28 Oct · Fri 2005
How improbable is a rainbow?
I saw a rainbow today, and it occurred to me what an unlikely thing it appears to be. There it is, surrounded by fractal stuff like clouds, trees, rainfall, wind and so on, and yet it is a perfect geometric shape, delineated in a spectrum of colour which appears to be utterly unnatural. If I were an Intelligent Design proponent, presumably that's about as far as my investigations would need to go: the rainbow is something so clearly at odds with the rest of the observable natural world that it must be evidence of a higher designer.
I find ID so intellectually alien that it's hard to know which objection to raise first, but I tend towards this one: anything which encourages someone to give up on scientific method because the thing under investigation "looks too complex to explain scientifically" is bad.
If that's the approach we inculcate in our children, I think we are sowing their future with the intellectual equivalent of anti-personnel mines. There ought to be an international treaty against that. In Socratic Athens, it was grounds for hemlock.
Of ID Theft, Compost and Brand Subversion...
Identity theft, in its various guises, seems to be all over the headlines today. I mean specifically today, rather than "these days":
A Romanian couple are being sentenced in London for an eBay scam which ran for two years and netted an estimated £200,000. They apparently used a dozen or so fake IDs to help perpetrate the scam, which was a standard one of auctioning non-existent goods, then persuading the 'unlucky losing bidders' to send a money transfer for 'an equivalent item which we do have in stock'.
Police raids in Cardiff uncovered a classic card counterfeiting ring, based on good old "dumpster diving" (or, as we know it, 'rummaging through the bin') for utility bills, bank statements and the like. If you still just bin your bills and statements, pleez, pleez buy a shredder and use it. It not only lowers your risk of ID theft, the resulting shreddings make an excellent addition to your compost heap. There are two ways you can use them: either just add a thick layer occasionally along with the garden waste, or bag the shreddings up in a black bin-liner and use this as an insulating blanket on top of the heap. The heat retention will help what's underneath break down more quickly. I do the same thing with twiggy hedge clippings which are too woody to go straight on the heap. Bag them up, put them on top of the heap as insulation, and after a year or so they will have broken down enough to be emptied out onto the compost.
Finally, what's the difference between ID Theft and Brand Subversion? Not a lot. Both are pernicious, cost you money, damage your reputation and are hard to clean up. Clothing manufacturer Burberry has discovered this, as it has seen its signature black, red and tan check pattern spread like bird 'flu through a stratum of society it would sooner not be associated with. But if that design simply "is" Burberry to the majority of consumers, what do they do to reclaim it as the 'identity' they want? It's pretty tough, isnt' it? They can't just switch to a nice blue-green paisley instead, any more than Coca Cola could ditch the familiar red of the most recognised brand on the planet.
By the same token: what recourse do you have, as an individual, if someone 'steals' your identity? They can't 'give it back to you' like they could a camera or a car, nor can they buy you a new one. Think what will happen when we all rely on biometrics: you can't be given another set of DNA just because someone forged your current credentials. I know biometrics tends currently to be portrayed as the be-all and end-all of authentication technology, but I have a sneaking suspicion that's a rather short-term view. We need to be thinking of biometrics as a technology with a shelf-life, and planning what to do if (when?) its effectiveness erodes over time.
Posted by racingsnake
@ 04:13 PM GMT+00:00
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