Shifting Spycraft

 kw: book reviews, nonfiction, espionage, memoirs

When I was an active member of a Toastmasters club, an elderly woman joined. I will call her Carol. Members are encouraged to prepare a 5-minute speech every month or two. Carol did so. Sometimes her speeches were quite memorable. She and her husband were retired from the U.S. State Department, and it became clear that they had been spies. I'll paraphrase her most memorable speech in Toastmasters:

"We were sent to Thailand to surveil a Russian team who had obtained a compound at the edge of a rice paddy. We were able to obtain a small house in a row of houses on the other side. We decided to put a listening device under the Russians' house by pushing a pipe through the ground; once it was installed we would push through stiff wires with a microphone at the end. We dug a trench so that we could pound a pipe along, and screw on new sections as needed. We did the pounding only when there was a lot of traffic on a nearby road, using irregular blows to avoid a patterned sound. Late one winter evening, during the rush hour but after dark, the pounding got very hard, but we persisted as long as we dared. When rush hour ended we stopped for the night. In the morning, we looked out, and saw that the pipe must have hit a rock because it was sticking a couple of feet right out of the ground!"

She didn't say what happened next. Later my wife and I met them at a YMCA event, and I asked about it, but she said some secrets still have to be kept. That is our only contact with spies…that we know about.

More recently, both Andrew and Jihi Bustamante worked for the CIA for several years, and then another dozen years or so training security teams. They founded Everyday Spy, teaching spy skills to help individuals deal with more ordinary matters. They have written Shadow Cell: An Insider Account of America's New Spy War. There they tell of their most significant achievement in the CIA, applying the "cell model" that has long been used most successfully by terrorist networks and the spy operations of some countries; I remember reading decades ago about cell networks in America operated by the USSR. If it works, use it! This is the basis of the "new spy war" and it breaks down the overly bureaucratic stovepipe structure that had arisen in the traditional CIA. 

Andrew and Jihi had worked, separately and together, in what they call Falcon House, where "Falcon" is code for one of the most secretive and paranoid countries (but not quite on the level of North Korea). At first I thought Falcon is an Islamic country because Arab men adore falconry. But the ease of movement of female CIA operatives nixed that idea. Falcon is probably in Asia; there's no need to speculate further. During their work with Falcon they lived in a nearby country, one with the freedom to come and go.

A foundational characteristic of spycraft is to go unnoticed. Memorable people are more likely to be caught. In this regard, I think Andrew is on the edge of being too memorable; from the description by his wife Jihi, he can be bold and loud, even arrogant. In this generated image (DuckDuckGo running GPT Image 2) several couples are visible. Does one stand out? If one couple were spies, it would probably not be that one.

The Bustamantes did not enter Falcon publicly as a couple. They had different roles. He often worked in the field, while she was a target specialist. Another couple, an extremely unmemorable pair, did operate as a couple, with good success. A long section near the end of the book outlines some of Andrew's forays into Falcon, and eventually his almost miraculous escape from capture, more due to bumbling by Falcon officials than his own skills. It ended his usefulness there. But by that time the "shadow cell" had been set up, successfully operating under the principle that only a single person in the Cell could be known to other CIA entities or cells; other cells were set up on the Cell's model once its efficacy became known.

Just as the Bustamantes began operating near and in Falcon, a mole had been detected operating in the CIA, someone who had been "turned" by Falcon's agents. His identity is not revealed in the book, but his eventual discovery and arrest are briefly outlined. While the mole was active, Andrew had to be even more circumspect than usual to avoid exposing the other members of the Cell.

The advice and stories in this book buttressed for me two principles I learned from lectures by police and security trainers: "security by obscurity" and "be a harder target than the next guy". In spy work as in personal security, the opposition isn't perfectly diligent (though in Falcon they come close!), and will often pay more attention to easier prey and sometimes can be distracted.

The astonishing popularity of Einstein

 kw: book reviews, nonfiction, memoirs, facebook, instagram, social media, Albert Einstein

How many people who lived in the early Twentieth Century but passed away before 1960, who are not your own relatives, can you name? Perhaps you wouldn't come up with this name right away, but if someone says it, you remember instantly: Einstein.

Did you know that Albert Einstein still has social media accounts with millions of followers? Not only so, there is still a hot market in Einstein artifacts and memorabilia, including his letters, copies of letters and articles he wrote, and even bobblehead dolls (Podcasting physicist Sabine Hossenfelder keeps an Einstein bobblehead handy in her videos).

The "voice" behind the Facebook page, Instagram site, and other media, writer Benyamin Cohen (titled "Manager of Einstein's Official Social Media Accounts") has written an enjoyable book about the great scientist and his own experiences as the guy behind the scenes: The Einstein Effect: How the World's Favorite Genius Got Into Our Cars, Our Bathrooms, and Our Minds.

Say the word "genius" and most people will think, and usually say, "Einstein." The kid in math class who aces every test gets kidded, "Hey, Einstein, slack off and leave a few decent grades for the rest of us." Whenever you drive to a new place and plot your course on hour phone, or a Garmin or a TomTom, you're using tech with Einstein's math behind it. Use a TV remote, and the IR signal detector behind that tiny black window on your TV is using the photoelectric effect, for which Einstein received the Nobel Prize in 1921. Einstein's explanation for Brownian Motion (the jiggling of pollen grains seen under a microscope) proved the existence of atoms, long before more direct evidence was found. Nuclear energy (and, sad to say, nuclear weapons) have their origin in his most famous equation, E=mc².

To produce around ten posts and pictures daily, Mr. Cohen needs to do constant research. Fortunately, this is easier than in the past, because of the Internet. But he gets in a bit of travel now and again, such as his trip to see what is left of Einstein's brain. The story is much retold, how the medical examiner diced up the brain and took it home in several Mason jars filled with alcohol. Bits have been sent to various researchers over the years, but much is left. Cohen got to see it, at a secret location, meeting someone he just calls Dr. X.

By the way, while it would be nice if Benyamin Cohen were a talented physicist, he isn't any kind of scientist, which he freely admits. As a result, I noticed a number of scientific mistakes in the book, but I would not expect them to detract from the value of the book. I'll mention just one, for the record: when he saw the brain, he writes, "The cerebellum that gave us E=mc² was right there in front of me." Just so you'll know: The cerebellum is the little "bun" at the back of the brain which operates your body; the part that thought up the equation is called the cerebrum. 

It is quite amazing that Einstein is still so popular. Only a few people understand his theories of Relativity. Yes, theories; there are two of them. His popularity is based at least in part on his reputation as a maverick. In just one year, he overturned four areas of "known" scientific theory, with new theories that swallowed up the old ones. The GPS system we use to navigate is based on both theories of Relativity, and I'll try to explain how without getting into the scientific weeds:

First, the Special Theory of Relativity is based on the constant speed of light, no matter how fast things are moving. One result is the way speed affects time. In particular, the GPS satellites in their orbits some 20,000 km overhead (so they orbit the Earth twice daily), are moving fast, so the atomic clock that each satellite carries runs just a bit slow, about 7 microseconds daily.

Secondly, the General Theory of Relativity is based on the way that gravity shapes space, which also affects the passage of time. The altitude of the satellites puts them in a lower gravitational field, so their clock run just a bit fast, about 45 microseconds daily. 

Overall, their clocks run 38 microseconds per day faster than clocks on the surface of Earth. This has to be accounted for in the calculations made by a GPS receiver, or accurate location could not be determined. Thus, GPS, by its very existence, proves the effectiveness of both theories of Relativity.

Mr. Cohen tells a dozen or more aspects of Einstein's continuing effect on our society and culture. Einstein was in on the founding of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, which now holds many of his archives and other artifacts. He was a lifelong pacifist. Although he, along with others, urged President Roosevelt to fund the development of the atomic bomb, it was because he knew Germany was determined to develop one, and the scientists realized that America had to do it first, or lose the war. After the use of atomic bombs against Japan, Einstein was aghast at their power. He advocated for denuclearization for the rest of his life.

Albert Einstein was a complex personality. His focus on science came at the expense of his family life. What the book reveals, I don't care to repeat. When he was stuck on the math for a theory, he would either go sailing (and often, get lost) or play violin, to rest his brain. He had his likes and dislikes, but, don't we all? What he liked the most was discovery, the search for truth. I don't know what he would make of an era where a popular mantra is "my truth," but he would certainly understand "fake news." He was not universally loved, but found himself the target of envious attacks and religious attacks because he was a Jew (he didn't practice the religion much, but had a kind of general belief in God, whom he usually called "The Old One.") He typically shrugged it off.

Rather than get into more details, I suggest to everyone to read this book. I greatly enjoyed it.

Spiders getting down to business

 kw: blogs, blogging, spider scanning, AI training

What I call spider scanning software seems bent on setting new records. The spiders have buckled down to work! For the past week the average hit rate has been quite steady near one per second.

What do you make of these numbers?

Compare this month (so far) with the prior month. Nearly 7 times the traffic. A full month at one hit per second would come to about 2.6 million. Note that the "All Time" figure goes back to the date that Google Analytics were applied to Blogger, around a decade ago. For more context, here are the charts for the past 30 days, 7 days, 24 hours, and 2 hours.

In the upper two charts, a one-pre-second rate would be 86,400. We see that wasn't quite achieved. In the third chart, it would be 3,600 per hour, and in the last, 60 per minute. The last couple of hours before I obtained these charts, we see that a sustained rate of 80 per minute is possible; that's 1.33 per second, 4,800 per hour, 115,200 per day, and 3,456,000 per 30 days (or a bit more than 3.5 million per average month). In a few days it will be more clear how this is progressing.

Meanwhile, I'm interested in "where?". Here are the 7 day and one day top countries:

For the most recent full day, USA is running at about half its rate for the prior six days. Otherwise, these top 9 actors are the same for both periods. It is an odd mix. Although I mostly attribute this level of activity to a combination of AI training and AI agent lookups, I really can't be sure.

By looking at a list of the most "popular" posts in the different time periods, it is still true, as I reported earlier, that page-by-page views only constitute a few percent. Most of these views are front page only, with the understanding that the most recent ten to fifteen posts are presented in their entirety, and a "Load Older Posts" button brings up the next group, and so forth. That means the entire blog can be reached with fewer than 200 clicks, clicks which do not add to the totals for individual posts.

I'm curious: to any folks who read this, who use Blogger, please check in your stats to see if there are patterns similar to what I am seeing, and leave comments. Thanks!

A possibly futile obsession

 kw: book reviews, nonfiction, biographies, psychologists, parapsychologists, parapsychology, reincarnation

Disclaimer: The book being reviewed dwells on the subject of reincarnation and one physician's study of whether our minds can exist without a living brain, either in an afterlife or as a reincarnated person. I am a Christian, and similar questions are of great interest to those who believe the Bible. I do not oppose the work done by the subject of the book. I do have a different perspective on the experimental and observational results he obtained, which I will present in due time.

Dr. Ian Stevenson was a genius, with a solid combination of piercing intellectual skills and unflagging energy. For much of his life he was a practicing physician and psychologist. Over time he devoted more and more attention and energy to ascertaining whether the mind survives the death of the brain. He also led the Society for Psychical Research for a time and was a lifelong member, and in midlife cut short a fruitful administrative career to found the Division of Parapsychology at the University of Virginia, now called the Division of Personality Studies. The latter name was Dr. Stevenson's desire, to sidestep opposition to a major university having an endowed chair with the name Para-anything. But those in the campus administration who opposed his work would have none of it: they wanted it out in the open, in hopes a future administration would axe the whole project. 

One wrinkle: Dr. Stevenson was supported for much of his life by Chester Carlson, the inventor of xerography and founder of Xerox. Carlson's money shielded the doctor from much of the opposition and enabled him to work practically unfettered for decades. In particular, he traveled a great deal, including to countries such as India where belief in reincarnation was a part of the local culture.

As we find in The Incredible Afterlives of Dr. Stevenson: One Scientist's Epic Quest for Evidence of Reincarnation, Apparitions, Poltergeists, and Other Matters of the Soul, by Jesse Bering (a research psychologist and professor in his own right), Dr. Stevenson's efforts yielded a great mass of material. Whether it counts as "evidence" is still much in contention. On one side, wishful thinkers and "true believers" over-advocate for their point of view, and materialists and skeptics argue just as strongly for theirs. Both point to the same thing: the many anecdotal cases with clearly astounding details, buried in a mass of less definitive and even contradictory cases, plus a lack of clear experimental evidence, at least in the view of the skeptics, that any of the contentions of psychics could be valid.

Ian was an odd fellow in a few ways. One was his tendency to write about himself, in his own journals, in the third person. He strove to look at his own mind "from the outside," just as we all must look at the mind of any other person. One might think he would thus be too cold and analytical to relate to his patients and study subjects. However, he was very personable and able to lower the defenses of others, to interview people and learn much that they would typically hide from others.

Throughout his work he sought out cases in which the person in question, often a child, had physical manifestation of a connection with the person whom the youngster claimed to be. In one extraordinary case, a child born with a hand missing its fingers began talking before the age of two about people, whom he named, who turned out to live in a nearby village, and a terrible accident that caused the fingers of one hand to be cut off, plus a later event that took the "inhabitant's" life. Quite a collection of stories, many with photos, showed various birthmarks or birth defects that connected the now-living child with things that happened to the person who had died a few weeks, months, or even years before the child was born.

The bulk of the work on any case was to determine whether the child's seeming memory of being someone else was genuine, and not the result of knowledge that came by more ordinary means, or by fraud, or even by telepathy.

Dr. Bering confesses to be partly persuaded by the mass of material that Dr. Stevenson gathered. Having begun as a committed materialist, he is now somewhat open to the possibility that the mind can exist "discarnate", not entirely bound with a living brain, what some call a Soul.

For anyone who believes the Bible, this is foundational. The general view of most Christians is called Duality, that the soul and body are distinct and that the soul survives bodily death. The Biblical understanding is expressed in the first letter of Paul to the Thessalonians, where he wrote of "spirit, soul, and body [being] kept blameless". The person has a body, which deals with physical things and matters, a soul (including mind, emotion and will), which deals with psychological matters, and a spirit that is our means of communication and fellowship with God. Some psychologists, who are not Bible believers, have also written that human behavior seems to show that we have three "parts": spirit, soul and body.

However, for those who believe in reincarnation or "past lives", the Bible has a disappointing viewpoint. The author of Hebrews (probably Paul) wrote, "…it is reserved for men to die once, and after this comes judgment." (Heb. 9:27) No re-entering a different body and returning; souls don't get recycled.

What then of the amazing coincidences that Dr. Stevenson unearthed? I'll just summarize a few points to avoid turning this post into a theological treatise.

• In the Gospel of Luke, chapter 16, we read of a poor man and a rich man who both died. Jesus tells of a dialog that occurred in Sheol/Hades between the tormented soul of the rich man and Abraham. In the end, he asks Abraham to send the soul of the poor man, named Lazarus, to his brothers and warn them of their fate. Abraham refuses, saying they had the writings of Moses to warn them, and, "If they will not hear Moses, neither will they hear someone who rises from the dead."
• Ironically, I believe Jesus foreknew that his friend Lazarus would die and be raised from the dead (by Jesus); this is in the Gospel of John, chapter 11. In the next chapter, the religious leaders, who have been planning to kill Jesus, say that now they have to kill Lazarus also!
• The Bible tells of "unclean spirits" or demons, which are unseen by us, as also angels usually are. Whatever they may be, they sometimes "possess" or inhabit a person without permission. Telepathy in the ordinary sense is not needed if these beings can pass information in ways that Dr. Stevenson would have been unable to discern.
• The Christian view is that all Psychic manifestations are accomplished by such unclean spirits, seeking to deceive people and turn them from believing the Bible and the God of the Bible.

The Biblical Christian expects upon death to enter a restful state in Hades, awaiting "the first resurrection", whereupon to be given a spiritual body, a glorified body. There are other matters found in the Bible, but for the purpose of this review, this is sufficient. Whatever is the reality of the stories gathered by Dr. Stevenson, I believe unseen spirits are the source.

Dr. Stevenson did valuable work, discovering many cases that are hard to explain by purely materialistic means. Those who do not want to believe in God may be driven to reconsider the value of reading the Bible and giving it some credence; others they may be motivated to believe reincarnation or other things that a Biblical Christian would consider nonsense. We do have a free will, after all. I prefer a life with God to a life without God.

Another spider breakout

 kw: blogs, blogging, spider scanning, ai training

For many months the traffic to this blog has been ten to a hundred to a thousand times the level that it was for many prior years. I attribute the recent onslaught to the entire blog being snarfed up by online spiders for adding to training data for large language models (LLMs). The past couple of days the traffic has set a new record.

One one prior occasion this year it peaked at about 60,000 daily views, or more than forty per minute. Yesterday there were 61,894 and so far today there have been 62,417. For most of the past month traffic has been rocking along in the range of 3,000 daily views, just over two per minute. Now it is approaching one per second, as this chart of the prior two hours shows:

For the first hour, the average appears to have been at or over 60 per minute, or one per second, or 86,400 per day. The second hour sits near 50 per minute, or 72,000 per day. The sharp drop at the very end may portend a return to "only" a few thousand daily views. I'll know in a few hours.

This time, more than half the traffic originates (or passes through VPNs) in the US. China is not seen at all. I wonder if blogs that are a lot more popular—with tens of thousands to millions of "honest" daily views—are getting hit this hard, or perhaps much harder. Is anybody looking?

Illustrating a favorite hymn

 kw: photo essays, hymns, illustrations, ai art

I know many hymns. I usually have a hymn tune running through my head, which is why I am not to be found wearing earbuds. Certain hymns have such vivid imagery that I get a lovely scene in my mind's eye. I decided to illustrate one of these using the current version of Gemini Flash, which relies on Nano Banana 2 for image generation.

The first stanza and chorus of this hymn are:

Savior, lead me up the mountain,
  Where the Lord alone is seen,
Where we hear the voice from heaven,
  Where the air is pure and clean.

 

Lead me higher up the mountain,
  Give me fellowship with Thee;
In Thy light I see the fountain,
    And the blood it cleanses me.

I first asked Gemini how to properly format a prompt to produce an illustration for a poem or hymn. Following its suggestions I wrote a detailed prompt containing about 220 words. That yielded this image:

Then I began editing. I prompted Gemini to have the couple walking uphill. This was the result:

Now there is an uphill path, but the couple haven't started up it. So I asked for that:

Now we are getting somewhere. I could have requested them to be further up the path, but this is very good as it is. It's time for some finishing touches. 

At this point, the image size is 1376x768, Gemini's default for 16:9 aspect ratio (1.778:1). I make these images to run in a slide show on an HD screen (1920x1080), so the images need to be larger than that. I used the free program Upscayl to double the dimensions to 2752x1536. This is slightly wide, a ratio of 1.792:1. I like exact multiples of 32x18 for the slide show. All further work was done in IrfanView.

• I first resized to 2741x1530.
• I cropped a bit to achieve 2720x1530 (85 times 32x18), using a tool in Irfanview's Edit menu called Create Maximized Selection, picking 16:9 as the ratio to use.
• I added the text of the stanza and chorus, using drawing tools in IrfanView.

This is the final result:

For the file in my slide show, I added a signature; I sign with my name and date and the AI tool used, near a lower corner.

Note: You can click on the images to get the full size versions. The last image is 4 Mpx, midway between HD and 4k.