlink] saying that Liberals were right that the Iraq war was wrong.
"From the beginning, most people on the left were against going into Iraq. I wasn’t.... Liberals, you were right. We shouldn’t have,” he said on his radio show.
Of course liberals wouldn’t have heard it because they only listen to FM, and usually Public Radio.
"Not one more life. Not one more life. Not one more dollar, not one more airplane, not one more bullet, not one more Marine, not one more arm or leg or eye. Not one more," he said. "This must end now. Now can't we come together on that?" said Beck.
The next thing you know drones will go on strike.
Obviously the answer is no. If we stopped wars there would be less work for pundits. Just like if we legalized marijuana there would be less work for law enforcement and the cartels.
Besides, America has lost its ability to agree on anything.
On Politico, commentator Barry Posen said, “Here we go again. Whenever there’s a crisis anywhere in the world, you can count on America’s pundit class to demand action—usually of the military variety. Don’t just stand there, bomb something! After more than two decades of unchallenged American hegemony, Washington keyboards seem almost programmed to call for intervention halfway around the globe.”
He suggested a different approach _ restraint.
Posen came up with all sorts of reasons why restraint might cost less than intervention in Iraq. The MIT professor paid special attention to safe havens, though he did not go as far as saying terrorists could find one on their laptop on Google.
He did not even mention that at this time we do not need their oil.
The US is now the leading producer of fossil fuels in the world. Put that in your pipeline Putin.

Iraq crisis could be oppportunity for energy-strong U.S. or a reason for impeachment

The US energy position is the best in nearly 50 years amid Middle East chaos
Before Washington Republicans rush to send US troops to die in the Middle East, or cozy up to Iran, they should consider that the nation has become the world's leading fossil fuel producer.
Wait, President Obama is sending 275 marines to Baghdad. Ever heard of mission creep. Keep it coming and the Republicans can focus on impeachment instead of Iraq and war.
The production of oil and gas in April was the highest since the record set in 1970, the Financial Times reports.
Even a few years ago dogma held that US energy production was in an irreversible decline. Fracking, like or not, is the reason.
The increase in US production has helped keep prices down while production elsewhere, with the major exception of Russia, is down.
US production is so high it makes to sense to permit exports, particularly because it will strike a blow against Russia. Exports can be begin at the same time more money is spent on alternative sources than when the time comes the nation won’t be depend on fossil fuels.
Production could peak by 2020, so there is no time to persuade Republicans to accept science and support efforts to limit greenhouse gases. Even if other countries don’t cooperate a reduction in the US will help overall. At the same time, it can make lift healthier in US population centers.
There is a chance for the nation to come together and lead the world again. As entrepreneur Elon Musk [Unlink] says, there is not even time to waste on patent wars when industry needs to work together. He is handing over his Tesla patents, free of charge.
The Wall Street Journal, which should know better, says the US is the only country that can stop the collapse of Iran and region-wide violence in the Middle. Actually, that has already happened.
The Journal thinks that the loss of US blood somehow means we should make the same mistake again.
It’s headline today is” “Only America Can Prevent A Disaster In Iraq.”
Perhaps the Journal has it backwards. It is possible that pulling back sends a message of strength and that those who always criticize America’s alleged imperialist tendencies need to try it on their own.