This is Edward Snowden’s Advice to John Oliver for an Unhackable Password

2015/04/11 Leave a comment

We all struggle with passwords, finding the balance between convenient and security (I use 1Password but Snowden’s approach is likely as if not more effective and free):

Edward Snowden has bad news for you: Your computer password is probably terrible.

In a web extension of his Sunday interview with John Oliver on Last Week Tonight, Snowden laid out the bad news: “For somebody who has a very common 8-character password, it can literally take less than a second for a computer to go through possibilities and pull that password out.”

Less than one second.

“My password is five characters,” Oliver said. “That’s not a joke. That’s bad, right?”

Snowden agreed it is really bad.

So what should people do for their passwords? While Oliver’s suggestion of “limpbiscuit4eva” was a flop, Snowden had some helpful advice: Forget about passwords and go with “passphrases,” or phrases that are long, unique, and thus easy to remember. Like “margaretthatcheris110%SEXY”.

A computer would never get it, and you’d never forget it.

And if you don’t like the Margaret Thatcher version, you can always pick a name closer to your values and ideology, or outside the political realm.

This is Edward Snowden’s Advice to John Oliver for an Unhackable Password

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Douglas Todd: If academia is becoming less relevant, blame bad writing

2015/03/25 2 Comments

These apply to all writing, not just academic:

What are the signs of bad writing?

• Jargon: Sometimes it’s necessary to use technical words, but words like “apperception” become unhelpful jargon when they’re used mostly to keep out outsiders. Other bits of jargon, like “outsourcing,” hide offensive realities.

• Verbs as nouns: Billig dislikes academic “nouniness,” the tendency to turn virtually every idea into an abstract noun. Billig names scores of over-used nouns, like mediatization, re-ethnicification, deindividuation and, especially, reification. He argues against making verbs into nouns with suffixes such as “ization,” “ication” or “ism.”

Billig is correct when he says such nouns turn vague concepts into concrete things, when they’re not.

An over-reliance on abstract nouns helps academics avoid dealing with real people and actual processes, Billig says.

For what it’s worth, one of my pet-peeve abstract nouns is the increasingly common “essentialism.”

• Passive language: Academics, like everyone else, need to avoid passive sentences when possible, because they include less information than sentences with active verbs, which require (often human) actors as subjects.

• Not much to say: In academic circles, the pressure “to publish or perish” is not an empty threat. Billig maintains somewhat ruthlessly that a cause of bad writing is that many academics don’t have much worthwhile to say. Academics, he says, often use jargon, nouns and passive sentences because they’re hiding that they’re just repeating platitudes.

• Self-censorship: This is another danger in academia. It’s not just politicians and business leaders who cover their butts with euphemisms; academics also default to bureaucratic language. Bureaucratese is designed to say less, not more.

Douglas Todd: If academia is becoming less relevant, blame bad writing.

And always a good idea to re-read Orwell’s Politics and the English Language essay from time to time.

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Aleksander Solzhenitsyn on What is Important

2015/03/10 Leave a comment

Always worth reading his quotes:

“What about the main thing in life, all its riddles? If you want, I’ll spell it out for you right now. Do not pursue what is illusionary — property and position: all that is gained at the expense of your nerves decade after decade, and is confiscated in one fell night. Live with a steady superiority over life — don’t be afraid of misfortune, and do not yearn for happiness; it is, after all, all the same: the bitter doesn’t last forever, and the sweet never fills the cup to overflowing.

It is enough if you don’t freeze in the cold and if thirst and hunger don’t claw at your insides. If your back isn’t broken, if your feet can walk, if both arms can bend, if both eyes can see, if both ears hear, then whom should you envy? And why? Our envy of others devours us most of all.

Rub your eyes and purify your heart — and prize above all else in the world those who love you and who wish you well. Do not hurt them or scold them, and never part from any of them in anger; after all, you simply do not know: it may be your last act before your arrest, and that will be how you are imprinted on their memory,”

– Aleksander Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago, 1918-1956: An Experiment in Literary Investigation.

Quote For The Day « The Dish.

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Is the Professor Bossy or Brilliant? Much Depends on Gender – NYTimes.com

2015/02/10 Leave a comment

Gender bias universities

Frequency of word “genius” in RatemyProfessor

Interesting study on bias, this time in the university setting:

Studies have also shown that students can be biased against female professors. In one, teachers graded and returned papers to students at the exact same time, but when asked to rate their promptness, students gave female professors lower scores than men. Biases cut both ways — teachers have also been found to believe girls are not as good in math and science, even when they perform similarly to boys.

Mr. Schmidt, who made the chart as part of a project called Bookworm for searching and visualizing large texts, said he was struck by “this spectrum from smart to brilliant to genius, where each one of those is more strongly gendered male than the previous one was.” He was also surprised that relatively few people commented on female professors’ clothing or looks, which he had expected to be the case.

Another surprise, he said, was Shakespeare — apparently many more men than women teach it in English departments.

Men are more likely to be described as a star, knowledgeable, awesome or the best professor. Women are more likely to be described as bossy, disorganized, helpful, annoying or as playing favorites. Nice or rude are also more often used to describe women than men.

Men and women seemed equally likely to be thought of as tough or easy, lazy, distracted or inspiring.

Interestingly, women were more likely to be described in reviews as role models. Mr. Schmidt notes that the reviews are anonymous, so he doesn’t know the gender of reviewers. It could be that more female students describe female professors as role models than men do when describing men or women.

Is the Professor Bossy or Brilliant? Much Depends on Gender – NYTimes.com.

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Why Some Teams Are Smarter Than Others – NYTimes.com

2015/01/23 Leave a comment

More evidence that of the importance of diversity and emotional intelligence in improving the performance of teams:

We next tried to define what characteristics distinguished the smarter teams from the rest, and we were a bit surprised by the answers we got. We gave each volunteer an individual I.Q. test, but teams with higher average I.Q.s didn’t score much higher on our collective intelligence tasks than did teams with lower average I.Q.s. Nor did teams with more extroverted people, or teams whose members reported feeling more motivated to contribute to their group’s success.

Instead, the smartest teams were distinguished by three characteristics.

First, their members contributed more equally to the team’s discussions, rather than letting one or two people dominate the group.

Second, their members scored higher on a test called Reading the Mind in the Eyes, which measures how well people can read complex emotional states from images of faces with only the eyes visible.

Finally, teams with more women outperformed teams with more men. Indeed, it appeared that it was not “diversity” (having equal numbers of men and women) that mattered for a team’s intelligence, but simply having more women. This last effect, however, was partly explained by the fact that women, on average, were better at “mindreading” than men.

Why Some Teams Are Smarter Than Others – NYTimes.com.

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CIA torture report: Why Canada can’t claim innocence

2014/12/12 Leave a comment

Both Wark and Juneau-Katsuya make valid points about likely Canadian complicity:

However, as Juneau-Katsuya points out, intelligence Canada shared with the CIA led to the torture of a number of Canadians.

“That’s exactly what took place with Maher Arar, that’s exactly what took place with Omar Khadr, that’s exactly what took place with tons of other people,” says Juneau-Katsuya, who calls Harper’s stance “a very hypocritical position.”

Harper s dismissive tone about the Senate report obscures how closely Canadian intelligence works with its American counterparts, says Juneau-Katsuya.

He says that Canadian spies have a “phenomenal” relationship with the CIA. Not only do they share intelligence related to foreign threats, but CSIS has liaison officers that work in CIA headquarters, and vice versa.

Given their close working relationship, did Canadian intelligence agents witness any of the CIA’s torture tactics?

“It would be speculation on my part,” says Juneau-Katsuya, “but I think its very likely.”

He adds that “some [Canadian agents] might have had the wise reflex not to be there and simply say, I wasnt present.”

But the bottom line is the Canadian government “cannot deny the fact that we were aware of the practices.”

CIA torture report: Why Canada can’t claim innocence – CBC News – Latest Canada, World, Entertainment and Business News.

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Cohen: The shrinking space for books | Ottawa Citizen

2014/12/06 2 Comments

Andrew Cohen on the challenges of being a writer today given the decline of bookstores:

Today entering most bookstores is a test of character for the writer. You might find your book amid the baubles; you might not. You might be asked to speak and sign; you might be ignored.

There are a few sanctuaries offering literary asylum: Munro’s in Victoria, Books on Beechwood in Ottawa, Ben McNally Books in Toronto. Books on Beechwood was saved by guardian angels and a passionate staff.

McNally has a rare, crazy commitment to books. He is wonderfully innovative as a seller and marketer – a gift to writers.

The disappearing bookstore reflects the ebbing stature of books in society. The public space for books is shrinking.

The author tour is passé. Twenty years ago a first-time author with a good book could expect to visit five cities or so, speaking, giving interviews. Few do that today.

Newspapers used to review books seriously. The Globe and Mail published a weekly, well-read tabloid on books. The Toronto Star and The National Post carried reviews. Regional papers did, too.

There are fewer reviews in newspapers today and fewer specialty publications on books. Those that survive, like The Literary Review of Canada – the nation’s literary salon – commission reviews often long and learned for which they pay little.

There remain excellent book shows on CBC Radio, like The Next Chapter with the spirited Shelagh Rogers, and unusual hosts on private radio, like Mark Sutcliffe on CFRA, who appreciate books. None has the impact of Peter Gzowski’s CBC’s Morningside, where an author’s appearance on national radio could make telephones ring in bookstores.

Cohen: The shrinking space for books | Ottawa Citizen.

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A “Sticky” Situation: Persistent Gender Gap

2014/11/26 Leave a comment

Gender gapsInteresting US study and chart showing persistence of the gender wage gap, increasing by level:

This is what economists call the “sticky floor” theory of the gender wage gap. Women make very close to men coming out of college, but as men climb the corporate ladder, female salaries stick to the ground. Consider that women account for 49 percent of the bottom 99 percent of earners, but just 11 percent of the 1 percent, and just 9 percent of the top 0.1 percent of earners, according to one recent paper.

A “Sticky” Situation « The Dish.

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Canada becomes more unequal, but good policies could halt that: TD Bank

2014/11/26 Leave a comment

When the banks start worrying about rising inequality ….

But author [TD Economist] Craig Alexander says rising inequality is bad for the economy – both because it leaves lower income people with less to spend and because it stalls opportunity for children and youth.

“Inequality has risen and it is a concern, because it actually can hamper investment in human skills, it can hamper economic growth. There’s an increasing body of literature that shows that elevated levels of inequality is not just bad for individuals, it’s bad for your economy and your society,” he said in an interview with CBC’s Metro Morning.

He calls for smart policies that improve Canadian productivity and social mobility, among them:

  1. Investing in policies that improve productivity.

  2. Investment in skills training.

  3. Reviewing the tax and income distribution systems.

  4. More means testing on programs to shift support to families more in need.

  5. Improving policies around education, early childhood education and health.

Canada becomes more unequal, but good policies could halt that: TD Bank – Business – CBC News.

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Leonard Cohen and the Art of Stillness: Pico Iyer on How to Fall in Love with the World | Brain Pickings

2014/11/20 Leave a comment

For a change.

Some good observations about stepping back from the world in order to understand it:

Not many years ago, it was access to information and movement that seemed our greatest luxury; nowadays it’s often freedom from information, the chance to sit still, that feels like the ultimate prize. Stillness is not just an indulgence for those with enough resources — it’s a necessity for anyone who wishes to gather less visible resources. Going nowhere, as Cohen had shown me, is not about austerity so much as about coming closer to one’s senses.

…Going nowhere … isn’t about turning your back on the world; it’s about stepping away now and then so that you can see the world more clearly and love it more deeply.

Leonard Cohen and the Art of Stillness: Pico Iyer on How to Fall in Love with the World | Brain Pickings.

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