The Times has a handy interactive tool that lets readers game out the possible Supreme Court rulings on the Affordable Care Act. I’m also reminded that I need to set up the office pool on how the Court will rule. I’m picking Monday, June 25th as the date of the ruling and that the mandate will be struck down but the rest of the law will be left standing. If I’m wrong, you have an open invitation to taunt me in the comments section.
Ars Technica is running a thoughtful article that examines the intersection of disability, technology, and intellectual property. The story centers on an app called Speak for Yourself, which allows an iPad to be used as a communication device for people with disabilities. Prentke Romich, a company that produces specialty assistive communication devices, took notice of the app and filed a patent infringement suit against the developers. The case has yet to be decided, but Prentke Romich also petitioned Apple to remove Speak for Yourself from the App Store, which Apple eventually did. The article also profiles a family whose young daughter uses the app with much success. The family has disabled Internet access on their iPad to prevent any operating system updates that might break the app and worries about what to do if their child breaks the tablet.
Incidentally, Prentke Romich is the same company that produced the headset I’m using to write this post.
The article doesn’t pick sides and I’m inclined to do the same. The app developers seem genuinely motivated to produce an affordable alternative to expensive communication devices while Prentke Romich may have legitimate concerns about protecting its patents. But the real question concerns Apple’s role in this dispute. We often think of apps as trivial things that we use for amusement or for banal tasks like getting directions or comparison shopping. But as mobile technology becomes more powerful and more critical to our daily lives, certain apps may become indispensable to some users. Should companies like Apple have the power to unilaterally pull an app when another party complains? And if so, do we really own the apps that we purchase? Should a communications app that is essential to daily living for some be subject to the same internal policies as Angry Birds? These are big questions that have so far received little attention.
I owe my ongoing good health to several factors. Quality nursing care. Medical technology. Good nutrition. But I may also owe a debt to the trillions of bacteria colonizing my body–my microbiome. A landmark study has found that a typically healthy human shares personal space with over a thousand strains of bacteria and many of those strains contribute to maintaining our health. The notion that we are covered with microscopic symbiotes is nothing new, but this study reveals the vast complexities of human physiology on a scale that few of us regularly contemplate.
When I was younger, my physician had me on prophylactic antibiotic. At the time, we thought it would protect me from serious respiratory infections. But perhaps it actually compromised me further.
We all know that the Internet is mostly cats and porn. But in case you require further evidence, I give you indifferent cats in amateur porn. This link is both highly amusing and exceedingly NSFW, so don’t peruse it while you’re eating lunch in your cubicle. Save it for the bus ride home.
Those going into Prometheus expecting a direct prequel to Alien will be disappointed, but there’s still plenty to tantalize fans of the franchise. The movie begins eighty years in the future, when a pair of archeologists discover evidence that humanity may have been visited by aliens who left their calling card with directions to a distant planetary system. Flash forward a few years and we find ourselves aboard the starship Prometheus as it approaches the planet in question. The expedition team soon finds traces of an advanced civilization and they begin investigating. But, this being a movie that shares DNA with Alien, things go horribly wrong before you can say “space jockey!”
As several reviewers have noted, the movie is a sumptuous visual feast. I watched the IMAX 3D version and some of the aerial and space scenery is truly breathtaking. The ship itself is one of the film’s central characters and director Ridley Scott lets us explore its sleek interior at some length. The plot itself lacks the same polish. Supposedly intelligent characters do some incredibly stupid or inexplicable things that distract from the sense of dread that Scott is trying to build. And David the android (Michael Fassbender) is the only character who seems like more than a quick sketch. But while its failings are certainly evident, Prometheus never becomes tedious or predictable. Indeed, it offers several moments that are genuinely scary or disturbing. Prometheus is smart science fiction that could have been even smarter.
Enjoy the weekend. I’ll be escaping the heat by paying a visit to a certain spaceship named Prometheus. The reviews seem positive enough to alleviate my fears that this will be another Alien 3. Perhaps I’ll post a review next week.
When Minneapolis began building its municipal wi-fi network in 2006, locals like me had high hopes that it would offer a compelling and affordable alternative to broadband offerings from Comcast and Qwest (now CenturyLink). But the network’s success has been underwhelming, suffering from low subscriber numbers and competition from both wired and cellular providers. The wi-fi network couldn’t match the higher speeds offered by Comcast or the ubiquitous coverage offered by the cellular companies. A wi-fi network becomes much less essential when people can get online anywhere with their smartphones.
I still think municipal broadband can be a good idea, but perhaps Minneapolis should paid more heed to other cities that abandoned their plans to build wireless networks when they realized the technology doesn’t provide great coverage or speed. Or perhaps the city should have focused on developing hotspots in public places rather than attempting to ensure access for every resident.
Ray Bradbury didn’t introduce me to science fiction. Asimov and L’Engle took care of that. Bradbury showed me that science fiction could be poetic and rich with metaphor. The lyricism of the opening paragraphs of Fahrenheit 451 captivated me and I tried to emulate it in my juvenile efforts at writing. The Martian Chronicles, with its separate but linked stories, helped me understand the importance of perspective and voice when telling a story. Reading Bradbury gave me my my first inkling that there was a difference between good writing and not-so-good. And I’ll always associate him Awith warm summer days at the kitchen table and slightly musty library books.
In case you hadn’t heard, Venus is currently in transit across the Sun. This won’t happen again until 2117, by which time we’ll probably be too busy fighting gladiatorial matches for the amusement of our robot overlords to take much notice of anything else. So take a moment to check it out and perhaps your descendants, enjoying a five-minute protein break in one of the lunar mine shafts, can recount the tale of how Great-Grandparent was able to watch a dot move across an actual sky.
Things aren’t looking good for opponents of Wisconsin governor Scott Walker and their efforts to recall him. InTrade has Walker as a 94% favorite to win tomorrow’s election. It’s entirely possible that the oddsmakers are wrong, but the polling trends clearly favor Walker. I’m saddened to witness from afar the venomous partisanship that has engulfed the state where I grew up. Wisconsin politics could swing between bold progressivism and staunch conservatism (Tommy Thompson was governor for much of my childhood), but the state’s political system generally reached consensus on the important issues. Much of the blame for the current state of affairs lies with Walker’s scorched-earth ideology, but I’m not sure the recall is the best strategy to effect change. The resources poured into this campaign might have been better spent on electing Democrats in November; a Walker win tomorrow could leave Wisconsin’s left dispirited and weakened. And using the recall process for purely political purposes seems like begging for trouble in the event that Wisconsin elects a truly liberal governor in the future who encounters fierce conservative opposition.
I hope I’m wrong about all this, but I have the sinking feeling that Wisconsin Democrats are playing right into their opponents’ hands.