To serve man
Science and religion should not be at the odds they are because both are seeking to explain all the phenomena which has been noted over the millennia and both fail to do so completely.
There’s an awful lot of blind faith with one, along with prejudice and political hijacking, allowing atrocities to be committed against man in its name … and an awful lot of error due to the narrow thinking of the contemporary age and the political hijacking of Science with the other.
Both can be as dogmatic as the other.
It is better for each to allow the other, not in opposition and hostility but in an attempt to draw the threads together to explain and allow the apparent anomalies of the other.
Other disciplines such as history should also not be ignored in the pursuit of truth.
Higgs Boson is the new alchemy and its pursuit will have its own consequences. Lest there be any mistake, this is no more nor less than the same motivation for the Tower of Babel – the unlocking of the ultimate secret. And as in that particular venture, other forces will be unleashed which will put a stop to it.
Meanwhile, science does its own “good works” and continues to develop technologies which serve man but often it ignores “old wives tales” which have more to them than Science cares to admit. It worries me that so-called rationalists ignore phenomena which they ascribe to superstition, when there might be quite cogent physical reasons on which the superstitions are based. This is particularly so in medicine.
Lord T confines himself to the reality which can be physically observed and lists many technological advances and some not so advanced. Five examples, selected at random, of technology which might help modern man are listed here:
1. Underwater biospheres have been on the board since Atlantis and can draw on the rich fruits of the sea to sustain life.
2. This article is a step by step guide on setting up a SIP phone and interfacing to Google Voice, which frees us from the negative elements of Skype and also gives us an overseas provider [non-UK], which makes control of this media more difficult for authorities.
3. Authenticating recordings is what the law has been after for decades – the ability to say yes, this person said this, beyond a shadow of a doubt. If this technology could do this, it would revolutionalize history and even the nature of truth.
4. Sustainable travel is the summum bonum and electric bikes are one compromise solution but as everyone knows, energy saving in one area means energy expenditure in another.
5. Lord T loves the idea of nanobots roaming around inside us, identifying trouble here and fixing it, boosting immunity there, even doing micro-surgery perhaps. DNA robots are an interesting study in this field.
There are examples not included in this post, e.g. ID technology, on the grounds that they do not serve man but do serve to enslave him and that’s the double-edged sword of technology.
Filed under: Society & human issues, Technology & ideas
There are fates worse than enslavement –
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/To_Serve_Man
Thanks for this James.
Personally, I do see Science and Religion as unwelcome bed fellows. Both forced to share the same bed based on unproved theories.
I do see technology as the saviour of Man. It is politicians every time that screws us. Science can develop tools to diagnose and repair our bodies but we *cough* ‘invest’ our money in paying someone to watch Ophrah or something instead.
I fear we are too late to stop the wheel turning this cycle and blood will flow as it always does. Perhaps next cycle we can make it. Fingers crossed that the blood flowing this time will include politicians. All of them.
IMHO the audio recording authenticity stuff is most unlikely to be of serious provable importance.
As I understand it (try Wikipedia at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrical_network_frequency_analysis ), the idea is to look at the mains hum pickup that is part of an audio recording at a low level.
The technique can be overcome very simply by recording some mains hum of one’s own. Then take the spliced recording, apply notch filters to suppress the mains hum and its main harmonics (usually odd harmonics) and add a dash of one’s own self consistent mains hum. Even better, filter out the mains hum from the recordings before splicing, so any discontinuities are less obvious at the splice points.
To overcome the possibility of a true match against the long-term record of mains frequency, make sure you record the mains hum at the time you intend to claim for the recording. However, this is unlikely to be a critical factor unless the spliced recording is to last for several minutes.
For the more sophisticated, one could take the original signals and dynamically change the sampling rate (using a rational fraction rate changer with higher rate interpolation) so that the mains frequency comes out at exactly 50Hz all the time; this is most unlikely to affect the speech in a perceptual or detectable way, as the changes would be slight and slowly varying. Then do the cutting and splicing, being careful to make each pair of splice points of same phase at 50Hz (which does somewhat inhibit totally free choice of splices in the middle of fully or partially voiced parts of utterances). Finally dynamically change the sampling rate for a second time, so that any residual mains hum follows the mains frequency track appropriate for the claimed time of recording.
If all else looks unhelpful, use the mains hum taken at the same time of day, on the same day of the week, add it at a modest level to the spliced signal, then notch filter that down to a low level, and finally add some bandlimited noise between around 45Hz and 275Hz (to cover the mains fundamental, 3rd harmonic and 5th harmonic) at a somewhat higher level than the residual mains hum. That would make recovering the mains frequency variation very difficult.
The above techniques can also be used to ‘forensically time-stamp’ a recording that does not involve cutting and splicing, but was made at a different time.
Generally, on such ‘wonderful technology’, a clever criminal can spoof the forensic science (though this requires a bit of effort) such that the techniques (with the passage of time) become only useful against less clever criminals.
Best regards
“Generally, on such ‘wonderful technology’, a clever criminal can spoof the forensic science (though this requires a bit of effort) such that the techniques (with the passage of time) become only useful against less clever criminals.”
This is one which should cause concern.
James writes: “This is one which should cause concern.”
Why is this of any particular concern?
Crime, like war, is a battle on many fronts, including the continually advancing front of technology.
Best regards
Nigel,
Sorry to take solong to respond I lost the post and James had to point mein the right direction. (Thank you James)
My main issue with the mains hum is like everything else nowadays it’s not evidence that counts but sheer volume of innuendo. The guy has a book written by Glenn beck, he has two sacks of fertilizer and car filler and has downloaded the anarchists cookbook. All legal but the innuendo is he is a terrorist and our laws allow this to convict him. The mains hum is another such tool. Easily spoofed but just another coincidence to throw in the mix.
As far as causing concern. I agree with you. What is concerning is that if this gives critical evidence how strong is the case. I would guess not very and they were looking to swamp the evidence with too many coincidences. Now that is concerning.