Keep Calm and Meta

Why Big Brother wants your mug shot

Last week I went to a photographer to get pictures taken from my kids, one and three years old. Not funfunfun pretty pictures, but official depressing, bad lighting passport pictures. We’re planning a trip abroad and with all these baby terrorists and kidnappings, obviously they need their own passports. And passport pictures.

Let me hear it for democracy!
I love democracy. I love freedom. I love being safe and secure and thank my government for providing such a society. Hurrah government. Well done people! So I can get over the fact that we have this idiotic law that says that even babies and toddlers need their own identification. I am not in ‘give me back my privacy’ mode right now (even though, seriously, give it back). But why do we have to look like criminals in our passport photos?

Practical issues
There were two big problems when taking those pictures. The first was the photographer himself, who was crap beyond imagination. The second was my two boys. There are happy boys. They are friendly boys. The are well behaved. So when someone want to take their picture, they smile. They even tend to laugh. Oh my. That is not allowed. In your passport you need to stare into the camera like you’re Bill Murray in the opening scene of Broken Flowers (Go see that film. Really, you should). The law says, that’s a ‘neutral’ look. Everyone else says it’s a lethargic stare that makes you look like a busted dope dealer.

Look at this criminal. Must’ve done something.

Why
Looking at my sons pictures I hardly recognize them at all. Where is the youthful energy? The laughter? The love for their daddy? It’s all gone. here’s my Big Brother conspiracy theory why we need such pictures. Because police and customs officers need to suspect us of something when looking at our passport.
If they look at your passport, they can’t be thinking: ‘Hey, that’s a nice friendly and smiling face. This must be a really fun, trustworthy person. I am sure this person won’t break a law.” that;s the way a trusting government would operate. And we no longer live in such a society. This society needs passports that, when seen by an official government representative, says: “this boy is a hardened criminal. He may appear to be a cheerful one year old boy, but look at this photo. He is definitely guilty of something. Or he has been kidnapped. Or worse. Anyway, there is something definitely wrong here. Check again.”

Let’s face it, if we are all guilty of something. Isn’t it efficient that our government already prints your mug shot right in your passport. Yeah democracy!

Semantics

A: We mean the same thing. It’s all just semantics.

B: I agree that it’s semantics. I disagree on that it’s ‘just’ semantics.

Patents

A story about patenting.

Imagine these two guys. One guy living somewhere in, say, the USA. The other one on a small island somewhere. American guy is on the island on a holiday and sees Island guy manufacture a wheel.  “Wow,” American guy mutters to himself, “If I wasn’t such an idiot around the toolshed I could totally build one of these myself. and wouldn’t a wheel be handy around the house?” But since he is, in fact, an idiot in the toolshed he cannot make one. He can however make a drawing of a wheel, which he does. He takes the drawing home (it’s a long trip by boat and horse, driving and riding are not yet invented and boating without wheels is a bit of a challenge as well) and then submits it to the Patent Office. He gets a patent for ’round objects used for transportation purposes’. From this point on, he will be known to the world as  ‘Patent Guy’.

So, Island guy then comes over from his island to the States and starts selling his wheels to everybody. And everyone wants a couple. So Island guy gets rich. At least, untill Patent guy comes in and says: “Hey, you owe me one hundred billion dollars“. Island guy says: “No way!“. Patent guy says:”Way!“. Island guys says: “No way!“. Patent guys says: “Way!” and shows him his patent. Island guys shows Patent guy his backside. Patent guy starts crying and runs to Judge guy.

Then things get kinda ugly.
And unfortunately there is no happy ending.

There is also a sort of similar story which involves poor little orphaned kids, dying of AIDS because people with fat arses and plastic wives who drive in big cars say they can’t afford to give those kids the medicine that would keep them alive. but that story is even worse for my blood pressure. So I chose the other one.

Patents, intellectual property, copyrights. The don’t help innovation. They suck. They really really do.

The digital future

Mat Honan’s piece ‘Kill the password‘ in the latest edition of Wired almost brought me to tears. Mat’s online profile was hacked, probably for his Twitter account, @mat, and the hackers decided to just erase all his documents he had files in the cloud. Which meant everything digital he had, including all the pictures of the first four years of his daughter’s life. My eldest kid is almost four. What if I were to lose all the photos of him? Gasp. This tragedy led him to do research in internet security and especially it’s Achilles’ heel: the password. Someone can find you home address, last four credit card digits and Gmail account name online? All they have to do is call customer service, provide that information and bang, you are owned. And all that information is a lot easier to find than you’d wish.

Bike-theft prevention strategy
Anyway, seeing as how Mat is a writer for Wired which means that there is 96.5% chance that he is more internet savvy than me and you, this is a frightening concept. If he can’t protect his stuff, what chance do I have? Well, I guess for me, my weakness is my strength, and it may be the same for you. My logic when it comes to bike-theft prevention is not to buy the most expensive lock out there, but to always find a bike that has an even more worthless lock to park mine next to. And I also do the exact opposite thing as I do with the bike theft prevention: I   I do not own a black or dark bike which is so common over here. I apply paint; yellow, pink, green. That makes my bike a lot less attractive to steal and I don’t care what it looks like, I’m sitting on it, I don’t see it. Online, like swarming sparrows, strength lies in numbers. I don’t stand out in any way. That is not by choosing, it is just the way it is for the great majority of us.

Personal data and backups
Especially that last argument is very weak. It’s almost the same argument Big Governments use when they try to get their hands on more of your private information and communication; most of have nothing to hide, so they have nothing to fear. That’s completely true, until it;s no longer true at which point it will be too late to do something about it. Ironically, extra safety actually comes from giving up part of your privacy by handing your personal mobile number to Big Google for two step verifaction. I chose to do so. Back to the stealing of your digital life: I do back-ups. Cloud back-ups in case my hard drives get lost in a fire, or stolen by an idiot burglar, and I do back-ups on hard drives in case something that happened to Mat happens to me. This is still not 100% disaster proof, but it’s a start. I also try to limit the amount of personal info I leave around the web. I am not saying it’s impossible to find my current home adress  or mobile number online, but I try to be careful. In Mat’s case, it wasn’t the password that did it, it was the fact that the hackers were given a password reset by the Apple helpdesk who were tricked into believing it was Mat himself asking for it. And since all his accounts were linked, the hackers had access to everything.
Oh, and: Get.a.proper.up.to.date.virus.scanner.

Our digital future isn’t just a blessing. It’s a bumpy road and there will be some casualties along the way.

Be safe.

Tiger & Twins

Hop and skip,to near perfection,
As around you, they tumble and fall,

Cool, crisp autumn leaves,
inviting laughter that promises spring,

Ignorance as wisdom,
Knowledge we have forgotten,
Dig up dirt,
Scream down slides,
Run untill you’re flat on your face,
Or watching the clouds,
bare feet on damp grass.

If I were to shed all of this weight,
would you teach me to hop and skip.
to near perfection?

Sleep deprivation and Bruce Mau’s Incomplete Manifesto for Growth

My sons are the most fantastic the people who ever lived. Both of them. However, the two of them sometimes seem to team up on their dad to make him give up as much sleep as possible. Their mother and I have an agreement. Anything that happens during the night which does not require breastfeeding: I get out of bed first.

Very common pattern

23:00 I go to bed
Midnight Lens wakes up
00:20 Lens is sound asleep, I go back to bed
00:35 I fall asleep
00:45 Bent wakes up
00:50 Bent is sound asleep, I go back to bed
01:00 I fall asleep
01:15 Lens wakes up, is hungry
01:20 I hand Lens over to his mom, I go back to sleep
01:40 I fall asleep
01:45 Lens decides he thinks it’s daytime and won’t go back to sleep, his mom wakes me up.
02:15 Convinced Lens it’s the middle of the night, he goes back to sleep
02:20 I go back to bed
02:30 I think I hear Lens
02:35 I think I hear Bent
02:40 I think I hear Lens
02:45 Drink of water for Bent
02:50 I go back to bed
03:00 Still awake
03:15 Still awake
03:20 Start thinking about work
03:30 Start thinking about life’s great mysteries
03:35 I give up, get out of bed, go downstairs and start making notes
04:30 Fall asleep at the dinner table behind scribbled notes
04:45 Lens wakes up
05:00 I go back to bed
05:15 I fall asleep
06:00 alarm goes off, I do not have a clue where or who I am at this point.
07:00 Off to work in zombie mode

Bruce Mau
I consider myself to be a ‘creative professional’ and as such, I am a big fan of Bruce Mau and his Incomplete Manifesto for Growth. Especially ‘rule’ 18:

Stay up late.  Strange things happen when you’ve gone too far, been up too long, worked too hard, and you’re separated from the rest of the world.

I have often found that rule to be very true. The best ideas I have had in my life have always come at times when I did not expect them or were even looking for ideas. And many times, these moments were when I was deprived of sleep.

Scribbling
The last time my sons teamed up on me I came up with the definitive answer to why the Many-worlds interpretation, a quantum mechanics interpretation which would make stuff like ‘time travel’ theoretically possible , is highly improbable. One thought led to another and as I kept on writing a quite impressive essay on probability, time and infinity emerged. With a little work this could easily lead to some sort of book on popular science. Just add some serious research and twist and bend some scientific findings on the subjects and you’re there. So when I finally fell asleep for my one hour nap of that night, I was a happy person.

Only problem: When I opened my notebook on the train two hours later, I found out that I could even read my handwriting of that night myself. I’m sure I had some wonderful insights and brilliant thoughts, I just can’t remember what they were now. Oh well, maybe in a different universe in an alternative space-time continuum…