Another privacy spat has erupted in relation to Facebook, the social networking site. It all began when the site began actively advertising everything you did you all of your friends: every time a photo was updated or a relationship status changed, everyone could see it by default, rather than having to go looking. After that, it emerged that Facebook was selling information to third parties. Now, it seems that the applications people can install are getting access to more of their information than is required for them to operate, allowing the writers of such applications to collect and sell information such as the stated hometown and sexual orientation of anyone using them.
Normally, I am in favour of mechanisms to protect privacy and sympathetic to the fact that technology makes that harder to achieve. Facebook, I think, is different. As with a personal site, everything being posted is being intentionally put into the public domain. Those who think they have privacy on Facebook are being deluded and those who act as though information posted there is private are being foolish. The company should be more open about both facts, but I think they are within their rights to sell the information they are collecting.
The best advice for Facebook users is to keep the information posted trivial, and maintain the awareness that whatever finds its way online is likely to remain in someone’s records forever.
[Update: 12 February 2008] Canada’s Privacy Comissioner has a blog. It might be interesting reading for people concerned with such matters.
Canada’s federal government is launching an initiative to combat antibiotic resistant bacteria. This is a very sensible thing to do, given how bacterial evolution is creating resistant strains at a higher rate than the one at which we are inventing new antibiotics. MRSA and its relatives could well signal a return to a world in which morbidity and mortality from bacterial illness start shifting back towards the levels prevalent before antibiotics were widely available.
We largely have ourselves to blame for the existence of these bugs. Every time a doctor prescribes unnecessary antibiotics in order to get a patient out of their office, we give them another chance to get stronger. The same goes for when a patient stops taking an antibiotic prescription when they feel better, rather than when it runs out, potentially leaving a few of the most resistant bugs behind to infect others. The same is true for all the ‘antibacterial’ soaps and cleaning products out there. Putting triclosan in soap is pretty poor prioritization. Outside the body, it makes the most sense to kill bugs with things they cannot evolve resistance to: like alcohol or bleach. Using the precious chemicals that kill them but not us to clean countertops is just bad thinking. Finally, there is the antibiotic-factory farming connection discussed extensively here before.
The federal plan involves a number of prudent steps, many of them specifically targeted to MRSA and Clostridium difficile. These include more active patient screening, better sanitization of hospital rooms, use of prophylactics like gloves and masks, and the isolation of patients with resistant strains. Given that there were 13,458 MRSA infections in Ontario hospitals in 2006, it seems that such an initiative is overdue. It would be exceedingly tragic if we comprehensively undermined one of the greatest discoveries in the history of medicine through carelessness and neglect.
Virgin Galactic – Richard Branson’s space company – has released the design of its next generation craft: SpaceShipTwo. The machine will carry passengers into the upper atmosphere after being carried to an altitude of about 15km by a larger mothership. After spending time at 110km of altitude, the vehicle will re-enter the atmosphere. While the technology is new and doubtless interesting, there is good reason to ask whether it serves any valuable purpose.
The three aims commonly described for the technology are delivering extremely urgent packages, launching small satellites, and entertaining rich people. While it can certainly be argued that manned spaceflight has not generally been a valuable undertaking, this sort of rollercoaster ride does seem like an especially trivial use of technology. For about $200,000, you get a few minutes in microgravity, the view out the windows, and bragging rights thereafter. Satellite launching could be a lot more useful, though the Virgin group has yet to demonstrate the capability of their vehicles to do so – a situation that applies equally to the idea of making 90 minute deliveries anywhere in the world.
The Economist provides an especially laughable justification for the whole undertaking, arguing:
When space becomes a democracy—or, at least, a plutocracy—the rich risk-takers who have seen the fragile Earth from above might form an influential cohort of environmental activists. Those cynics who look at SpaceShipTwo and think only of the greenhouse gases it is emitting may yet be in for a surprise.
Hopefully, they won’t become ‘environmental activists’ of the Richard Branson variety: investing in airplanes and gratuitous spacecraft while hoping someone will develop a machine that will somehow address the emissions generated.
This blog has previously considered the relationship between antibiotic resistant bacteria and factory farming. Recently, I learned about another way in which industrial meat production is breeding microbes that kill humans all the more efficiently. This one has to do with the acidity of our stomachs, one of the ways in which our bodies protect themselves from microorganisms living in the food we eat.
A cow living on a diet of grass has a rumen with a neutral pH. The rumen is the ‘first stomach’ of grass eating animals. Inside, bacteria help to ferment undigestible grass into material the cow’s body can process. Along with these digestive bacteria, many other kinds are present. One sort – Escherichia coli – kills humans by releasing toxins that destroy the kidneys. ‘Normal’ E. Coli, of the sort found in cows since the 1980s, cannot tolerate an acidic environment. As such, our stomachs are pretty good at killing it and thus keeping it from killing us.
A cow in a factory farm does not eat grass. The corn it eats creates an acidic environment in the rumen. This makes the cows ill, while also helping to breed E. Coli that can survive passage through acidic human stomachs. Now, about 40% of feedlot cows have E. Coli in their rumens. Feeding them grass or hay for a few days before slaughtering reduces the number of E. Coli in the animal’s digestive tract by about 80%, but factory farms do not do this. Instead, they try to prevent E. Coli outbreaks through irradiation.
Just another way in which industrial meat farming perverts nature and threatens human health.
[Update: 22 January 2010] Apparently, new research has called this hypothesis about diet and e. coli into question: “different set of findings emerged to indicate that this particular strain did not, in fact, behave like other strains of E. coli found in cattle guts. Most importantly (in terms of consumer safety), scientists showed in a half-dozen studies that grass-fed cows do become colonized with E. coli O157:H7 at rates nearly the same as grain-fed cattle. An Australian study actually found a higher prevalence of O157:H7 in the feces of grass-fed rather than grain-fed cows. The effect postulated (and widely publicized) in the 1998 Science report—that grain-fed, acidic intestines induced the colonization of acid-resistant E. coli—did not apply to the very strain of bacteria that was triggering all the recalls.”
The myriad problems of electronic voting machines have been mentioned here before. Given that 80% of electoral districts in New Hampshire use electronic voting machines – and ones made by the infamous Diebold, at that – it’s not surprising that talk of fraud is circulating in relation to the latest primary. Some commenters are arguing that: “In machine counted precincts, Clinton beat Obama by almost 5%. In hand counted precincts, Obama beat Clinton by over 4%, which closely matches the scientific polls that were conducted leading up to the election” and alleging that this proves either unintentional bugs in the voting system or fraud.
The issue is less the outcome of that particular contest and more the way in which electronic voting machines diminish the perceived validity of elections. Given how they have been proven insecure again and again, and given how straightforward and manageable counting paper ballots is, there really isn’t much reason for anyone to use these machines. Hopefully, the world will finally figure this out soon.
Related prior posts:
In today’s news, there is some talk about the new report from the National Round Table on the Environment and the Economy. Much of it has surrounded the possibility of a carbon tax as a vehicle for assisting the with reduction of Canadian greenhouse gas emissions. One comment from the CBC struck me as especially wrong-headed. In relation to a carbon tax, a person being interviewed said that it “would specifically impact western oil producers who might have to carry the brunt of such attacks.”
The fallacy here is that western oil producers have the right to emit as many greenhouse gasses as they like, for free. If your neighbour was running a pulp mill in his back yard, allowing toxic chemicals to ooze throughout the neighbourhood, nobody would call it an ‘attack’ when he was made to stop. Arguments implying that industry or private individuals have the right to impose ecological harms upon others need to be challenged in terms of fairness and ethics. Otherwise, they obscure the true character of the situation and help to perpetuate the status quo.
