…[A] marathon church service, which started more than six weeks ago, and hasn’t stopped since, can never take a break.
Under an obscure Dutch law, the police may not disrupt a church service to make an arrest. And so for the past six weeks, immigration officials have been unable to enter Bethel Church
to seize the five members of the Tamrazyan family, Armenian refugees who fled to the sanctuary to escape a deportation order.
The service, which began in late
October as a little-noticed, last-gasp measure by a small group of local ministers, is now a national movement, attracting clergy members and congregants from villages and cities
across the Netherlands. More than 550 pastors from about 20 denominations have rotated through Bethel Church, a nonstop service all in the name of protecting one vulnerable family.
…
Beautiful story of the Dutch church that’s been running a non-stop service (with over 500 pastors from various denominations contributing in shifts) for six weeks and counting in order
to protect from deportation a family who’ve been taking refuge inside. The whole piece
is well worth your time to read, but aside from the general joy and good feels that fill it, I was also impressed by how widely it’s inspired preachers to try things that are a little
different:
Some preachers simply reuse services and sermons they gave at other churches. But others have used the opportunity to try something new, turning the church into a kind of greenhouse
for liturgical experiments.
Ms. Israel read from a modern reinterpretation of the biblical story of King David and his wife Bathsheba, told from Bathsheba’s perspective. One minister incorporated meditative song into her service, and another interspersed prayers and
hymns with sermons from Martin Luther King Jr. During one all-nighter, Mr. Stegeman even brought along a harpist.
Of course, let’s not forget that this is another one of those happy-news-stories-with-an-underlying-sad-story. Given that the family in question, according to the article, have
successfully appealed against their deportation twice, and furthermore the duration of their stay so far should at least grant the children amnesty under
Dutch law, it sounds like their deportation shouldn’t really be happening in the first place! It’s great that a community has come together to protect them, but wouldn’t a better happy
story be if the country that’s supposed to be protecting them were doing so, instead, so that the community didn’t have to?
“In our family, we have a special way of transitioning the kids from receiving from Santa, to becoming a Santa. This way, the Santa construct is not a lie that gets discovered, but an
unfolding series of good deeds and Christmas spirit.
When they are 6 or 7, whenever you see that dawning suspicion that Santa may not be a material being, that means the child is ready. I take them out “for coffee” at the local
wherever. We get a booth, order our drinks, and the following pronouncement is made: “You sure have grown an awful lot this year. Not only are you taller, but I can see that your
heart has grown, too. [ Point out 2-3 examples of empathetic behavior, consideration of people’s feelings, good deeds etc, the kid has done in the past year]. In fact, your heart has
grown so much that I think you are ready to become a Santa Claus.
You probably have noticed that most of the Santas you see are people dressed up like him. Some of your friends might have even told you that there is no Santa. A lot of children think
that, because they aren’t ready to BE a Santa yet, but YOU ARE.
Tell me the best things about Santa. What does Santa get for all of his trouble? [lead the kid from “cookies” to the good feeling of having done something for someone else]. Well, now
YOU are ready to do your first job as a Santa!” Make sure you maintain the proper conspiratorial tone.
We then have the child choose someone they know–a neighbor, usually. The child’s mission is to secretly, deviously, find out something that the person needs, and then provide it, wrap
it, deliver it–and never reveal to the target where it came from. Being a Santa isn’t about getting credit, you see. It’s unselfish giving.
My oldest chose the “witch lady” on the corner. She really was horrible–had a fence around the house and would never let the kids go in and get a stray ball or Frisbee. She’d yell at
them to play quieter, etc–a real pill. He noticed when we drove to school that she came out every morning to get her paper in bare feet, so he decided she needed slippers. So then he
had to go spy and decide how big her feet were. He hid in the bushes one Saturday, and decided she was a medium. We went to Kmart and bought warm slippers. He wrapped them up, and
tagged it “merry Christmas from Santa.” After dinner one evening, he slipped down to her house, and slid the package under her driveway gate. The next morning, we watched her waddle
out to get the paper, pick up the present, and go inside. My son was all excited, and couldn’t wait to see what would happen next. The next morning, as we drove off, there she was,
out getting her paper–wearing the slippers. He was ecstatic. I had to remind him that NO ONE could ever know what he did, or he wouldn’t be a Santa.
Over the years, he chose a good number of targets, always coming up with a unique present just for them. One year, he polished up his bike, put a new seat on it, and gave it to one of
our friend’s daughters. These people were and are very poor. We did ask the dad if it was ok. The look on her face, when she saw the bike on the patio with a big bow on it, was almost
as good as the look on my son’s face.
When it came time for Son #2 to join the ranks, my oldest came along, and helped with the induction speech. They are both excellent gifters, by the way, and never felt that they had
been lied to–because they were let in on the Secret of Being a Santa.”
**********************************
First up: why do people post galleries of images of text to Imgur? At that point, you’re taking some information, making it take up more space, be readable by fewer
people, be harder to translate, inaccessible to robots, and result in less-readable text. It drives me nuts. Anyway, I converted the original images (which you can find behind the
link if you really want) into text, above, thereby improving the entire thing immeasurably.
That minor rage out of the way: I’m not a fan of telling children that Santa is “real” in the first place, but if you’re going to do that, the
approach promoted by the author of the above might come a close second. I’ve always seen the concept of Santa as being the representation of the spirit of anonymous gift-giving, and I
love it for that reason. Just like the Easter Bunny representing the spirit of hiding chocolate eggs for other people to find, this approach fosters honesty, maturity, and the joy of
the season and doesn’t have to detract from the magic of Christmas.
An increasing number of people are reportedly suffering from an allergy to the meat and other products of nonhuman mammals, reports Mosaic Science this week, and we’re increasingly confident that the cause is
a sensitivity to alpha-gal (Galactose-alpha-1,3-galactose), a carbohydrate produced in the bodies of virtually
all mammals except for us and our cousin apes, monkeys, and simians (and one of the reasons you can’t transplant tissue from pigs to humans, for example).
The lone star tick (You call that a star, tick? Looks like a blob to me!), one of several vectors for alpha-gal sensitivity.
The interesting thing is that the most-common cause of alpha-gal sensitivity appears to be the bite of one of a small number of species of tick. The most-likely hypothesis seems to be
that being bitten by such a tick after it’s bitten e.g. deer or cattle may introduce that species’ alpha-gal directly to your bloodstream. This exposure triggers an immune response
through all future exposure, even if it’s is more minor, e.g. consuming milk products or even skin contact with an animal.
That’s nuts, isn’t it? The Mosaic Science article describes the reaction of Tami McGraw, whose symptoms began in 2010:
[She] asked her doctor to order a little-known blood test that would show if her immune system was reacting to a component of mammal meat. The test result was so strongly positive,
her doctor called her at home to tell her to step away from the stove.
That should have been the end of her problems. Instead it launched her on an odyssey of discovering just how much mammal material is present in everyday life. One time, she took
capsules of liquid painkiller and woke up in the middle of the night, itching and covered in hives provoked by the drug’s gelatine covering.
When she bought an unfamiliar lip balm, the lanolin in it made her mouth peel and blister. She planned to spend an afternoon gardening, spreading fertiliser and planting flowers, but
passed out on the grass and had to be revived with an EpiPen. She had reacted to manure and bone meal that were enrichments in bagged compost she had bought.
Cats can eat bacon. But some cat owners can’t. More bacon for the cats? The plot thickens. Also: haven’t used this picture in
a while, have I?
Of course, this isn’t the only nor even the most-unusual (or most-severe) animal-induced allergy-to-a-different-animal we’re aware of. The hilariously-named but terribly-dangerous
Pork-Cat syndrome is caused, though we’re not sure how, by exposure to cats and
results in a severe allergy to pork. But what makes alpha-gal sensitivity really interesting is that it’s increasing in frequency at quite a dramatic rate. The culprit? Climate change.
Probably.
It’s impossible to talk to physicians encountering alpha-gal cases without hearing that something has changed to make the tick that transmits it more common – even though they don’t
know what that something might be.
…
“Climate change is likely playing a role in the northward expansion,” Ostfeld adds, but acknowledges that we don’t know what else could also be contributing.
An average serving of beef contributes almost 8kg of greenhouse gases, compared to around 1kg for chicken. Thanks, Beeb (click through for full article).
A little dated, perhaps: I’m sure that nobody needs to be told nowadays that one of the biggest things a Westerner can do to reduce their personal carbon footprint (after from breeding less or not at all, which I maintain is the biggest, or avoiding air
travel, which Statto argues for) is to reduce or refrain from consumption of meat (especially pork and beef) and dairy products.
Indeed, environmental impact was the biggest factor in my vegetarianism (now weekday-vegetarianism) for
the last eight years, and it’s an outlook that I’ve seen continue to grow in others over the same period.
Seeing these two stories side-by-side in my RSS reader put the Gaia hypothesis in my mind.
If you want a pop-culture-grade introduction to the Gaia hypothesis in the context of climate change, this SMBC comic does the job, and does so almost with fewer words than this
caption explaining that it does so.
If you’re not familiar with the Gaia hypothesis, the basic idea is this: by some mechanism, the Earth and all of the life on it act in synergy to maintain homeostasis. Organisms not
only co-evolve with one another but also with the planet itself, affecting their environment in a way that in turn affects their future evolution in a perpetual symbiotic relationship
of life and its habitat.
Its advocates point to negative feedback loops in nature such as plankton blooms affecting the weather in ways that inhibit
plankton blooms and to simplistic theoretical models like the Daisyworld Simulation
(cute video). A minority of its proponents go a step further and describe the Earth’s changes teleologically, implying a conscious Earth with an intention to
protect its ecosystems (yes, these hypotheses were born out of the late 1960s, why do you ask?). Regardless, the essence is the same: life’s effect on its environment affects the
environment’s hospitality to life, and vice-versa.
There’s an attractive symmetry to it, isn’t there, in light of the growth in alpha-gal allergies? Like:
Today – climate change causes ticks to spread more-widely and bite more humans.
Tomorrow – tick bites cause humans to consume less products farmed from mammals?
Both my appreciation and my rejection of Gaia Hypothesis can probably be traced to me playing way too much SimEarth as a
teenager. Here’s my Daisyworld in state of equilibrium, because I haven’t yet gotten bored and spawned dinosaurs to eat all of the daisies.
That’s not to say that I buy it, mind. The Gaia hypothesis has a number of problems, and – almost as bad – it encourages a complacent “it’ll all be okay, the Earth will fix itself”
mindset to climate change (which, even if it’s true, doesn’t bode well for the humans residing on it).
But it was a fun parallel to land in my news reader this morning, so I thought I’d share it with you. And, by proxy, make you just a little bit warier of ticks than you might have been
already. /shudders/
Mongolian folk rock. Until right now, you probably didn’t even know that this was missing from your life.
Be sure to switch on the translated subtitles (assuming you don’t speak Mongolian): they’re not perfect, but they’re good enough to get the idea. Awesome.
Melbourne gave 70,000 trees email addresses so people could report on their condition. But instead people are writing love letters, existential queries and sometimes just bad puns.
…
In an effort to facilitate better tracking of the health of their trees, the city of Melbourne assigned an email address to each of them and allowed them to be looked-up using a map.
The thinking was that people could email if a tree needed attention by the council, and the human that processed the email would automatically be able to determine the location of the
plant.
But people started emailing the trees themselves. And not just people who’d seen them in person: people from all over the world. From “You are just outside my work and you make
me happy :)” to “I love the way the light looks through your leaves and how your branches come down so low and wide it is almost as if you are trying to hug me. It is nice to have you
so close, I should try to visit more often.” Delightful.
Set a timer. Cook the eggs for precisely three minutes and not a second longer.
Everyone thinks they have a sense of how time passes, but it’s crucial to use a timer. You are never as right as you think. Three minutes goes by more quickly than you expect. Six
years even quicker.
…
Good instructions for poaching eggs. Also for leaving a marriage, for all I know. Surprisingly strong parallels between the two.
Will Microsoft’s decision make it harder for Firefox to prosper? It could. Making Google more powerful is risky on many fronts. […] If one product like Chromium has enough market
share, then it becomes easier for web developers and businesses to decide not to worry if their services and sites work with anything other than Chromium. That’s what happened when
Microsoft had a monopoly on browsers in the early 2000s before Firefox was released. And it could happen again.
Before you lament the return to a Microsoft-like monopoly, remember what happened to Microsoft’s monopoly. In fact, remember what happened to the lineal descendant of that monopoly
just last week. Near-monopolies do not necessarily mean the end of the web.
…
Yet more in the “EdgeHTML to be replaced by Chromium” story, on which I already shared my opinions. Peter-Paul does a good job of illustrating
the differences between the reduction of diversity in/increasing monopolisation of the browser space this time around and last time (when Internet Explorer 6 became
the de facto standard way to surf the Web), using it to provide a slightly less-pessimistic outlook (albeit one not without its warnings).
Click through for the full review. I’ve always loved me some Oh Joy Sex Toy, but I’ve rarely been inclined to buy
something off the back of one of Erika’s recommendations until now.
Visited GZ as part of maintenance; all well here, although the “obvious” path to the cache continues to become increasingly overgrown – a fallen tree in the way almost but not quite
justifies putting the terrain rating up half a point.
Two bicycles seem to have been abandoned near the GZ. One belongs to hire scheme Ofo and has been reported to them. Making a note here so that if one or both are seen to still
be there in the New Year they can be reported as having been “abandoned for several weeks” as per council recommendations:
https://www.oxford.gov.uk/info/20060/street_cleaning/168/report_an_abandoned_bicycle
Cache container and contents remain in perfect condition. Go find it!
I’m a huge fan of multifactor authentication. If you’re using it, you’re probably familiar with using an app on your phone (or receiving a text or email) in addition to a username and
password when logging in to a service like your email, social network, or a bank. If you’re not using it then, well, you should be.
Using an app in addition to your username and password, wherever you can, may be the single biggest step you can make to improving your personal digital security.
Ruth recently had a problem when she lost her phone and couldn’t connect to a service for which she usually used an authenticator app like the
one pictured above, so I thought I’d share with you my personal strategy for managing multifactor authentication, in case it’s of any use to anybody else. After all: the issue of
not-having-the-right-second-factor-to-hand has happened to me before, it’s certainly now happened to Ruth, and it’s probably
something that’s happened to other people I know by now, too.
It could happen to anybody. What’s your authentication plan?
Here’s my strategy:
Favour fewer different multifactor solutions. Instead of using e.g. text messaging for one, an app for another, a different app for a third, a hardware token
for a fourth, and so on, try to find the fewest number of different solutions that work for your personal digital life. This makes backing up and maintenance easier.
I use RFC6238/TOTP (better known as “Google Authenticator”) for
almost all second factor purposes: the only exceptions are my online bank (who use a proprietary variant of RFC6238 that I’ve not finished reverse-engineering) and Steam (who use a
proprietary implementation of RFC6238 with a larger character set, for some reason, in their Steam Guard app).
Have a backup plan. Here’s the important bit. If you use your phone to authenticate, and you lose access to your phone for a period of time (broken, lost, stolen, out
of battery, in use by a small child playing a game), you can’t authenticate. That’s why it’s important that you have a backup plan.
That’s probably more backup devices than you need, but YMMV.
Some suggested backup strategies to consider (slightly biased towards TOTP):
Multiple devices: (Assuming you’re using TOTP or something like it) there’s nothing to stop you
setting up multiple devices to access the same account. Depending on how the service you’re accessing provides the code you need to set it up, you might feel like you have to
set them all up at the same time, but that’s not strictly true: there’s another way…
Consider setting up a backdoor: Some systems will allow you to print e.g. a set of “backup codes” and store them in a safe place for later use should you lose access
to your second factor. Depending on the other strategies you employ, you should consider doing this: for most (normal) people, this could be the single safest way to retain access to
your account in the event that you lose access to your second factor. Either way, you should understand the backdoors available: if your online bank’s policy is to email you
replacement credentials on-demand then your online bank account’s security is only as good as your email account’s security: follow the chain to work out where the weak links are.
Retain a copy of the code: The code you’re given to configure your device remains valid forever: indeed, the way that it works is that the
service provider retains a copy of the same code so they can generate numbers at the same time as you, and thus check that you’re generating the same numbers as them. If you keep a
copy of the backup code (somewhere very safe!) you can set up any device you want, whenever you want. Personally, I keep copies of all TOTP configuration codes in my password safe (you’re using a password safe, right?).
Set up the infrastructure what works for you: To maximise my logging-on convenience, I have my password safe enter my TOTP numbers for me: I’m using KeeOTP for KeePass, but since 2016 LastPass users can do basically the
same thing. I’ve also implemented my own TOTP client in Ruby to run on desktop computers I control (just be careful to protect the secrets file), because sometimes you just want a
command-line solution. The code’s below, and I think you’ll agree that it’s simple enough that you can audit it for your own safety too.
I’ve occasionally been asked whether my approach actually yields me any of the benefits of two-factor authentication. After all, people say, aren’t I weakening its benefits by storing
the TOTP generation key in the same place as my usernames and passwords rather than restricting it to my mobile
device. This is true, and it is weaker to do this than to keep the two separately, but it’s not true to say that all of the benefits are negated: replay attacks by an
attacker who intercepts a password are mitigated by this approach, for example, and these are a far more-common vector for identity theft than the theft and decryption of password
safes.
Everybody has to make their own decisions on the balance of their convenience versus their security, but for me the sweet spot comes here: in preventing many of the most-common attacks
against the kinds of accounts that I use and reinforcing my existing username/strong-unique-passwords approach without preventing me from getting stuff done. You’ll have to make your
own decisions, but if you take one thing away from this, let it be that there’s nothing to stop you having multiple ways to produce TOTP/Google Authenticator credentials, and you should consider doing so.
Quantum computing is all the rage. It seems like hardly a day goes by without some news outlet describing the extraordinary things this technology promises. Most commentators forget,
or just gloss over, the fact that people have been working on quantum computing for decades—and without any practical results to show for it.
We’ve been told that quantum computers could “provide breakthroughs in many disciplines, including
materials and drug discovery, the optimization of complex manmade systems, and artificial intelligence.” We’ve been assured that
quantum computers will “forever alter our economic, industrial, academic, and societal landscape.” We’ve even been told that “the encryption that protects the world’s most sensitive
data may soon be broken” by quantum computers. It has gotten to the point where many researchers in various fields of physics feel obliged to justify whatever work they are doing by
claiming that it has some relevance to quantum computing.
Meanwhile, government research agencies, academic departments (many of them funded by government agencies), and corporate laboratories are spending billions of dollars a year
developing quantum computers. On Wall Street, Morgan Stanley and other financial giants expect quantum computing to mature soon and are keen to figure out
how this technology can help them.
It’s become something of a self-perpetuating arms race, with many organizations seemingly staying in the race if only to avoid being left behind. Some of the world’s top technical
talent, at places like Google, IBM, and Microsoft, are working hard, and with lavish resources in state-of-the-art laboratories, to realize their vision of a quantum-computing future.
In light of all this, it’s natural to wonder: When will useful quantum computers be constructed? The most optimistic experts estimate it will take 5 to 10 years. More cautious
ones predict 20 to 30 years. (Similar predictions have been voiced, by the way, for the last 20 years.) I belong to a tiny minority that answers, “Not in the foreseeable future.”
Having spent decades conducting research in quantum and condensed-matter physics, I’ve developed my very pessimistic view. It’s based on an understanding of the gargantuan technical
challenges that would have to be overcome to ever make quantum computing work.
…
Great article undermining all the most-widespread popular arguments about how quantum computing will revolutionise aboslutely everything, any day now. Let’s stay realistic, here:
despite all the hype, it might well be the case that it’s impossible to build a quantum computer of sufficient complexity to have any meaningful impact on the world beyond the
most highly-experimental and theoretical applications. And even if it is possible, its applications might well be limited: the “great potential” they carry is highly
hypothetical.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m super excited about the possibility of quantum computing, too. But as Mickhail points out, we must temper our excitement with a little realism and not give in to
the hype.
