Snacks to the Rescue

To offset the shockingly familiar theft of data from switched-off mobile phones at meetings, managers at a German company have adopted the practice of storing their phones in cookie tins during meetings. The company has said that it uses specifically tins in which biscuits (cookies) are delivered, thereby taking advantage of the unique electromagnetic-blocking properties of these metallic data-saviors. Yes, indeed, it's phone-in-a-tin. (We don't have any further data about what brand or thickness of biscuit, but that's probably classified anyway, or perhaps even immaterial.)

The theory is that the tins function like a Faraday cage, blocking out static electric fields like those invaded by data-thieving devices. Apparently, hackers have been able to tap into phone and email messages even while phones are switched off. Specifically, the Faraday cage redistributes the electric charges within the enclosed area, thereby making the data difficult if not impossible to track, let alone steal.

Such a device is commonly used to shield vital entities from lighting strikes and other kinds of electrostatic discharges. Not sure where phone-hacking fits in there; but if the company managers are doing it, they must have a very good reason for it. Surely they wouldn't go to all the trouble and effort of ordering the biscuit tins, eating the biscuits so the phones can be stored in a crumb-free environment, carefully switching off the phones and then storing them inside the electric cone of silence for the duration of the meeting, and then telling the world they're doing all this.

The most common Faraday cages found in everyday living are the microwave oven and the MRI machine. Let's hope that the German experiment doesn't end up somehow cooking the phones so that even the owners can't retrieve the data.

His Brother, Himself

So much for self-reflection.

The experts have spoken, and they have revised their opinion on a self-portrait of Vincent van Gogh. The experts now think that that portrait is of Theo, Vincent's brother. The painting, which was completed in 1887, shows a man wearing a dark blue jacket and a light-colored hat. The man is also sporting a beard that is of a color more consistent with that of Theo, according to the researchers announcing the decision. The color of the eyes is also supposed to be a clue as to which brother it is.

The announcement came from the Van Gogh Museum, in Amsterdam, so presumably they know what they're talking about and they've done their research and they haven't gone and concluded anything and announced anything without doing all of their homework first. But you have to wonder why, if Theo really is the person in the painting, we haven't been made aware of it until now. The common assessment was that it was a self-portrait. Why hasn't other research come to this conclusion?

Perhaps it's best not to ask those sorts of questions. After all, they're the experts and I'm not.

But it put me in mind of a similar episode from my own life in which one brother insisted that a portrait was of his brother. This is a very personal story, so bear with me.

My stepfather was Dutch. He was involved with the Dutch Resistance during World War II and survived that life-altering series of events by, at one point, hiding in the rafters of someone else's house.

He brought his family to America eventually and found enough jobs to keep them healthy as they grew. He eventually drifted apart from that family and met the mother of my wife.

His name was John, and he was a jolly fellow all the years that I knew him. He loved to tell a story (and he had a lot of them!). His laugh was infectious. One such jolly laugh-inducing story was the occasion of his 80th birthday. Barbara, my wife's mother, had outdone herself rounding up friends hither and yon for a superb birthday party, at the hotel where John had worked for many years. She had rifled through his photo albums when he wasn't looking and found a photo of young Johnny. She had reproduced this photo so that people sitting at every table at the birthday dinner could see the photo of young Johnny.

Slightly older John didn't know about this, of course, but he was a quick wit. When she ushered him into the party room and he got a look at the photo, he said, "Ah, that's my brother. Why is his photo here?"

Barbara was mortified. Where had she gone wrong? Surely that was John and not his brother. Surely that photo, stored along with others from his youth, was of the celebrant, not his brother. And yet here was John, saying that the photo, which many people commented on throughout the evening, was actually someone else and not the birthday boy!

Well, John was a trickster. It really was him in the photo. But he and his brother looked very much alike. It very well could have been his brother in that photo. Really, only John knew for sure. He was having us on, for sure, but he might not have been.

The point is that only Vincent and Theo know for sure whose portrait that is. (You could possibly draw that circle a bit larger and include people who knew them very well, but not too many of those people are still around.) Bottom line: It's still a painting done by Vincent van Gogh, which makes it very well done indeed. John would agree.

Happy Swim: Antarctic Penguin Gets Lost, Ends up in New Zealand

Talk about taking a wrong turn.

An Emperor penguin bound for Antarctica has ended up on a beach in New Zealand, 2,000 miles away. How it happened is quite obvious, scientists say: The Penguin, looking for food, headed in the wrong direction — and kept going. The species is known for being able to spend long periods of time at sea, needing to come ashore only to rest or to molt.

Experts think that the penguin, which is nearly 3 feet tall, is about 10 months old and is probably happy to be on land again. The penguin ended up on Peka Peka Beach, up the Kapiti Coast a bit from the capital, Wellington, and was the first Emperor penguin seen there in the wild in since 1967.

Winter is approaching in New Zealand, so the penguin probably thinks it's a bit warm but not too hot, scientists say. However, they also say, the penguin probably needs to get moving again in a few weeks if it's to get home again safely.

For now, the scientists, confident that the penguin can quench its thirst by drinking saltwater, are happy to let nature take its course. They are, naturally, keeping people and other animals away from the scene.

Coming soon to your e-book reader: spam

So now we have e-books and e-book readers and, of course, e-spam. Yes, Amazon has shone the spotlight on the spam e-books that are now available for purchase for Amazon's own e-reader, the Kindle.

Kind of makes you want to skip the whole e-reading phenomenon, doesn't it? I mean, really. Haven't we had enough spam with TV ads and newspaper inserts and magazine "advertorials" and — the king of all spam domains — email? Oh, wait, there's the World Wide Web as well, and all those flashing lights and dancing bears and other elements of distraction that make us take our eye off the virtual ball. Web pages are supposed to be informative or fun or at least semi-entertaining, but they tend to be not so much of any of those things if the entire experience is diminished by distractions.

The same is true of reading a book. I guess the difference here is that the entire book is spam. We're not to the point yet where we have ads in the margins of e-books: "It was the best of times. It was the worst of times." — "Take our medicine to help you feel better!"

That sort of thing might be happening on a small scale — meaning not in every case — but the case being referred to here is that of the entire contents of a "volume" being an ad, group of dancing bears, plea for money from an unnamed undeveloped country, etc. I guess that's inevitable.

The more worrying element of Amazon's report, though, is the admission that some e-books are repackaged versions of originals under different author's names — meaning piracy. Now that's downright theft. We're not talking plagiarism here, for which an author lifts thoughts, words, or whole passages from one book and passes it off as his or her own; no, this is more insidious in that an "author" has taken all of another person's work, copied it into a new document, and placed a different name under Author. That is heinous. Worse, the thief will profit from someone else's intellectual property.

Not much Amazon can do about this, though, unless they want to get into the business of copyright law and lawsuits on such. Caveat emptor would definitely apply, as would caveat actor, the Latin equivalent of "writer beware."

Imitation might be a sincere form of flattery, but it shouldn't lead to profit at someone's else expense.

Engage: DoD Announces 100-year Starship Plan

In the words of the noted explorer Jean-Luc Picard, "Make it so."

The U.S. Department of Defense has announced a $1 million project titled Starship Study, with an eye toward helping fund a spaceship that can transport human beings to a nearby star, if it takes 100 years. The closest star, other than the Sun, is Alpha Centauri A, 25 trillion miles away — a blink of an eye, in interstellar terms, as long as the starship gets some speed up on the way there.

The money is coming from DARPA, the research agency famous for all manner of competitions including the one where people build things approximating armored personnel carriers except being driven by autopilot. So the project won't hurt for money.

Speaking of cash, there's half of that $1 million on offer in the form of "seed money," as DARPA are wanting to reward some lucky sir or madam for germinating an idea that flowers into the eventual starship.

We're way past Robert Goddard at this point because even at today's fastest speeds, a rocket trip would require a few hundred generations of people to keep manning (and womanizing) the ship before it reached its destination. So we definitely have something to work on — wormholes, anyone? Maybe it's an opportunity for application of quantum entanglement on a (relatively) grand scale.

The Government is already off to a good start, as 150 people have already thrown their hats in the ring. But there's still time to get in the sweepstakes. You might be able to help us all go where no one has gone before.

France Faces Stiff Fines for Great Hamster Headache

Sometimes, the littlest of things can be the biggest of headaches. Such is the case with the Great Hamster of Alsace, which, if unprotected, could cost France more than a bit of a hit in the country treasury.

No less an authority than the Court of Justice, the highest court in the European Union, has handed an opinion that France has failed to protect this hamster, of which only 800 remain on the planet. Since 1993, laws have mandated the protection of this little rodent, the unwitting target of French roading projects and changes in French crop rotations. (The hamster has an affinity for alfalfa, but French farmers in the Alsace region have switched to corn, which is not available when the master awakens from its winterlong slumber.)

Have a look at the photo. The hamster is, for its species, great because it can grow up to 10 inches long. It's a bit special in that its belly is black while its paws are white. Many people would take one look at that brown-and-white face and black belly and say something like, "Ah, how cute!"

You can't blame the farmers, really, because they think of the wee beastie as a pest. The French farmers were generally good at poisoning or trapping the hamsters several years ago. You could probably forgive the French farmers as well because even though the masters exist in Western Europe only in Alsace, they exist in greater numbers in Eastern Europe and in Central Asia.

Tell that to the Court of Justice.

The amount of the fines mandated by the court's judgement could approach $25 million, if France's agriculture policies remain unchanged. That's a lot of cash to spend to say that a pest has been eradicated.

Think it's a joke? Read the opinion here.