scooch

Another try

2010-08-23T00:13:00.001-07:00

Let's see if it works.

Another try

2010-08-23T00:13:00.000-07:00

Let's see if it works.

demonstration

2010-08-23T00:00:00.001-07:00

this is a test

iGoogle

2010-08-23T00:00:00.000-07:00

this is a test

I can't sign in. What should I do? - Blogger Help

2010-08-22T23:55:00.001-07:00

This is a test.

I can't sign in. What should I do? - Blogger Help

2010-08-22T23:55:00.000-07:00

This is a test.

Is"privacy" a right?

2008-11-24T15:35:00.000-08:00

Some 40 years ago I wrote a book having to do with the right to privacy. I did not at the time think it important to define what it was that I was talking about. Everyone knew what privacy was. It had long ago been declared a "right", memorably by a pair of Boston law partners, Samuel D. Warren and Louis Brandeis when, in the Harvard Law Review of December 15, 1890, they declared that:

Recent inventions and business methods call attention to the next step which must be taken for the protection of the person, and for securing to the individual what Judge Cooley calls the right "to be let alone" Instantaneous photographs and newspaper enterprise have invaded the sacred precincts of private and domestic life; and numerous mechanical devices threaten to make good the prediction that "what is whispered in the closet shall be proclaimed from the house-tops." For years there has been a feeling that the law must afford some remedy. .

So matters stood at the time my book appeared. I felt no need for a close definition of a right as elusive as privacy. After all, as the sainted Augustine of Hippo pointed out that while everyday language about time may be inaccurate, people still manage to understand each other. Justice Potter Stewart could just as well have been talking about the concept of privacy as well as he did pornography when he wrote the famous words, in the obscenity case of Jacobellis v. Ohio (1964), that "hard-core pornography" was hard to define, but that "I know it when I see it."

No more. As Esther Dyson reflects:

Privacy is a public Rorschach test: Say the word aloud, and you can start any number of passionate discussions. One person worries about governmental abuse of power; another blushes about his drug use and sexual history; a third vents outrage about how corporations collect private data to target their ads or how insurance companies dig through personal medical records to deny coverage to certain people. Some fear a world of pervasive commercialization, in which data are used to sort everyone into one or another "market segment"-the better to cater to people's deepest desires or to exploit their most frivolous whims. Others fret over state intrusion and social strictures.

The question now is whether any use is served by carrying on a discussion of a subject as if it were an umbrella covering, for example, a woman's right to choose, "identity theft", industrial espionage, Googling. . .Why trouble our deliberations, and invite mischief, by making of a "right", no less, anything as unspecifiable as the concept of "privacy"? The Stanford Encyclopedia notes that:

There are several skeptical and critical accounts of privacy. According to one well known argument there is no right to privacy and there is nothing special about privacy, because any interest protected as private can be equally well explained and protected by other interests or rights, most notably rights to property and bodily security

The "one well known argument" was made by Judith Jarvis Thomson who has written:

Perhaps the most striking thing about the right to privacy is that nobody seems to have any very clear idea what it is. Consider, for example, the familiar proposal that the right to privacy is the right ''to be let alone." On the one hand, this doesn't seem to take in enough. The police might say, "We grant we used a special X-ray device on Smith, so as to be able to watch him through the walls of his house; we grant we trained an amplifying device on him so as to be able to hear everything he said; but we let him strictly alone: we didn't touch him, we didn't even go near him-our devices operate at a distance." Anyone who believes there is a right to privacy would presumably believe that it has been violated in Smith's case; yet he would be hard put to explain precisely how, if the right to privacy is the right to be let alone. And on the other hand, this account of the right to privacy lets in far too much. If I hit Jones on the head with a brick I have not let him alone. Yet, while hitting Jones on the head with a brick is surely violating some right of Jones', doing it should surely not turn out to violate his right to privacy. Else, where is this to end? Is every violation of a right a violation of the right to privacy?

Good question.

One is reminded of line from Kenneth Koch's One Train May Hide Another:

In a poem, one line may hide another line,
As at a crossing, one train may hide another train.
That is, if you are waiting to cross
The tracks, wait to do it for one moment at
Least after the first train is gone. And so when you read
Wait until you have read the next line--
Then it is safe to go on reading. . .

On the track beyond the one marked "privacy" is the train that may better carry us to where we wish to go, namely the one marked "fourth amendment." It asserts that:

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

The operative phrase is "secure in their persons." Considering the Moebius strip made of the Second Amendment in order to create today's National Rifle Association, the extrapolation needed to make the Fourth Amendment into a place where all of the interests in Esther Dyson's list would be protected should cause no sweat. The rule book is already filled with arguments and annotation on the matter. To wit, this from Find Law:

The premise that property interests control the right of the Government to search and seize has been discredited. . . . We have recognized that the principal object of the Fourth Amendment is the protection of privacy rather than property, and have increasingly discarded fictional and procedural barriers rested on property concepts."

It will take a lot of negotiation yet to formulate what it takes to be secure in one's own person in today's environment. We might begin by asking ourselves what it would take to achieve that equality of conditions of which Tocqueville spoke.

.

The Legacy

2008-11-14T15:40:00.000-08:00

Lest we forget all of the things that Bush brought to the presidency.

Some notes on terrorism

2008-11-13T16:17:00.000-08:00

    1795, in specific sense of "government intimidation during the Reign of Terror in France" (1793-July 1794), from Fr. terrorisme (1798), from L. terror (see terror).
    "If the basis of a popular government in peacetime is virtue, its basis in a time of revolution is virtue and terror -- virtue, without which terror would be barbaric; and terror, without which virtue would be impotent." [Robespierre, speech in Fr. National Convention, 1794]
    General sense of "systematic use of terror as a policy" is first recorded in Eng. 1798. Terrorize "coerce or deter by terror" first recorded 1823. Terrorist in the modern sense dates to 1947, especially in reference to Jewish tactics against the British in Palestine -- earlier it was used of extremist revolutionaries in Russia (1866); and Jacobins during the French Revolution (1795) -- from Fr. terroriste. The tendency of one party's terrorist to be another's guerilla or freedom fighter was noted in ref. to the British action in Cyprus (1956) and the war in Rhodesia (1973). The word terrorist has been applied, at least retroactively, to the Maquis resistance in occupied France in World War II (e.g. in the "Spectator," Oct. 20, 1979).
    Pronunciation: 'ter-&r, 'te-r&r
    - ter·ror·less /-l&s/ adjective
    “Terrorism”
    01/01/2003 GMT
    Terrorism is the unconventional use of violence for political gain. It is a strategy of using coordinated attacks that fall outside the laws of war commonly understood to represent the bounds of conventional warfare.
    "Terrorist attacks" are usually characterized as "indiscriminate," "targeting of civilians," or executed "with disregard" for human life. The term "terrorism" is often used to assert that the political violence of an enemy is immoral, wanton, and unjustified. According to definition of terrorism typically used by states, academics, counter-terrorism experts, and non-governmental organizations, "terrorists" are actors who don't belong to any recognized armed forces and who don't adhere to their rules, and who are therefore regarded as "rogue actors".
    Etymology
      Etymology: Middle English, from Anglo-French terrour, from Latin terror, from terrEre to frighten; akin to Greek trein to be afraid, flee, tremein to tremble -- more at TREMBLE
      1 : a state of intense fear
      2 a : one that inspires fear : SCOURGE b : a frightening aspect <the terrors of invasion> c : a cause of anxiety : WORRY d : an appalling person or thing; especially : BRAT
      4 : violent or destructive acts (as bombing) committed by groups in order to intimidate a population or government into granting their demands <insurrection and revolutionary terror>
      The term "terrorism" comes from the French word terrorisme, which is based on the Latin language verbs terrere (to frighten) and deterrere (to frighten from). It dates to 1795 when it was used to describe the actions of the Jacobin Club in their rule of Revolutionary France, during the so-called "Reign of Terror". Jacobins are rumored to have coined the term "terrorists" to refer to themselves. Acts described as Jacobin Club "terrorisme" were mostly cases of arrest and execution of opponents as a mean of frightening the "enemies of the Revolution
      synonym see FEAR
      3 : REIGN OF TERROR
      Although the term is often used imprecisely, there have been many attempts by various law enforcement agencies and public organizations to develop more precise working definitions of terrorism
      The United Nations Office for Drug Control and Crime Prevention has proposed a short legal definition —that "[an act of "terrorism"is] the peacetime equivalent of a war crime." A U.S. court found that "the malice associated with "terrorist attacks" transcends even that of premeditated murder."
      Etymology: Middle English, from Anglo-French terrour, from Latin terror, from terrEre to frighten; akin to Greek trein to be afraid, flee, tremein to tremble -- more at TREMBLE
      1 : a state of intense fear
      2 a : one that inspires fear : SCOURGE b : a frightening aspect <the terrors of invasion> c : a cause of anxiety : WORRY d : an appalling person or thing; especially : BRAT
      3 : REIGN OF TERROR
      4 : violent or destructive acts (as bombing) committed by groups in order to intimidate a population or government into granting their demands <insurrection and revolutionary terror>
      synonym see FEAR
    Official definitions of "terrorism" tend to be relativist, because views toward particular acts of political violence are often only subjective, and rarely aim to objectivity. For example, according to the United States Department of Defense, "terrorism"is:
    "the calculated use of unlawful violence or threat of unlawful violence to inculcate fear; intended to coerce or to intimidate governments or societies in the pursuit of goals that are generally political, religious, or ideological."
    This definition is vague because it relies on unclear terms which are left to interpretation —terms such as "unlawful violence," "intended to coerce or intimidate," "the pursuit of goals..." all can easily be applied to violent actions by state actors, though the above definition suggests such can be "lawful."
    Like all political ideas, the meaning of the term "terrorism" has evolved in response to circumstances. The words "terrorism" and "terror" originally referred to methods employed by regimes to control their own populations through fear, a tactic seen in totalitarian regimes such as Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia. As well at it was used by those regimes to qualify resistance movements.
    In response to the September 11, 2001 attacks, political leaders from Europe, North America, Asia, and the Middle East have placed the phenomenon of "terrorism" within the context of a global struggle against systems of government perceived by those accused of using "terrorist" tactics as harmful to their interests. The European Union includes in its 2004 definition of "terrorism" the aim of "destabilising or destroying the fundamental political, constitutional, economic or social structures of a country."
    Causes
    Theories on the causes of terrorism include:
    Sociological explanations, which focus on the position of the perpetrators in society
    Conflict theory which examines their relationship to those in power
    Ideological explanations, which focus on the differences in ideology, and the different goals of the ideologies
    Media theory explanations, which treat "terror" acts as a form of communication.
    Separatism
    During much of the 20th century, the term "terrorism" was primarily applied to nationalist movements of various types. Most of them were separatist movements, seeking to create a new independent nation-state on the territory of a larger, existing state. There were also some cases of non-state irredentist violence, seeking to annex territory. Classic counter-terrorist operations were a feature of the decolonization in Africa and the Middle East.
    Perpetrators
    Acts of "terrorism" can be carried out by individuals or groups. According to some definitions, clandestine or semi-clandestine state actors may also carry out attacks outside the framework of a state of war. The most common image of "terrorism" is that it is carried out by small and secretive cells, highly motivated to serve a particular cause. However, some acts have been committed by individuals acting alone, while others are alleged to have had the backing of established states. Over the years, many people have attempted to come up with a "terrorist" profile to attempt to explain these individuals' actions through their psychology and social circumstances.
    Responses to terrorism
    Responses to "terrorism" are broad in scope. They can include re-alignments of the political spectrum and reassessments of fundamental values. The term counter-"terrorism" has a narrower connotation, implying that it is directed at terrorist actors.
    Military intervention
    "Terrorism" has often been used to justify military intervention in countries where suspects could be found. That was the false justification used for the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan and one reason for the 2003 invasion of Iraq. It was also a stated justification for the second Russian invasion of Chechnya.
    Source: wikipedia.org
    First rate source: http://www.cla.purdue.edu/academic/engl/conferences/covar/Program/novotny.pdf

Infernal Optimism

2008-10-11T17:25:00.001-07:00

Optimism has gotten a bad press lately. This is because optimism -- the belief that the architect of the future, the God of your choice, takes sides and that it is your side that it’s on -- has gotten us into a lot of trouble, including the Iraq war and a history-making banking crisis. In truth, optimism has, except among True Believers, long been something of a hard sell. There was a time when an American audience would ingest without a big rock of salt Ralph Waldo Emerson's claim, in an 1844 speech before The Mercantile Library Association, that "America is the country of the future. It is a country of beginnings, of projects, of vast designs and expectations." Today's politicians strum a similar tune, but only because it is expected of them, not because the airs they whistle offer as much comfort as they once did.

Not that optimism has ever been an easy sell, not even in Emerson's time. The word itself started out under a cloud. It made ts first appearance, as "optimisme", in the February, 1737 number of a French Jesuit journal, Mémoires de Trévoux. Its author coined the word as a means to have some fun at the expense of the German polymath Gottfried Leibniz. Leibniz had proposed that God had -- I hope that I get this straight -- created the "best (i.e. the optimum) of all possible worlds" given what He had to work with, among components of good and evil. (This seems to me to raise more questions than it answers, but I must, perforce, leave that to the philosophers.)

Voltaire soon picked up the baton with his creation of the buffoonish stand-in for Leibniz, Dr. Pangloss, in Candide, or Optimism. I can't improve on the Wikipedia summary:

The novella begins with a young man, Candide, who is living a sheltered life in an Edenic paradise and being indoctrinated with Leibnizian optimism (or simply optimism) by his tutor, Pangloss. The work describes the abrupt cessation of this existence, followed by Candide's slow, painful disillusionment as he witnesses and experiences great hardships in the world. Voltaire concludes with Candide, if not outright rejecting optimism, advocating an enigmatic precept, "we must cultivate our garden", in lieu of the Leibnizian mantra of Pangloss, "all is for the best in the best of all possible worlds.”

With the great international success of Candide, optimism suffered an important setback.

Back even in Herman Melville’s time, Americans were of (at the least) two minds about optimism. One of Melville's most celebrated creations, Bartleby the Scrivener, took as his mantra "I would prefer not to." The critic Richard Chase remarks that Melville

learned to say 'no' to the boundlessly optimistic commercialized creed of most Americans, with its superficial and mean conception of the possibilities of human life, its denial of all the genuinely creative or heroic capacities of man, and his fear and dislike of any but the mildest truths. Melville's 'no' finds expression in the tragic-comic tale of Bartleby the Scrivener. . "

Even so, taking one thing with another, Americans remained, on the whole, optimistic despite disasters, financial and otherwise, right up until the Great Depression. Belief in the inevitability of progress was oxygen to a damn-the-consequences surge of innovation. Take as emblematic the creations of the mechanical engineer turned chemist Thomas Midgley (His years were 1889-1944.) The historian J.R. McNeil remarked that Midgley "had more impact on the atmosphere than any other single organism in Earth history."

Midgley's story was told compellingly by Mark Bernstein in the Spring 2002 issue of American Heritage [The article can be found in the archives at americanheritage.com] Bernstein writes that:

When the Arizona Diamondbacks won the World Series last fall, team officials rushed to thank everyone who had contributed, from the players to the owner to government officials and fans. No one mentioned the name of Thomas Midgley, yet without him, there might well be no Diamondbacks, for his two great discoveries made today ’ s Southwest possible. Only the hardiest souls braved Arizona ’ s desert heat until Midgley ’ s development of Freon made air conditioning commonplace. Similarly, his leaded gasoline allowed the high - performance engines that the region’s long distances and tall mountains demand. Before him, air conditioning was reserved for a few large public buildings and wealthy homeowners; owning a refrigerator required a mass of bulky and dangerous machinery in the basement; and cars couldn't climb hills or hit top speed without sputtering dangerously. Decades after he died, a new generation of scientists would learn that both of Midgley’s great discoveries had come with great costs attached. The gasoline that had revved up America’s cars was also dumping lead into the atmosphere, and the chlorofluorocarbons that had cooled the nation and chilled its food were also destroying the earth’s protection against the sun’s rays.

(Midgley's life ended in a manner few would wish on anyone. In 1940 he contracted polio, and for a period was trapped in an iron lung. Then, in 1944 “he met a sudden and shocking end. He disliked being lifted out of bed to his wheelchair, so he had used his training as a mechanical engineer to design a harness and a system of pulleys that allowed him to move about unaided. On the morning of November 2, 1944, his wife found him hanging from his contrivance, strangled to death. “)

As optimism began its long decline into its present sicklied condition, it attracted more and more modifiers -- cautious, reckless, overheated, tip-toed, heedless, relentless, guarded. . . A while back, I began a catalogue of adjectives but soon gave it up as the list began to creep toward the size of my old Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary. This trail of modifiers would tempt us to believe that perhaps we aren't as reckless about things as we used to be, when maybe we're just reckless about different things. Like climbing aboard a winged machine confident against all intuition that 20 tons of flesh, metal and baggage will take to the air as if to be a bird, rise to an unbirdly altitude, and deposit us and our laptop safely at a place miles, thousands of miles even, from where we began. There are people about who will tell you that the Hadron collider is an act of the most distressingly reckless form of optimism and that we shall all disappear into a black hole as a result.

Occasionally, one might find a Jesuit among one's fellow passengers aboard an airliner. I feel as if I ought to find occasion to ask one of them what their 18th century forebears had against optimism. Did they, perhaps, know something we didn’t? At this distance it’s hard to tell. Perhaps they mocked Leibniz only because, as Voltaire points out in the Preface to his Poem on Natural Law (written in 1751/1752) that the theologians very correctly saw through the optimists' argument, that this is the best world possible, and that it relegated the Fall, redemption and salvation to a strictly subordinate role in men's lives. Whatever.

Perhaps it is an "appropriate" optimism that we hanker for. The objection seems obvious: how are we to know in advance what is appropriate? We try, certainly, with our fretful planning and environmental impact reports only to find, as if we needed reminding, that things are a lot more complicated, more inter-hooked, than we realized, and so we let ourselves in for another set of unforeseen consequences. Entire literatures have sprung into foliage around such questions as “Is recycling self-defeating?”Thus we spend time, increasingly precious time, wondering how we got ourselves into this pickle, and how might we get out of it?

Perhaps the ancient Greeks and their predecessors had no need for the lexical equivalent of optimisme because they knew their gods intimately, and which of them ruled over what and how, if possible, to stay on good terms with them. It is only recently, as these things are reckoned, that we have come to have faith that whomever, or whatever, is in charge of the future will tilt the great pinball machine of life in our favor. I suppose that what Melville had in mind is what I think of as "infernal optimism". This is the form of optimism, regnant during the early days and adolescence of the Industrial Revolution, which tended to ignore the Law of Unintended Consequences and that the creator would insure Progress. Fat chance.

candide

Sure enough

2008-09-30T18:19:00.000-07:00

"If money isn't loosened up," said
President Bush of the U.S. economy, "this sucker could go down."

Norwegian Guide

2008-07-30T20:31:00.000-07:00

Catherine

2008-07-22T10:11:00.000-07:00

Kristin

2008-07-21T16:03:00.001-07:00

Culinary delight in the making.

Cousins

2008-07-20T18:49:00.001-07:00

Chessie and Juliet

The delights of summer.

2008-07-19T15:49:00.001-07:00

Ol' Rockin Chair

2008-07-19T15:43:00.001-07:00

Looking good

Look who is here.

2008-06-26T12:03:00.001-07:00

The Slough

2008-06-22T08:03:00.000-07:00

Walkway

2008-06-21T12:02:00.001-07:00

Francesca and friend

2008-06-21T11:53:00.001-07:00

What would Solon say?

2008-06-18T20:23:00.001-07:00

Solon

Juliet

2008-06-17T16:45:00.001-07:00

Some friends

2008-06-17T16:37:00.001-07:00

McCain assesses his chances

2008-06-17T09:42:00.000-07:00

The relentless vetting he'll get shows him standing by the curb on Pennsylvania Avenue weighed down with the baggage from the Bush years.

The Back of the Napkin.

2008-06-14T14:55:00.001-07:00

Works for me. Get a stack of napkins and a few (preferably colored) pencils and give it a try. There are several You Tube clips that Roan has made (The one for a Google group that runs for about an hour is the most helpful.) to illustrate his methods.

The rule of fifty

2008-06-14T12:00:00.001-07:00

Nancy Pearl, a former librarian of the enviable Seattle Public Library library, and onetime regular contributor to N.P.R., once suggested that one is obligated to read fifty pages into a book before deciding whether it is worth further effort; until, that is, one reaches the age of fifty. After that, one may deduct one page per birthday, so that at age 75, for instance, one is obligated to read only 25 pages, and so forth. By inference from her salubrious formula, if we live long enough we are truly entitled to judge a book by its cover. Long live Nancy Pearl!

Noah Webster turns 250

2008-06-01T10:17:00.001-07:00

As we celebrate 250 years since Noah Webster's birth, here are a few remarks by Professor Jill Lepore (Harvard):

"Webster at 65 was a failed schoolmaster, a passable flutist, a lousy lawyer, an intriguing essayist, an inexhaustible lobbyist, a shrill editor, a pompous lecturer, and a man once dubbed "critick and coxcomb general of the United States. But he was undoubtedly also a prominent American citizen and to many Americans an eminent and admirable man of letters."

Coincidence? You decide.

2008-05-26T16:38:00.001-07:00

Every high school class, or so it seems, harbors a class brain, an "Einstein", to go along with the class clown. In my senior class the post was held by a young man, I'll call him Albert, who did not at all fit the stereotypical nerd: Coke bottle glasses, shirt pocket protectors, pimpled face' except that he seemed constantly distracted by something he saw or heard out in the middle distance. That plus the fact that his socks only occasionally matched. One would come across Albert tall, pale and as if in need of a good breakfast, between classes and be rewarded with his latest speculation on "Why is there something rather than nothing? " or some news of the quirks of quarks, and then, abruptly, "Which direction did I come from?" and, on being told, might say, "Oh good. Then I've already eaten lunch."

Albert and I became good friends but confine our conversations these days mostly to e-mail. On December 6 he sent me the following posting:

Only 222 shopping days until St. Swithin's Day. Moreover, 2(2+2+2) =the number of the current month, while 2+2+2 = the day of the month. Coincidence? You decide.

Albert helpfully adds this, from the online Catholic Encyclopedia:

"Very little is known of this saint's life, for his biographers constructed their "Lives" long after his death and there is hardly any mention of him in contemporary documents. Swithin was one of the two trusted counsellors of Egbert, King of the West Saxons (d. 839), helping him in ecclesiastical matters, while Ealstan of Sherborne was his chief advisor He probably entrusted Swithin with the education of his son Ethelwulf and caused the saint to be elected to the Bishopric of Winchester in succession to Helmstan. His consecration by Ceolnoth, Archbishop of Canterbury, seems to have taken place on 30 October, 852. On his deathbed Swithin begged that he should be buried outside the north wall of his cathedral where passers-by should pass over his grave and raindrops from the eaves drop upon it."

Surely, you recall the girls of our deep youth skipping rope to:

St. Swithin's day if thou dost rain
For forty days it will remain
St. Swithin's day if thou be fair
For forty days 'twill rain nae mair

Albert's spoof is at those "for whom life is too uncertain to live with, and so they have to make things up." Religions are high on Albert's list of made-up things ("Some other time.") but what bothers him particularly are what he calls "folk voodoo" like the "coincidences" that clog up the internet these days. The mathematicians Edward B. Burger and Michael Starbird in their dandy Coincidences, Chaos and All That Math Jazz: Making Light of Weighty Ideas offer a particularly vivid example.

It's just too eerie to be true, and yet .. :

Abraham Lincoln was elected to Congress in 1846. John F. Kennedy was elected to Congress in 1946.

Abraham Lincoln was elected president in 1860. John F. Kennedy was elected president in 1960.

Lincoln's secretary was named Kennedy. Kennedy's secretary was named Lincoln.

Andrew Johnson, who succeeded Lincoln, was born in 1808. Lyndon Johnson, who succeeded Kennedy, was born in 1908.

John Wilkes Booth, who assassinated Lincoln, was born in 1839. Lee Harvey Oswald, who assassinated Kennedy, was born in 1939.

A week before Lincoln was shot, he was in Monroe, Maryland.

A week before Kennedy was shot, he was in . . . well, you get the idea.

Unbelievable! What are the chances? What's going on?

The authors elaborate instructively on the familiar fact that in any group of 45 people, there is a 95 per cent chance that two of them will have the same birthday. They go on to demonstrate that the more data you accumulate on two human subjects, the more is the likelihood of discovering coincident points in their lives. In the case of Presidents, nearly everything they say or do or that happens to them in the course of their lives is duly recorded and amassed somewhere or other. What's more, the computer makes possible more data density than ever, together with the means to manipulate it, with the result that discovery of coincidences abound.

Much of this coincidence mining is for the amusement of those who have too much time on their hands. Too much of it, though, in Albert's view, serves as a way to feed either a popular paranoia or a hunger for a faith among the susceptible or, in the hands of unscrupulous puppeteers, both. "Are these coincidences what is meant by intelligent design'?" Albert snarls, with, one imagines, Thomas Hobbes whispering in his ear and egging him on. Perhaps you can't fool all of the people all of the time; but what are the odds?

One year at a time.

2008-05-24T15:33:00.001-07:00

Nancy Pearl, a former librarian of the enviable Seattle Public Library library, and formerly a regular contributor to National Public Radio, once suggested that one is obligated to read fifty pages into a book before deciding whether it is worth further effort; until, that is, one reaches the age of fifty. After that, one may deduct one page per birthday, so that at age 75, for instance, one is obligated to read only 25 pages, and so forth. By inference from her salubrious formula, if we live long enough we are truly entitled to judge a book by its cover. Long live Ms.Pearl!

A chilling frost

2008-05-20T13:43:00.001-07:00

"The (subpoena's) chilling effect on expressive e-commerce would frost keyboards across America. Well-founded or not, rumors of an Orwellian federal criminal investigation into the reading habits of Amazon's customers could frighten countless potential customers into canceling planned online book purchases. ... The subpoena is troubling because it permits the government to peek into the reading habits of specific individuals without their knowledge or permission. It is an unsettling and un-American scenario to envision federal agents nosing through the reading lists of law-abiding citizens while hunting for evidence against somebody else."

-- U.S. Magistrate Judge Stephen Crocker, in a recently unsealed ruling that led federal prosecutors to withdraw their subpoena, made in the course of a fraud investigation, for the identities of 24,000 people who bought used books on Amazon

Beats shock and awe

2008-05-20T13:34:00.001-07:00

APPENDIX IV Twenty-Seven Articles* by T. E. Lawrence, August 1917 The following notes have been expressed in commandment form for greater clarity and to save words. They are, however, only my personal conclusions, arrived at gradually while I worked in the Hejaz and now put on paper as stalking horses for beginners in the Arab armies. They are meant to apply only to Bedu: townspeople or Syrians require totally different treatment. They are of course not suitable to any other person's need, or applicable unchanged in any particular situation. Handling Hejaz Arabs is an art, not a science, with exceptions and no obvious rules. At the same time we have a great chanceeast there: the Sherif trusts us, and has given us the position (towards his Government) which the Germans wanted to win in Turkey. If we are tactful we can at once retain his good will. and carry out our job - but to succeed we have got to put into it all the interest and energy and skill we possess. 1. Go easy just for the first few weeks. A bad start is difficult to atone for, and the Arabs form their judgements on externals that we ignore. When you have reached the inner circle in a tribe you can do as you please with yourself and them. 2. Learn all you can about your Ashraf and Bedu. Get to know their families, clans and tribes, friends and enemies, wells, hills and roads. Do all this by listening and by indirect enquiry. Do not ask questions. Get to speak their dialect of Arabic, not yours. Until you can understand their allusions avoid getting deep into conversation, or you will drop bricks. Be a little stiff at first. 3. In matters of business deal only with the commander of the army, column or party in which you serve. Never give orders to anyone at all, and reserve your directions or advice for the C.O., however great the temptation (for efficiency's sake) of dealing direct with his underlings. Your place is advisory, and your advice is due to the commander alone. Let him see that this is your conception of your duty, and that his is to be the sole executive of your joint plans. 4. Win and keep the confidence of your leader. Strengthen his prestige at your expense before others when you can. Never refuse or quash schemes he may put forward: but ensure that they are put forward in the first instance privately to you. Always approve them, and after praise modify them insensibly, causing the suggestions to come from him, until they are in accord with your own opinion. When you attain this point, hold him to it, keep a tight grip of his ideas, and push him forward as firmly as possible, but secretly so that no one but himself (and he not too clearly) is aware of your pressure. 5. Remain in touch with your leader as constantly and unobtrusively as you can. Live with him, that at mealtimes and at audiences you may be naturally with him in his tent. Formal visits to give advice are not so good as the constant dropping of ideas in casual talk. When stranger sheikhs come in for the first time to swear allegiance and offer service, clear out of the tent. If their first impression is of foreigners in the confidence of the Sherif, it will do the Arab cause much harm. 6. Be shy of too close relations with the subordinates of the expedition. Continued intercourse with them will make it impossible for you to avoid going behind or beyond the instructions that the Arab C.O. has given them on your advice: and in so disclosing the weakness of his position you altogether destroy your own. 7. Treat the sub chiefs of your force quite easily and lightly. In this way you hold yourself above their level. Treat the leader, if a Sherif, with respect. He will return your manner, and you and he will then be alike, and above the rest. Precedence is a serious matter among the Arabs, and you must attain it. 8. Your ideal position is when you are present and not noticed. Do not be too intimate, too prominent, or too earnest. Avoid being identified too long or too often with any tribal sheikh, even if C.O. of the expedition. To do your work you must be above jealousies, and you lose prestige if you are associated with a tribe or clan, and its inevitable feuds. Sherifs are above all blood-feuds and local rivalries, and form the only principle of unity among the Arabs. Let your name therefore be coupled always with a Sherif's, and share his attitude towards the tribes. When the moment comes for action put yourself publicly under his orders. The Bedu will then follow suit. 9. Magnify and develop the growing conception of the Sherifs as the natural aristocracy of the Arabs. Inter-tribal jealousies make it impossible for any sheikh to attain a commanding position, and the only hope of union in nomad Arabia is that the Ashraf be universally acknowledged as the ruling class. Sherifs are half-townsmen, half-nomad, in manner and life, and have the instinct of command. Mere merit and money would be insufficient to obtain such recognition: but the Arab reverence for pedigree and the prophet gives hope for the ultimate success of the Ashraf. 10. Call your Sherif 'Sidi' in public and in private. Call other people by their ordinary names, without title. In intimate conversation call a Sheikh 'Abu Annad', 'Akhu Alia' or some similar by-name. 11. The foreigner and Christian is not a popular person in Arabia. However friendly and informal the treatment of yourself may be, remember always that your foundations are very sandy ones. Wave a Sherif in front of you like a banner, and hide your own mind and person. If you succeed you will have hundreds of miles of country and thousands of men under your orders, and for this it is worth bartering the outward show. 12. Cling tight to your sense of humour. You will need it every day. A dry irony is the most useful type, and repartees of a personal and not too broad character will double your influence with the chiefs. Reproof if wrapped up in some smiling form will carry further and last longer than the most violent speech. The power of mimicry or parody is valuable but use it sparingly for wit is more dignified than humour. Do not cause a laugh at a Sherif except amongst Sherifs. 13. Never lay hands on an Arab: you degrade yourself. You may think the resultant obvious increase of outward respect a gain to you: but what you have really done is to build a wall between you and their inner selves. It is difficult to keep quiet when everything is being done wrong, but the less you lose your temper the greater your advantage. Also then you will not go mad yourself. 14. While very difficult to drive, the Bedu are easy to lead, if you have the patience to bear with them. The less apparent your interferences the more your influence. They are willing to follow your advice and do what you wish, but they do not mean you or anyone else to be aware of that. It is only after the end of all annoyances that you find at bottom their real fund of good will. 15. Do not try to do too much with your own hands. Better the Arabs do it tolerably than that you do it perfectly. It is their war, and you are to help them, not to win it for them. Actually also, under the very odd conditions of Arabia, your practical work will not be as good as perhaps you think it is. 16. If you can, without being too lavish forestall presents to yourself. A well placed gift is often most effective in winning over a suspicious sheikh. Never receive a present without giving a liberal return, but you may delay this return (while letting its ultimate certainty be known) if you require a particular service from the giver. Do not let them ask you for things, since their greed will then make them look upon you only as a cow to milk. 17. Wear an Arab headcloth when with a tribe. Bedu have a malignant prejudice st the hat, and believe that our persistence in wearing it (due probably itish obstinacy of dictation) is founded on some immoral or irreligious iple. A thick headcloth forms a good protection against the sun, and if you wear a hat your best Arab friends will be ashamed of you in public. 18. Dlisguise is not advisable. Except in special areas let it be clearly known that you are a British officer and a Christian. At the same time if you can wear Arab kit when with the tribes you will acquire their trust and intimacy to a degree impossible in uniform. It is however dangerous and difficult. They make no allowances for you when you dress like them. Breaches of etiquette not charged against a foreigner are not condoned to you in Arab clothes. You will be like an actor in a foreign theatre, playing a part day and night for months, without rest, and for an anxious stake. Complete success, which is when the Arabs forget your strangeness and speak naturally before you, counting you one of themselves, is perhaps only attainable in character: while half success (all that most of us will strive for - the other costs too much) is easier to win in British :things; and you yourself will last longer, physically and mentally, in the comfort :they mean. Also then the Turks will not hang you when you're caught. 19. If you wear Arab things, wear the best. Clothes are significant among the tribes, and you must wear the appropriate, and appear at ease in them. Dress like a Sherif - if they agree to it. 20. If you wear Arab things at all, go the whole way. Leave your English friends and customs on the coast, and fall back on Arab habits entirely. It is possible, starting thus level with them, for the European to beat the Arabs at their own game, for we have stronger motives for our action, and put more heart into it than they. If you can surpass them, you have taken an immense stride toward complete success, but the strain of living and thinking in a foreign and half:-understood language, the savage food, strange clothes, and still stranger ways, with the complete loss of privacy and quiet, and the impossibility of ever relaxing your.watchful imitation of the others for months on end, provide such an added stress to the ordinary difficulties of dealing with the Bedu, the climate, and the Turkss, that this road should not be chosen without serious thought. 21. Religious discussions will be fairly frequent. Say what you like about your own side, and avoid criticism of theirs, unless you know that the point is external, when you may score heavily by proving it so. With the Bedu Islam is so all pervading an element that there is a little religiosity, little fervour, and no regard for externals. Do not think, from their conduct, that they are careless. their conviction of the truth of their faith, and its share in every act and thought and principle of their daily life is so intimate and intense as to be unconscious, unless roused by opposition. Their religion is as much a part of nature to them as is sleep, or food. 22. Do not try to trade on what you know of fighting. The Hejaz confounds ordinary tactics. Learn the Bedu principles of war as thoroughly and as quickly as you can, for till you know them your advice will be no good to the Sherif. Unnumbered generations of tribal raids have taught them more about some parts of the business than we will ever know. In familiar conditions they fight well, but strange events cause panic. Keep your unit small. Their raiding parties are usually from one hundred to two hundred men, and if you take a crowd they only get confused. Also their sheikhs, while admirable company commanders, are too set to learn to handle the equivalents of battalions or regiments. Don't attempt unusual things, unless they appeal to the sporting instinct Bedu have so strongly, or unless success is obvious. If the objective is a good one (booty) they will attack like fiends: they are splendid scouts, their mobility gives you the advantage that will win this local war, they make proper use of their knowledge of the country (don't take tribesmen to places they do not know), and the gazelle-hunters, who form a proportion of the better men, are great shots at visible targets. A sheikh from one tribe cannot give orders to men from another: a sherif is necessary to command a mixed tribal force. If there is plunder in prospect, and the odds are at all equal, you will win. Do not waste Bedu attacking trenches (they will not stand casualties) or in trying to defend a position, for they cannot sit still without slacking. The more unorthodox and Arab your proceedings the more likely you are to have the Turks cold, for they lack initiative and expect you to. Don't play for safety. 23. The open reason that Bedu give you for action or inaction may be true, but always there will be better reasons left for you to divine. You must find these inner reasons (they will be denied, but are none the less in operation) before shaping your arguments for one course or other. Allusion is more effective than logical exposition: they dislike concise expression. Their minds work just as ours do, but on different premises. There is nothing unreasonable, incomprehensible, or inscrutable, in the Arab. Experience of them, and knowledge of their prejudices will enable you to foresee their attitude and possible cause of action in nearly every case. 24. Do not mix Bedu and Syrians, or trained men and tribesmen. You will get work out of neither, for they hate each other. I have never seen a successful combined operation, but many failures. In particular, ex-officers of the Turkish army, however Arab in feelings and blood and language, are hopeless with Bedu. They are narrow-minded in tactics, unable to adjust themselves to irregular warfare, clumsy in Arab etiquette, swollen-headed to the extent of being incapable of politeness to a tribesman for more than a few minutes, impatient, and, usually, helpless on the road and in action. Your orders (if you were unwise enough to give any) would be more readily obeyed by Beduins than those of any Mohammedan Syrian officer. Arab townsmen and Arab tribesmen regard each other mutually as poor relations - and poor relations are much more objectionable than poor strangers. 25. In spite .of ordinary Arab example avoid too free talk about women. It is as difficult a subject as religion, and their standards are so unlike our own, that a remark harmless in English may appear as unrestrained to them, as some of their statements would look to us, if translated literally. 26 Be as careful of your servants as of yourself. If you want a sophisticated one you will probably have to take an Egyptian, or a Sudani, and unless you are very lucky he will undo on trek much of the good you so laboriously effect. Arabs will cook rice and make coffee for you, and leave you if required to do unmanly work like cleaning boots or washing. They are only really possible if you are in Arab kit. A slave brought up in the Hejaz is the best servant, but there are rules against British subjects owning them, so they have to be lent to you. In any case take with you an Ageyli or two when you go up country. They are the most efficient couriers in Arabia, and understand camels. 27. The beginning and ending of the secret of handling Arabs is unremitting study of them. Keep always on your guard; never say an inconsidered thing, or an unnecessary thing: watch yourself and your companions all the time: hear all that passes, search out what is going on beneath the surface, read their characters, discover their tastes and their weaknesses, and keep everything you find out to yourself. Bury yourself in Arab circles, have no interests and no ideas except the work in hand, so that your brain shall be saturated with one thing only, and you realise your part deeply enough to avoid the little slips that would undo e work of weeks. Your success will be just proportional to the amount of mental effort you devote to it. * First published in the Arab Bulletin, a spin-off from daily Military Intelligence Bulletins. A Lawrence biographer, Jeremy Wilson (from whose work this is reproduced), writes of it: “They provide a remarkable insight into the methods he used to direct operations without being seen to do so, and they have since been used in the training of Western advisers for many other theatres of war.”

I forget the source

2008-05-19T15:48:00.001-07:00

A man in his nineties, dashingly attired, ascot in place, flower in lapel, subtle aftershave scent, sees seated at the bar a woman about in her eighties and equally well turned out. The man walks over to the bar, settles himself on the barstool next to the woman, and says: "Excuse me. Do I come here often?"

Too much information

2008-05-17T13:00:00.001-07:00

"A book ought to have some excuse for being written," Joe Palmer began in a book he never finished. "Often this is left for the reader to discover, and all too frequently it is hidden too cleverly for him. . ."

Red Smith
Foreword to This Was Racing, by Joe H. Palmer

A Picture from an Institution

2008-05-16T13:23:00.001-07:00

This earth carries aboard it many ordinary passengers; and it carries, also,a few very important ones. It is hard to know which people are, or were, or will be which. Great men may come to the door in carpet slippers, their faces like those of kindly more fretful old dogs, and not even know that they are better than you; a friend meets you after 15 years and the Nobel Prize, and he is sadder and fatter and all the flesh of his face has slumped an inch nearer the grave, but otherwise he is as of old They are not very important people. On the other hand, the president of your bank, the Vice Chancellor of the - no, not of the Reich, but of the School of Agriculture of the University of Wyoming : these, and many Princes and Powers and Dominions, are very important people; the quality of their voices has changed, and they speak more distinctly from the mounds upon which they stand, making sure that their voices come down to you.
Pictures from an Institution
Randall Jarrell

Of eavesdropping, torture and beyond

2008-05-05T16:09:00.001-07:00

This is from Mr. Justice Frankfurter's dissent of more than half a century ago in a case of government eavesdropping.

"The law of this Court ought not to be open to the just charge of having been dictated by the 'odious doctrine', as Mr. Justice Brandeis called it, that the end justifies reprehensible means. To approve legally what we disapprove morally, on the ground of practical inconvenience, is to yield to a short-sighted view of practicality. It derives from a preoccupation with what is episodic and a disregard of long-run consequences. The method by which the state chiefly exerts an influence upon the conduct of its citizens, it was wisely said by Archbishop William Temple, is 'the moral qualities, which it exhibits in its own conduct'."

Another lap

2007-07-08T17:17:00.001-07:00

After a few last nips and tucks, I take delivery on Tuesday of my new limb. If they do no more than toss it into a shopping bag, I'll be glad – no, overjoyed -- to have it. It is preternaturally pink in color, (I'm in pretty good shape, but not that good.) which I guess passes for flesh-colored in the prosthetics business. No matter: I shall wear and protect it as long as it will have me.

Now begins some heavy duty outpatient therapy at The RISB to get the rest of me used to the new limb. (I'm going to have to find a name for it; all suggestions welcome.) From all sides I hear how arduous that will be. All I ask for is regular progress. Stay attuned.

The fitting

2007-06-21T14:34:00.001-07:00

A very patient and workmanlike Eric took the specifications for my new prosthesis yesterday afternoon. The high motivation (for which read impatience) of the patient made possible in one session yesterday what generally takes up to several. It is an imposing process. There isn't a single electronic device in sight. I'm waiting now to hear from Eric for the final fitting of the actual prosthetic leg. I can scarcely wait.

For the inquisitive

2007-06-08T13:25:00.001-07:00

Artificial Limb

Background

Artificial arms and legs, or prostheses, are intended to restore a degree of normal function to amputees. Mechanical devices that allow amputees to walk again or continue to use two hands have probably been in use since ancient times, the most notable one being the simple peg leg. Surgical procedure for amputation, however, was not largely successful until around 600 B.C. Armorers of the Middle Ages created the first sophisticated prostheses, using strong, heavy, inflexible iron to make limbs that the amputee could scarcely control. Even with the articulated joints invented by Ambroise Paré in the 1500s, the amputee could not flex at will. Artificial hands of the time were quite beautiful and intricate imitations of real hands, but were not exceptionally functional. Upper limbs, developed by Peter Baliff of Berlin in 1812 for below-elbow amputees and Van Peetersen in 1844 for above-elbow amputees, were functional, but still far less than ideal.

The nineteenth century saw a lot of changes, most initiated by amputees themselves. J. E. Hanger, an engineering student, lost his leg in the Civil War. He subsequently designed an artificial leg for himself and in 1861 founded a company to manufacture prosthetic legs. The J. E. Hanger Company is still in existence today. Another amputee named A. A. Winkley developed a slip-socket below-knee device for himself, and with the help of Lowell Jepson, founded the Winkley Company in 1888. They marketed the legs during the National Civil War Veterans Reunion, thereby establishing their company.

Another amputee named D. W. Dorrance invented a terminal device to be used in the place of a hand in 1909. Dorrance, who had lost his right arm in an accident, was unhappy with the prosthetic arms then available. Until his invention, they had consisted of a leather socket and a heavy steel frame, and either had a heavy cosmetic hand in a glove, a rudimentary mechanical hand, or a passive hook incapable of prehension. Dorrance invented a split hook that was anchored to the opposite shoulder and could be opened with a strap across the back and closed by rubber bands. His terminal device (the hook) is still considered to be a major advancement for amputees because it restored their prehension abilities to some extent. Modified hooks are still used today, though they might be hidden by realistic-looking skin.

The twentieth century has seen the greatest advances in prosthetic limbs. Materials such as modern plastics have yielded prosthetic devices that are strong and more lightweight than earlier limbs made of iron and wood. New plastics, better pigments, and more sophisticated procedures are responsible for creating fairly realistic-looking skin.

The most exciting development of the twentieth century has been the development of myoelectric prosthetic limbs. Myoelectricity involves using electrical signals from the patient's arm muscles to move the limb. Research began in the late 1940s in West Germany, and by the late sixties myoelectric devices were available for adults. In the last decade children have also been fitted with myoelectric limbs.

In recent years computers have been used to help fit amputees with prosthetic limbs. Eighty-five percent of private prosthetic facilities use a CAD/CAM to design a model

After a plaster cost of the amputee's stump is made, a thermoplastic sheet is vacuum-formed around this cast to form a test socket. In vacuum-forming, the plastic sheet is heated and then placed in a vacuum chamber with the cost (or mold). As the air is sucked out of the chamber, the plastic adheres to the cast and assumes its shape. After testing, the permanent socket is formed in the some way.

of the patient's arm or leg, which can be used to prepare a mold from which the new limb can be shaped. Laser-guided measuring and fitting is also available.

Raw Materials

The typical prosthetic device consists of a custom fitted socket, an internal structure (also called a pylon), knee cuffs and belts that attach it to the body, prosthetic socks that cushion the area of contact, and, in some cases, realistic-looking skin. Prosthetic limb manufacture is currently undergoing changes on many levels, some of which concern the choice of materials.

A prosthetic device should most of all be lightweight; hence, much of it is made from plastic. The socket is usually made from polypropylene. Lightweight metals such as titanium and aluminum have replaced much of the steel in the pylon. Alloys of these materials are most frequently used. The newest development in prosthesis manufacture has been the use of carbon fiber to form a lightweight pylon.

Certain parts of the limb (for example, the feet) have traditionally been made of wood (such as maple, hickory basswood, willow, poplar, and linden) and rubber. Even today the feet are made from urethane foam with a wooden inner keel construction. Other materials commonly used are plastics such as polyethylene, polypropylene, acrylics, and polyurethane. Prosthetic socks are made from a number of soft yet strong fabrics. Earlier socks were made of wool, as are some modern ones, which can also be made of cotton or various synthetic materials.

Physical appearance of the prosthetic limb is important to the amputee. The majority of endoskeletal prostheses (pylons) are covered with a soft polyurethane foam cover that has been designed to match the shape of the patient's sound limb. This foam cover is then covered with a sock or artificial skin that is painted to match the patient's skin color.

The Manufacturing

Process

Prosthetic limbs are not mass-produced to be sold in stores. Similar to the way dentures or eyeglasses are procured, prosthetic limbs are first prescribed by a medical doctor, usually after consultation with the amputee, a prosthetist, and a physical therapist. The patient then visits the prosthetist to be fitted with a limb. Although some parts—the socket, for instance—are custom-made, many parts (feet, pylons) are manufactured in a factory, sent to the prosthetist, and assembled at the prosthetist's facility in accordance with the patient's needs. At a few facilities, the limbs are custom made from start to finish.

Measuring and casting

1 Accuracy and attention to detail are important in the manufacture of prosthetic limbs, because the goal is to have a limb that comes as close as possible to being as comfortable and useful as a natural one. Before work on the fabrication of the limb is begun, the prosthetist evaluates the amputee and takes an impression or digital reading of the residual limb.
2 The prosthetist then measures the lengths of relevant body segments and determines the location of bones and tendons in the remaining part of the limb. Using the impression and the measurements, the prosthetist then makes a plaster cast of the stump. This is most commonly made of plaster of paris, because it dries fast and yields a detailed impression. From the plaster cast, a positive model—an exact duplicate—of the stump is created.

Making the socket

3 Next, a sheet of clear thermoplastic is heated in a large oven and then vacuum-formed around the positive mold. In this process, the heated sheet is simply laid over the top of the mold in a vacuum chamber. If necessary, the sheet is heated again. Then, the air between the sheet and the mold is sucked out of the chamber, collapsing the sheet around the mold and forcing it into the exact shape of the mold. This thermoplastic sheet is now the test socket; it is transparent so that the prosthetist can check the fit.
4 Before the permanent socket is made, the prosthetist works with the patient to ensure that the test socket fits properly. In the case of a missing leg, the patient walks while wearing the test socket, and the prosthetist studies the gait. The patient is also asked to explain how the fit feels; comfort comes first. The test socket is then adjusted according to patient input and retried. Because the material from which the test socket is made is thermoplastic, it can be reheated to make minor adjustments in shape. The patient can also be fitted with thicker socks for a more comfortable fit.
5 The permanent socket is then formed. Since it is usually made of polypropylene, it can be vacuum-formed over a mold in the same way as the test socket. It is common for the stump to shrink after surgery, stabilizing approximately a year later. Thus, the socket is usually replaced at that time, and thereafter when anatomical changes necessitate a change.

Fabrication of the prosthesis

6 There are many ways to manufacture the parts of a prosthetic limb. Plastic pieces—including soft-foam pieces used as liners or padding—are made in the usual plastic forming methods. These include vacuum-forming (see no. 3 above), injecting molding—forcing molten plastic into a mold and letting it cool—and extruding, in which the plastic is pulled through a shaped die. Pylons that are made of titanium or aluminum can be die-cast; in this process, liquid metal is forced into a steel die of the proper shape. The wooden pieces can be planed, sawed, and drilled. The various components are put together in a variety of ways, using bolts, adhesives, and laminating, to name a few.
7 The entire limb is assembled by the prosthetist's technician using such tools as a torque wrench and screwdriver to bolt the

A typical artificial limb, in this case an above-the-knee prosthesis. The foam cover is covered with artificial skin that is pointed to match the patient's natural skin color.
prosthetic device together. After this, the prosthetist again fits the permanent socket to the patient, this time with the completed custom-made limb attached. Final adjustments are then made.

Physical Therapy

Once the prosthetic limb has been fitted, it is necessary for the patient to become comfortable with the device and learn to use it in order to meet the challenges of everyday life. At the same time, they must learn special exercises that strengthen the muscles used to move the prosthetic device. When the patient has been fitted with a myoelectric device, it is sometimes true that the muscles are too weak to effectively signal the device, so again the muscles are exercised to strengthen them. Some new amputees are trained to wash the devices—including the socks—daily, and to practice getting them on and off.

A patient fitted with an artificial arm must learn to use the arm and its locking device as well as the hand. If the amputee lost an arm due to an accident and is subsequently fitted with a myoelectric device, this is relatively easy. If the loss of the limb is congenital, this is difficult. An instruction system has been developed to teach amputees how to accomplish many small tasks using only one hand.

Some patients fitted with an artificial leg also undergo physical therapy. It typically takes a new amputee 18-20 weeks to learn how to walk again. Patients also learn how to get in and out of bed and how to get in and out of a car. They learn how to walk up and down hill, and how to fall down and get up safely.

Quality Control

No standards exist for prosthetic limbs in the United States. Some manufacturers advocate instituting those of the International Standards Organization of Europe, particularly because U.S. exporters of prosthetic limbs to Europe must conform to them anyway. Others believe these regulations to be confusing and unrealistic; they would rather see the United States produce their own, more reasonable standards.

Lack of standards does not mean that prosthetic limb manufacturers have not come up with ways to test their products. Some tests evaluate the strength and lifetime of the device. For instance, static loads test strength. A load is applied over a period of 30 seconds, held for 20 seconds, then removed over a period of 30 seconds. The limb should suffer no deformation from the test. To test for failure, a load is applied to the limb until it breaks, thus determining strength limits. Cyclic loads determine the lifetime of the device. A load is applied two million times at one load per second, thus simulating five years of use. Experimental prosthetic limbs are usually considered feasible if they survive 250,000 cycles.

The Future

Many experts are optimistic about the future of prosthetic limbs; at least, most agree that there is vast room for improvement. A prosthetic limb is a sophisticated device, yet it is preferably simple in design. The ideal prosthetic device should be easy for the patient to learn how to use, require little repair or replacement, be comfortable and easy to put on and take off, be strong yet lightweight, be easily adjustable, look natural, and be easy to clean. Research aims for this admittedly utopian prosthetic device, and strides have been made in recent years.

Carbon fiber is a strong, lightweight material that is now being used as the basis of endoskeletal parts (the pylons). In the past it was used primarily for reinforcement of exoskeletal protheses, but some experts claim that carbon fiber is a superior material that will eventually replace metals in pylons.

One researcher has developed software that superimposes a grid on a CAT scan of the stump to indicate the amount of pressure the soft tissue can handle with a minimum amount of pain. By viewing the computer model, the prosthetist can design a socket that minimizes the amount of soft tissue that is displaced.

An experimental pressure-sensitive foot is also in the works. Pressure transducers located in the feet send signals to electrodes set in the stump. The nerves can then receive and interpret the signals accordingly. Amputees can walk more normally on the new device because they can feel the ground and adjust their gait appropriately.

Another revolutionary development in the area of prosthetic legs is the introduction of an above-knee prosthesis that has a built-in computer that can be programmed to match the patient's gait, thereby making walking more automatic and natural.

Where To Learn More

Books

Forester, C. S. Flying Colours. Little, Brown, 1938.

Sabolich, John. You 're Not Alone. Sabolich Prosthetic and Research Center, 1991.

Shurr, Donald G. and Thomas M. Cook. Pros the tics and Orthotics. Appleton and Lange, 1990.

Periodicals

Abrahams, Andrew. "An Amazing 'Foot' Puts Legless Vet Bill Demby Back in the Ballgame," People Weekly. April 4, 1988, p. 119.

Hart, Lianne. "Lives that Are Whole," Life. December, 1988, pp. 112-116.

Heilman, Joan Rattner. "Medical Miracles," Redbook. May, 1991, p. 124+.

"A Helping Hand for Christa," National Geographic World. November, 1986, p. 10.

"Off to a Running Start," National Geographic World. August, 1991, pp. 29-31.

—Rose
Secrest

User Contributions:

jessica

Apr 1, 2006 @ 11:11 am

The earliest know form of an artificial limb was 500 BC According to Herodotus a prisoner escaped from his chains by cutting of his leg. He later replaced it with wood. In 1529 a surgeon named Ambroise Pare started making artificial limbs. In 1836, Dubois L Parmelee added the socket to the limb. In 1898, Dr. Vanghetti made an artificial limb that could move using muscle contrast. In 1946 there was a really big change to the artificial limb. The suction sock was created in a Californian University. In 1975 Ysidro M. Martinez who had an artificial limb himself created a lighter limb to take off some of the pressure.

A person who is born missing a limb or loses one during an accident or war might require an artificial limb. Most people with artificial limbs are war veterinarians. The goal of an artificial limb is to live your life the way you lived it before you lost the limb. You can get a limb to fit your hobbies. For example there are special limbs for swimmers, dancers and other athletes. There is even a limb that looks real for people who are concerned about the looks. But learning how to use an artificial limb is not easy. It takes lessons, hard work and a lot of practice. They also have to learn exercises that help them strengthen their muscles that are use to work the artificial limb. The lessons themselves take 18-20 weeks. Most of this is just learning how to walk. Some focus on sitting down and getting up and how to fall down and get up safely. The lessons for people who have lost arms are not so long and mainly focus on being able to grip objects with their new hand. It is important to care for artificial limbs for the amputee's own health and safety. The sockets need washing every day and the amputees need to go to the hospital for check ups to make sure nothing is broken.

Most doctors say that in the future there will be lots of room for improvement on the artificial limb. They want the limb to be easy to learn how to walk in, less need for repair and replacement, comfortable, strong, light and real looking.

Transtibial Prosthesis

A transtibial prosthesis is an artificial limb that replaces a leg missing below the knee. Transtibial amputees are usually able to regain normal movement more readily than someone with a transfemoral amputation, due in large part to retaining the knee, which allows for easier movement.

Artificial limbs are typically manufactured using the following steps:^[3]

Measurement of the stump
Measurement of the body to determine the size required for the artificial limb
Creation of a model of the stump
Formation of thermoplastic sheet around the model of the stump – This is then used to test the fit of the prosthetic
Formation of permanent socket
Formation of plastic parts of the artificial limb – Different methods are used, including vacuum forming and injection molding
Creation of metal parts of the artificial limb using die casting
Assembly of entire limb

Cost

Transradial and transtibial prostheses typically cost between US $6,000 and $8,000. Transfemoral and transhumeral prosthetics cost approximately twice much with a range of $10,000 to $15,000 and can sometimes reach costs of $35,000. The cost of an artificial limb does recur because artificial limbs are usually replaced every 3-4 years due to wear and tear on the artificial limb. In addition, if the artificial limb has fit issues, the limb must be replaced within several months.^[8]

Jaipur Foot, an artificial limb from Jaipur, India, costs about US$ 40.

There is currently an open Prosthetics design forum known as the "Open Prosthetics Project". The group employs collaborators and volunteers to advance Prosthetics technology while attempting to lower the costs of these necessary devices. Visit their site at http://OpenProsthetics.org.

[edit] Footnotes

^
"Science, Medicine, and the Future: Artificial Limbs", BMJ, 29 September 2001. Retrieved 11 February 2007.
^ ^a
^b
"History of Prostheses", University of Iowa, 5 June 2006. Retrieved 11 February 2007.
^ ^a
^b
^c
^d
"Artificial Limb", How Products are Made, 2007. Retrieved 11 February 2007.
^ ^a
^b
^c
"Getting an Artificial Leg Up", Australian Broadcasting Corporation, 2000. Retrieved 11 February 2007.
^
"Advanced Signal Processing Dramatically Improves Capability of Artificial Limbs", SIGMO Technology, 2005. Retrieved 11 February 2007.
^ ^a
^b Kuiken TA, Miller LA, Lipschutz RD, Lock BA, Stubblefield K, Marasco PD, Zhou P, Dumanian GA (Feb 2007). "Targeted reinnervation for enhanced prosthetic arm function in a woman with a proximal amputation: a case study". Lancet
369 (9559): 371-80. PMID 17276777.
^
"Replacement Arm, Good as New", DefenseTech.org, 11 April 2005. Retrieved 11 February 2007.
^
"Cost of Prosthetics Stirs Debate", The Boston Globe, 5 July 2005. Retrieved 11 February 2007.

[edit] External links

Amputee Coalition of America
National Academy of Sciences
OandPCare.org has an extensive glossary of terms relating to artificial limbs, prostheses and the field of prosthetics
Prosthetic Suppliers and Manufacturers
The Open Prosthetics Project

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artificial_limb"

A leg up

2007-06-08T11:32:00.000-07:00

Huzzah! Eric made a mold of stump’s end on Wednesday. Unlike the surgeon, who was trying to jolly me into a decision towards amputation, (He thinks, as I do, that it was the best way to go.) Eric is very conservative. Still, he appears to think that I may be standing on some sort of a leg within four weeks. I do hope that he’s right. Meanwhile, I am overjoyed at the making of new progress

Act 3, Scene 2

2007-05-23T13:08:00.000-07:00

1:01 PM 5/23/2007 Blasted! Eric ( Nobbe) this morning found a fleck of a scab on the stump but says that in two weeks for sure we can make the mold for the button-on leg. If patience is a virtue, I am a saint. Saint Edward the Gimp. Set aside a holiday for February 29.

Act 3: Nobbe

2007-05-19T10:15:00.000-07:00

My attention and patience now turns to Nobbe orthopedics. Nobbe has a well-earned monopoly in Santa Barbara to supply equipment and other necessities to the halt and the lame. They have been in business here since forever and have never had serious competition. This is because of the conscientious way they go about their business. The point man that has attended to my needs (shoes for diabetic feet seven years ago, post--toectomy) is Eric, a most pleasant and capable fixture at Nobbe. As an example of his service: I wear a boot protector, a cumbersome device that fits over my stump to protect it against unwanted encounters. The thing is highly effective, but requires an expert in the ins and outs of its straps and buckles in order to make it work properly. It is so designed that one need only unstrap the part that goes across the waist and the entire boot accommodatingly removes itself. Inevitably, every nurse who has no experience with this boot will unbuckle the entire device and try to put it back on. They never get it right -- so that it works, but only sort of. On the way back from the rehabilitation center Kay and I decided that we must at least try to see if there was anyone at Nobbe able to restore the boot -- it was scarcely doing its job after several bungled attempts at re-strapping it -- to its proper configuration. As it happens, we just caught Eric between appointments. He came out of the car, unbuckled the entire apparatus and re-buckled it as it should be buckled. That job done, I returned home with assurance.
At our appointment, two weeks ago Wednesday, Eric fitted the stump out in a shaper sock, which is a kind of double knit sock made of Ace bandage material. It is supposed to squeeze out the edema from the wound. Last Wednesday, Eric pronounced himself well pleased with the progress the stump was making. So much so that next week, he will take a casting for fitting a button--on leg. The first prosthetic will evidently be a training limb of some sort. If I get right everything I've been told, we will then proceed to intensive therapy attendant on getting a permanent prosthetic. Everyone tells me that getting one of these devices to function involves a lot of work on my part. Estimates of my capability with this thing vary widely. The surgeon made it sound as if it would be a walk in the park to walk down for the mail unaided. Another doctor claims I might need a walker for the rest of my walking life. Others say that I will be able to make do with a cane. I am used to a cane and would be happy to be able to get around using one. I guess we shall have to wait and see. For now, I am filling my dance card.

Act 2: the RISB

2007-05-14T09:47:00.000-07:00

Except for the lack of a sauna, the Rehabilitation Institute of Santa Barbara (RISB, or RizzBee), could pass easily for an upscale spa. It has a capacity of only 20 patients at any given time, this for the sake of better focus on each patient. It includes a spacious room full of all sorts of gymnastic equipment, a commons in which all of the patients eat their meals, all of which (the meals) are very well prepared and a staff equally so. The commons has among its many amenities a 21 inch computer at which I was able daily to check on, and to reply to, my e-mails. The nurses all were highly competent and accommodating as were the many therapists.(Nurses make up a strange lot, about which more later. Or perhaps not.)
The doctors at RISB are among the vainest creatures on earth, and I do not except George Steinbrenner, say, or Diane Keaton. Come to think of it, how can it be otherwise? Jerome Groopman in How Doctors Think pours syrup over the word, but, bottom line, it is vanity. "[Dr. Richard Selzer] showed the young Terry Light [a medical intern] that a surgeon has to have a high level of confidence to operate, or, as Selzer had written, the 'audacity to take a knife to another human being.' A certain bravado goes with being a surgeon, Light admitted." Aluminum siding salesmen need bravado; surgeons need the confidence that sprouts out of vanity. This came home to me during one appointment with my surgeon, when he raised both hands in front of him and said simply, "magic." And you can bet that he believed it. I wouldn't have had it any other way.
By this standard, the two doctors who prowled the halls at the RISB were the souls of diffidence. One or the other, and for the most part both, were on call most hours of long days. One was an epidemiologist, the other a specialist in the things physical rehab does. (It bears an inkhorn label.)There was much confusion concerning my medications; neither seems to have heard of Byetta so that I ended up taking both Lantus and Byetta and inherited a prescription for a three month's supply of Lantus, which I paid for – it’s quite pricey -- and did not need. However, both of the physicians seemed more than competent. One spoke to my nephrologist (whose services are strictly precautionary). This resulted in a downshifting of some of my prescriptions for the next order cycle. The wizards giveth and the wizards taketh away.
With as many as 20 patients in their charge, the doctors were kept quite busy with a lot of people complaining about one thing or another, with very little patience to spare waiting their turn at a receptive ear. I wondered at the energy and equanimity shown by these two wardens. My fellow internees constituted a mixed bag worthy of a novel (for which I don't have the time). At one point, I found myself in the nostalgic embrace of Old Brooklyn Heights with the long-since retired director of publications for the Jehovah’s Witnesses who (the Witnesses) had colonized the Heights even before my reluctant emigration. I was divertingly attracted too by a Kerr-like (Think Tea and Sympathy) woman whose charge was a brilliant Japanese girl whose problem (the girl’s) I did not inquire about, I having grown prematurely polite. And that is but a small sampling of my encounters at the RISB.

It begins

2007-05-08T15:01:00.000-07:00

The photograph is of Ella Fitzgerald seated in a wheelchair; where her legs were are stubs. She is smiling as if ready to break out with her trademark scat. I show that to the doctor on whom I depend for my primary care. He tells me that's what happens with diabetes. "The surgeons get you a snip at time." Seven years ago, a vascular surgeon whom I have come to trust – he is a Bohunk from Minneapolis -- snipped two toes from each of my feet, and "revascularized" each of my legs. Late in February, Kay noticed a familiarly ominous redness on one of my toes. The fact that we had paid little attention to a similar symptom the first time we saw it almost led to an amputation seven years ago. So off to the doctor we went. Without hesitating, he said go directly to the emergency room. A Doppler check and an MRA later, and I am listening to the surgeon spell out the options. What began as an ingrown toenail had made my entire right foot septic. None of the options that the surgeon put on the table were attractive. Indeed, the only sensible choice was to proceed with an amputation. This was done on March 2. I spent four days at Santa Barbara Cottage Hospital, after which I went to the Rehabilitation Institute of Santa Barbara.

I let it be known

2007-05-06T18:47:00.000-07:00

I am glad to see that "scooch" has made it into Webster's New Millennium™ Dictionary of English both as verb ("to move or push a short distance") and noun ("a small amount or distance"). The occasion for my finding this out came when the surgeon’s resident intern shifted me on to an examining table and asked if I could "scooch down just a scooch." It came to me that I had frequently been hearing the word for days from the several physical and occupational therapists assigned to instruct me in ways to pivot on my remaining leg from one butt rest – the wheel chair or bed, for the most part – on to another – a car seat, back on to the bed, a chair at table; whatever. The first thing to remember toward a successful pivot is to scooch toward the edge of the launching pad. The resident and I agreed that no other word would serve as well, that "scooch", served, without fuss or ambiguity, a genuine need. (I became known at the rehab center for the swift elegance of my "scooch and pivot." It gave the thought to one therapist of, as she put it, "Boris Karloff doing a trapeze act.") The surgeon has signed off. I am eager to see how scooch comes into play starting next week when I begin work, considerably ahead of schedule, toward fitting a new limb. And so it goes, scooch by scooch by scooch.

This is how I told anyone who might care that I had lost, to diabetes, the part of my right leg below the knee. This blog tell about the operation and what happened afterwords.