Marcus Thomas, former assistant director of the FBI’s Operational Technology Division in Quantico, said in a recent story in The Washington Post that the FBI has been able to covertly activate a computer’s camera — without triggering the light that lets users know it is recording — for several years.
Now research from Johns Hopkins University provides the first public confirmation that it’s possible to do just that, and demonstrates how. While the research focused on MacBook and iMac models released before 2008, the authors say similar techniques could work on more recent computers from a wide variety of vendors.
Thursday, December 19, 2013
Get the tape out ...
Hmm ...
"A certain type of person becomes a reporter, and generally speaking — generally speaking, I'm not saying every reporter in the world — the kind of person who is a reporter in Washington, D.C., or New York City has never worked a minimum-wage job outside of high school, has never experienced poverty, is not an evangelical Christian, like much of the country is," Tapper said. "There are a lot of experiences that the kinds of people who are reporters, editors, producers in Washington and New York City have not had."
Wednesday, December 18, 2013
Books in order …
… Forget selfies, we want to see your shelfies | Books | theguardian.com. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
It's a mystery …
… P.D. James: Who killed the golden age of crime? — The Spectator. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Outsider …
… Jenny Turner reviews ‘Penelope Fitzgerald’ by Hermione Lee � LRB 19 December 2013. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Fitzgerald’s novels, Byatt concludes, are best approached as ‘very English versions of European metaphysical fables’ – English, maybe, in the sense that Muriel Spark was Scottish and Isak Dinesen Danish, and that Marguerite Duras was French. Byatt does not make this point, but it’s worth noticing, surely, that this minor modern tradition often attracts women writers, maybe because its minority and smallness work well with limited resources, or because its irony makes sense to writers in secret protest over the limitations within which they work. As a conventional literary career, Fitzgerald’s life’s work was, as one reviewer put it, ‘an awful hash’. But really and truly, in what universe does the phrase ‘literary career’ make the slightest sense? Not on a leaky houseboat, when life is a daily struggle to look after all the people you have to look after. Nor, presumably, in the realms of ethical life and spirituality. Though she said and wrote little about it, Fitzgerald was a practising Anglican, and when she went on a coach tour of ‘the Holy Land’ in the early 1990s, headed straight for the Jordan to be rebaptised.
Too Much, Too Fast? OR just Blah, Blah, Blah? ...
The Stream represents the triumph of reverse-chronology, where importance—above-the-foldness—is based exclusively on nowness...
Tuesday, December 17, 2013
Not your usual book list …
… EFF's Reading List: Books of 2013 | Electronic Frontier Foundation. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Something I just came upon …
… Peter Wilby on the extravagant lives and loves of the poet George Barker | Books | The Guardian.
I am a great fan of Barker's poetry and have been for many decades.
I am a great fan of Barker's poetry and have been for many decades.
Q&A …
… Richard Rodriguez: “New Atheism has a distinctly neo-colonial aspect” - Salon.com. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
In case you wondered …
… 10 of the Greatest Essays on Writing Ever Written – Flavorwire. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
The latest contenders …
… Who is the greatest American novelist? 1: Saul Bellow v Raymond Chandler. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
More than a fellow traveler …
… the making of american literature - bookforum.com / current issue. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Academic fashion statements …
… American Studies Assoc | Israel boycott | Talking Points.
… Swarthmore Jewish students break with Hillel policies.
Chesterton's advice seems apt: “Do not be so open-minded that your brains fall out.”
… Swarthmore Jewish students break with Hillel policies.
Chesterton's advice seems apt: “Do not be so open-minded that your brains fall out.”
Sounds about right …
… Paul Davis On Crime: Jimmy Fallon On James Bond's Hard-Drinking Lifestyle.
Fleming also wrote Bond's (and his own) epithet: "I shall not waste my days in trying to prolong them. I shall use my time."Indeed.
A thought for today …
However, no two people see the external world in exactly the same way. To every separate person a thing is what he thinks it is - in other words, not a thing, but a think.
— Penelope Fitzgerald, born on this date in 1916
Monday, December 16, 2013
For the defense …
… It’s a Man’s World, And It Always Will Be | TIME.com.
From my long observation, which predates the sexual revolution, this remains a serious problem afflicting Anglo-American society, with its Puritan residue. In France, Italy, Spain, Latin America, and Brazil, in contrast, many ambitious professional women seem to have found a formula for asserting power and authority in the workplace while still projecting sexual allure and even glamor. This is the true feminine mystique, which cannot be taught but flows from an instinctive recognition of sexual differences. In today’s punitive atmosphere of sentimental propaganda about gender, the sexual imagination has understandably fled into the alternate world of online pornography, where the rude but exhilarating forces of primitive nature rollick unconstrained by religious or feminist moralism.
Clearing up misunderstanding …
… Scientism and the Integrity of the Humanities - The New Atlantis. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Will and cosmos …
… Rome: Sex & Freedom by Peter Brown — www.nybooks.com — Readability. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Harper’s book makes plain that the modern spate of works on sexuality and on the construction of gender in Roman and early Christian times, ingenious though they may be, are lightweight confections compared with this gross, ever-present fact of Roman life. We must look up from our literary games and see what is almost too big to be seen—the fact of slavery, towering above us like the trees of an immense forest of unfreedom that covered the Roman world. What mattered, in Roman law and in Roman sexual morality, had little to do with sex. It had everything to do with whose bodies could be enjoyed with impunity and whose could not be touched without elaborate formulas of consent.
C.S. Lewis and Legacy ...
Lewis did not regard his legacy with much confidence. He thought he would be remembered for about five years, then forgotten by all but specialists. Washington Post book critic Michael Dirda recently poked some fun at that dour assessment: “Lewis was clearly no prophet."
J.R.R. Tolkien and Defeat ...
Tears ago, when this forest was filled with vitality and effervescence, Galadriel had uttered these words, found with little pomp in J. R. R. Tolkien's masterpiece, The Lord of the Rings (LOTR), yet running like lightning throughout the pages of his seminal work:
". . . together through ages of the world we have fought the long defeat."
Happiness ...
It has been said that “happiness is as a butterfly which, when pursued, is always beyond our grasp, but which if you will sit down quietly, may alight upon you. Social scientists have caught the butterfly. After 40 years of research, they attribute happiness to three major sources: genes, events and values.
I really am shocked …
… a commonplace from eastrod: An important digression: eliminating writing requirements in college courses?
I really didn't think things were this bad. I taught freshman English in college for all of one semester once. I have it on good authority that those in both classes went on to be regarded as good writers. This probably had something to do with the fact I was already at the time a professional writer and editor (even if still in the larval stage). But it a had a lot to to with the fact that all of my students had the basics of grammar and usage down. I just taught them techniques.
Channeling the dead …
… Dead men’s pens: reinventing Wodehouse, Austen and Chandler - FT.com. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
What ya sees, and what ya snaps …
… Photography’s Chattering Ghosts . (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Why do we trust, or distrust, photographs? What are the forces that exist behind these images and why do they command such authority? Is it the subject of the photograph, or the photographic technology itself that commands this reverence? These questions, which have been debated for at least a century, lie at the heart of the medium’s history. These are the problems of photography, the sources of its central contradiction. From the beginning, the medium has had a fickle status: it’s been, at once, a tool of science and a tool of art; a servant ofobjective fact, and a creator of subjective experience.
Beloved Reverend...
...Who am I to judge?
Many observers insist that gestures of modesty and compassion cannot alter basic beliefs. But Francis has said, “I would not speak about ‘absolute’ truths, even for believers.”
Captive audience …
… Chris Hedges: The Play’s the Thing - Chris Hedges - Truthdig. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
For the season …
… yesterday was the Third Sunday of Advent, so this is a little late.
The leaves are fallen, but the sky is clear
(Though winter’s scheduling an arctic flight).
The rumor is a rendezvous draws near.
And, looking up, behold a striking light:
The leaves are fallen, but the sky is clear.
Advent
The leaves are fallen, but the sky is clear
(Though winter’s scheduling an arctic flight).
The rumor is a rendezvous draws near.
Some say a telling sign will soon appear,
Though evidence this may be so is slight:
The leaves are fallen, but the sky is clear.
Though evidence this may be so is slight:
The leaves are fallen, but the sky is clear.
Pale skeptics may be perfectly sincere
To postulate no ground for hope, despite
The rumor that a rendezvous draws near.
To postulate no ground for hope, despite
The rumor that a rendezvous draws near.
And, looking up, behold a striking light:
The leaves are fallen, but the sky is clear.
The king, his courtiers, and priests, all fear
Arrival of a challenge to their might:
The rumor is a rendezvous draws near.
Arrival of a challenge to their might:
The rumor is a rendezvous draws near.
The wise in search of something all can cheer
May not rely on ordinary sight:
The leaves are fallen, but the sky is clear.
May not rely on ordinary sight:
The leaves are fallen, but the sky is clear.
Within a common place may rest one dear
To all who yearn to see the world made right.
The leaves are fallen, but the sky is clear.
The rumor is a rendezvous draws near.
To all who yearn to see the world made right.
The leaves are fallen, but the sky is clear.
The rumor is a rendezvous draws near.
© 2006
Stirring things up …
… The Catholic Writer and the Skating Boom, Or Every Day Is Self-Parody Day. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Some good points are made here and also in Jacobs's piece, but I think that both Tushnet and Jacobs focus too much on the letter of Dana's essay and not enough on its spirit. Dana is not so naïve as to think we can have things once again the way they were half a century ago. That period came about because of a unique confluence of talent and circumstance. There have been other periods like it. Don't forget the strong Catholic influence during the decadent period at the end of the 19th century. Aubrey Beardsley, Ronald Firbank, and J.-K. Huysmans were all Catholics. Oscar Wilde, as Dana notes, died a Catholic.
The difference between the postwar period Dana refers to and how things are today is not that there were prominent Catholic writers then and there aren't now. Dana makes it quite clear that is not the case. The difference is that today the literary establishment either cannot recognize or else chooses to ignore Catholic elements even in works by Catholic authors. The vast lucuna in contemporary art that this represents has had profoundly adverse consequences.
As recently as the postwar period, the Roman Catholic Church still was recognized as something of a bulwark against the State, which is what it had been throughout Western history after the fall of Rome in 470 AD. Since then, the Church has seemed to have vagued out (and also to have wallowed in the gutter a bit), and the State has been left to do what it does — take greater and greater control of human life. That is why we are said to live in a secular age.
The problem with such an age is that it is, at best, superficial, and at worst utterly vacuous, for the simple reason that it has no savor or depth to begin with. It is just a bunch of busybodies pestering everybody. Now if the function of art, music, and literature were merely to reflect society, then a trip to a gallery or the theater, a concert of much that passes for music these days, or maybe even a best-seller would be reassuring, superficiality and vacuity being so often on display there. But art is a lens as well as a mirror, and has usually had more to reveal than just the passing scene. As Dana's article sadly demonstrates, that was so even in the not-too-distant past.
Dana's focus on Catholic writers is justified because during the post-war period that he discusses, the Catholic Church was about the only component of Christianity not evidently in decline. The waning of the Mainline Protestant churches had already begun, and Evangelical Protestantism had not yet thrust itself into the political arena. Even in its current vapid state, the Roman Church is better positioned than any other ecclesiastical entity to challenge authentically these times and theirs manners, such as they are. Two thousand years count for something, especially when more and more are noticing how little the prevailing viewpoint has to offer in the way of meaning.
Art and religion both demand practice, and the two can work in synergy. Many suspect that we are living in a period of decline, and they may well be right. If they are, then a resurgent Catholic art may be just what we need. The Church, after all, has plenty of experience when it comes to decline. It was there to pick up the pieces when the Roman Empire finally fell and couldn't get up.
What Dana has discerned is that Catholic writers, precisely by virtue of their faith, have an unusually good opportunity just now to remind people that there is a great deal more to life than what our society currently has on offer.
His essay is prophetic, not nostalgic.
His essay is prophetic, not nostalgic.
A thought for today …
To be interested in the changing seasons is a happier state of mind than to be hopelessly in love with spring.
— George Santayana, born on this date in 1863
Sunday, December 15, 2013
Trailer park living invades New York | New York Post
… Trailer park living invades New York | New York Post.
“It just sort of creeps me out that somebody is living in a parking space, and this may give rise to other people thinking that it’s a cheap way to live on the Upper West Side, where the rents are high. Is Manhattan going to become a trailer park?”
Let's have a pity party for the poor dear.
National Libraries sharing their info ...
In an inspired gesture to encourage digital crowdsourcing, the British Library has uploaded one million scans from 17th to 19th century books to Flickr for public domain use.
The library's goal was for anyone to "use, remix and repurpose" the enormous digital treasure trove of illustrations, maps, landscapes, paintings and decorative letters. It's the first step in an interesting new plan thatincludes the launch of a new crowdsourcing application early next year to helpdescribe what the images portray.
The National Library of Norway is planning to digitize all the books by the mid 2020s.
Yes. All. The. Books. In Norwegian, at least. Hundreds of thousands of them. Every book in the library's holdings.
Journalism's challenge ... Raising its intellectual standards
In his finely researched new book, “Informing the News,” Patterson catalogs the historic and systemic problems facing journalists concerning information, sources, knowledge, education, audiences, and democracy, and urges the profession to blaze a new path toward what he calls “knowledge-based journalism.”
A thought for today …
Scepticism is as important for a good journalist as it is for a good scientist.
— Freeman Dyson, born on this date in 1923
Saturday, December 14, 2013
The Long and the Short of It
The term long-form has come to stand for narrative and expository and deeply reported journalism during the same period—over the past 20 years, and particularly the past 10—that magazines have had, as the politicians say, some challenges. I think this wrong turn in our taxonomy is a sign of, and may even contribute to, the continuing commercial upheaval and crisis in confidence.
But the Science is Settled ... Ignore These Links!
U.S. geneticists say a second code hiding within DNA changes how scientists read its instructions and interpret mutations to make sense of health and disease
If you think the Earth is hot now, try wearing plate armor in the Middle Ages. A Swedish study found that the planet was warmer in ancient Roman times and the Middle Ages than today, challenging the mainstream idea that man-made greenhouse gas emissions are the main drivers of global warming.
Hacks, charlatans, and thugs …
… Maverick Philosopher: Keith Burgess-Jackson on Thomas Nagel. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
The man in his letters …
… Learning a Lot About Isaiah Berlin by John Banville | The New York Review of Books. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
In 1963 he wrote to the British intellectual and Labour parliamentarian Richard Crossman about a newspaper review in which Crossman had returned to “your old bone…on which you gnaw and gnaw—the fiddling dons of Oxford, dreary and craven pedants engaged in their petty and destructive tasks while worlds are crashing and great problems are crying out for solution.” Responding to the charge, IB reminds Crossman of the German “political professors who thundered away and supplied plenty of ideology for 1871 and 1914,” and reminds him of Friedrich Meinecke’s Die deutsche Katastrophe of 1946, “one of the noblest tracts of our times” and “a sufficient answer to those who want professors to plug political programmes and ideologies, however sincere and eloquent.”How prophetic.
12 Months of Reading - WSJ.com
… 12 Months of Reading - WSJ.com. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Mike Tyson
I'm currently reading "The Quotable Kierkegaard," edited by Gordon Marino, a collection of awesome quotes from that great Danish philosopher. (He wanted his epitaph to read: "In yet a little while / I shall have won; / Then the whole fight / Will all at once be done.") I love reading philosophy. Most philosophers are so politically incorrect—challenging the status quo, even challenging God. Nietzsche's my favorite. He's just insane. You have to have an IQ of at least 300 to truly understand him. Apart from philosophy, I'm always reading about history. Someone very wise once said the past is just the present in funny clothes. I read everything about Alexander, so I downloaded "Alexander the Great: The Macedonian Who Conquered the World" by Sean Patrick. Everyone thinks Alexander was this giant, but he was really a runt. "I would rather live a short life of glory than a long one of obscurity," he said. I so related to that, coming from Brownsville, Brooklyn. What did I have to look forward to—going in and out of prison, maybe getting shot and killed, or just a life of scuffling around like a common thief? Alexander, Napoleon, Genghis Khan, even a cold pimp like Iceberg Slim—they were all mama's boys. That's why Alexander kept pushing forward. He didn't want to have to go home and be dominated by his mother. In general, I'm a sucker for collections of letters. You think you've got deep feelings? Read Napoleon's love letters to Josephine. It'll make you think that love is a form of insanity. Or read Virginia Woolf's last letter to her husband before she loaded her coat with stones and drowned herself in a river. I don't really do any light reading, just deep, deep stuff. I'm not a light kind of guy.
Interesting.
In case you wondered …
… The death of photography: are camera phones destroying an artform? (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
See previous post for what Bryan thinks.
See previous post for what Bryan thinks.
Quality counts …
… Bryan Appleyard — Buy the Most Expensive Camera You Can Afford. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Indeed …
…Learning Cursive Is a Basic Right - Abigail Walthausen - The Atlantic. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Some of the comments are really dim.
Some of the comments are really dim.
A thought for today …
I have always loved to use fear, to take it and comprehend it and make it work and consolidate a situation where I was afraid and take it whole and work from there.
— Shirley Jackson, born on this date in 1916
Friday, December 13, 2013
Worthy of attention …
… Ignored and Overlooked Books in 2013 | Reluctant Habits. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
The top of the tops …
… Which Books Topped the 'Best Of' Lists This Year? - Speakeasy - WSJ. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
And the winners are …
… The 2014 Christianity Today Book Awards | Christianity Today. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Out of curiosity …
… Buffett, Slim, Greenspan, El-Erian, Lew Pick Best Books of 2013 - Bloomberg. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
A thought for today …
Communism possesses a language which every people can understand - its elements are hunger, envy, and death.
— Heinrich Heine, born on this date in 1797
Ivan Klima
Klima's a great writer. I'm excited for his memoir.
Excerpt from the NYT review:
“For me, it was a professional decision,” he explained. “For a writer it’s very important to be in close relation with a milieu you understand more than any other, and with a language. Exile is always very dangerous for a writer. I was nearly 40, and to accept an entirely new language seemed nearly impossible. You can learn to speak it, but you can’t write in it at a high level.”
Excerpt from the NYT review:
“For me, it was a professional decision,” he explained. “For a writer it’s very important to be in close relation with a milieu you understand more than any other, and with a language. Exile is always very dangerous for a writer. I was nearly 40, and to accept an entirely new language seemed nearly impossible. You can learn to speak it, but you can’t write in it at a high level.”
Thursday, December 12, 2013
You have been warned …
… Doctorow and “a first look into the Internet world’s hell” | The Book Haven.
“So it has begun. That slowly gathering, ghostly darkness coming off the otherworld technology. A kind of China-like darkness, maybe. Or call it a first look into the Internet world’s hell. It’s hard to believe as we assemble here this evening, a flourishing example of Western democracy. But the struggle has begun as to who will rule that webby other world—government data miners and the corporations in step with them, or everyone else? We’ll have to pull ourselves together and, reluctantly or not, join that struggle. I don’t have to remind us that everyone in this room is in the free-speech business.”
But that was the case yesterday, too, wasn't it?
… Collapse of the universe is closer than ever before.
I mean if the collapse is inevitable, it's getting nearer every day.
I mean if the collapse is inevitable, it's getting nearer every day.
Par for the Times these days …
…[Publisher’s Note] | The “Paper of Record” Gets it Wrong on André Schiffrin, by John R. MacArthur | Harper's Magazine. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
I was trained as a reporter to get different, often contradictory versions of the same story. It’s really not hard to do if you have a little energy and a telephone or computer. In this case, however, one only had to pick up André’s memoir to get another view of what happened at Random House.
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