Sometimes we look at the phones in our pockets and ask ourselves “what do they know about me?”
“Are they listening?”
“Can I be tracked wherever I go”
The answers are, in order: a lot, yes, and they know where you are right now.
One thing we tended not to ask is “can it be programmed to blow up and kill me?”
That is, until Israel did exactly that last week.
Well, not exactly – they went after the low tech devices terrorist groups tend to use because they also know the above: a lot, yes, and they know where you are right now.
It doesn’t seem a group or a government can just send signals willy-nilly to each and every device. Reports are that Israel intercepted the devices as they were being shipped to Hezbollah and inserted a bit of nasty blowy-up stuff. Then they sent a signal they knew would overheat the device and “kaboom!” - One less terrorist hand or ear or crotch.
While this is super neat spy stuff – a version of which will surely figure in the next Bond film – and the baddies got what they deserved, it does raise the more general question of “could it happen to me?”
Hmm – I better answer that text telling me my kid’s soccer practice ran long. Okay, open, type, and BOOM.
In a way, Israel has taken censorship to a whole new level.
Speaking of censorship, the once feted now fetid Scientific American magazine decided to endorse Kamala Harris for president.
First – don’t. Bon Appetit’ isn’t weighing in on Gaza, Swank isn’t calling for more action to combat global warming, and Outlaw Tattoo isn’t demanding diversity.
Second, and more importantly, Scientific American has become not only a parody of its former self but an actual danger to the scientific community with its ceaseless calls to fight oppression, etc.
The magazine has forgotten what both of the words in its title mean – it bashes the actual scientific method consistently (and was one of the worst “third party validators” of terrible pandemic response decision making) and it now take a dim view of the United States (no matter that many many of its academic readers already have contracts with the government to research everything from fusion to millipede social structures.)
Doing history of physics in school, I would read the magazine on occasion. I could grab the gist of most stuff but once the math went beyond differential equations I was pretty much at a loss. That’s because the magazine used to actually be very rigorous, very detailed, and very, um, scientific.
No more.
The endorsement said Harris “reli(es) on science, solid evidence and the willingness to learn from experience.”
It then talked about how wonderfully gung-ho she was for the covid vaccine, utterly ignoring the fact that she stated publicly numerous time that she would be very leery of a “Trump vaccine.”
So the endorsement should be ignored, but not completely.
It is a microcosmic example of the politicization of science and the danger that entails.
Instead of an epigram – more honored in the breach, huh? – I thought I’d pass along a fun fact:
In the 1800’s, every country except one paid slaveowners compensation for the loss of their “property” when they ended the practice.
That one country? The United States.
Cause, you know, the Civil War. I’m not yet exactly sure, but that has to mean something when it comes to the absurd reparations discussions.
Thanks for subscribing!