This photographer is trying to get funding to travel to a number of cities and chronicle atheists and how they derive meaning from their lives.  Visit this person’s website and please consider donating to his Kickstarter campaign. 

A while ago, I began posting the above video to a variety of Facebook groups of that facilitate discussion among atheists, secular humanists, etc.  This video has generated a lot of discussion, and quite a bit of controversy too.  First, let’s summarize what Alain de Botton, a philosopher and writer, has said in the above video.  De Botton has recently wrote a book titled Religion for Atheists: A Non-believer’s guide to the uses of religion, which will likely expand upon the ideas presented in the talk above.  (The book isn’t yet available for sale in the U.S.)

De Botton argues that atheists would benefit from adopting some strengths of the world’s religions and using them in the secular world.  He proposes “a new way of being an atheist” and calls it Atheism 2.0.  At the heart of his proposal is the desire to employ a new approach of atheism where atheists, taking godlessness as a given, move on from the old debates over the existence of gods.  This new approach challenges atheists to steal from religions; the approach challenges atheists to develop rituals, traditions, community, and morals for non-believers.  He suggests that atheists would be more successful by doing such things as replacing scripture with culture (an idea he claims has been forgotten), by repeating great truths, by adopting a calendar, by developing good oratorical skill, by using art to explain ideas, and by branding atheism.

I think there is great utility in De Botton’s ideas.  But his ideas seem to have encountered some resistance from members of the secular community.  Consider, for example, P.Z. Myers’ response to De Botton’s talk.  The purpose of this post is simply to encourage discussion on this issue (and, more fundamentally, to spread awareness of it).  I hope to sift through a collection of the objections I’ve seen to analyze them in a future post.  But, for now, I think it suffices to say this: De Botton’s ideas may not be palatable to some atheists to start.  I encourage, however, atheists to sit with this visceral (dare I say, emotional) first reaction and, eventually, move past it.  Perhaps not all of De Botton’s ideas are good or will work, but I believe we should examine them rationally first.

This video is worth watching for many professions.  But, with respect to emergency management, I think it is important to understand how our online experience is filtered.  Without understanding the increasing personalization of the web, emergency managers will have difficulty developing an effective communication strategy for new generations of people.

A while ago, I re-launched this blog as a personal blog with an emphasis on emergency management/homeland security related issues.  I did this, in part, to give my writing a sense of direction.  My previous blogging efforts were plagued with such indirection that it constantly made me self-critical of what I wrote.  But I think a discussion of secularism and critical/skeptical thinking has its place on a blog that focuses on emergency management for a couple of reasons.  First, emergency management finds itself intertwined with political and social issues.  Students in my program might not give this much thought, or might be weary of partisan debate (it tires me too), but the political and social problems of our society affect emergency management whether we like it or not.  Rather than divorce an emergency management blog from these issues, I think there is an inherent need to engage with the political and social spheres of influence.

Second, disasters, by their very nature, challenge our society to come up with new strategies and tactics that inevitably take on the characteristics of political and social problems.  We see, for instance, how the 9/11 terrorist attacks have inspired debate about religious issues, such as Islamic extremism and the United States’ response to it.  Emergency management has become intertwined with political debates about such things as airport security, how to engage in combat operations overseas, and even controversy over such silly things as whether or not to place a mosque near ground zero.  More recently (and, unrelated to terrorism), recent earthquakes in Youngstown have kindled an environmental debate over deep injection wells.

One chief benefit of secularism is that it inherently seeks to make our government neutral with respect to the religious affairs of people.  Though this is often deemed by conservatives as the very problem with our society, I think a secular government can be one of our chief strengths.  I also think that the active promotion of secular governance and scientific inquiry as a positive alternative to religiously-led governments needs to become a long-term strategy for those who care about emergency management issues.  This doesn’t mean that we need to extinguish religion, necessarily, but that we need to promote secularism as vital to our homeland security because of its inherent neutrality toward religion.  In essence, I believe we need to actively build a strategy that promotes non-religious engagement in and among governments about issues that affect our safety and our decision-making with regard to disasters.  Admittedly, my thoughts on how to build a strategy that seeks to promote secular and scientific goals in emergency management are really vague right now.  It’s a topic I hope to explore more, in depth, later.

But, I suppose I’m getting a little off track.  My original intention, with this post, was simply to mention how encouraged I am to have discovered that northeast Ohio has active secular groups.  I’ve recently attended a couple of events with a variety of secular groups and I’d like to briefly share my recent experiences as well as plug these groups to those who may be interested in checking them out.

Last night, I attended a talk titled, “Church-State Issues and the ACLU of Ohio” hosted by the Center for Inquiry – Northeast Ohio.  Michael Honohan, an ACLU attorney, discussed the cases that have shaped what Thomas Jefferson once described as “the wall” of separation between church and state.  It was an informative talk and Honohan was a knowledgeable speaker on the subject.  I almost think that anyone working in government ought to be required to attend a presentation like this one.  Honohan outlined specific actions that are and are not permitted by the First Amendment of the Constitution, which is a valuable lesson for those who constantly seek to push their religious beliefs down other people’s throats.  Perhaps it’s too bad that Honohan was largely preaching to the choir, as they say, but it was still a good discussion.  Sometimes, too, the complexity of the law surrounding these issues makes it difficult even for the non-religious to keep up.  The group asked some interesting questions about a variety of church-state issues.

I recently attended a Drinking Skeptically event at Bier Markt with the Cleveland Skeptics.  I’m happy to see that the group exists and that there’s a social element to it.  Skepticism (or whatever label you ascribe to) is probably only embraced by a certain segment of society, but there is no inherently unifying creed one needs to adhere to in order to be a skeptic.  One of the biggest advantages religion sometimes reaps from having its creeds is that it naturally facilitates cohesion among a group.  While I’m not looking for the rigid and irrational cohesion of a religious group, I think there is benefit among fostering a sense of community among those of us who don’t belong to a flock.

I’ll leave it at that for now.  Good night, folks!  And cheers to 2012!

It was on an episode of Triangulation that I learned that Kevin Mitnick has recently published a new book titled Ghost in the Wires: My Adventures as the World’s Most Wanted Hacker.  I quickly ordered the book (the first I read on my new Kindle) and found myself amazed at Mitnick’s story.

Plot

It seems like Kevin Mitnick was born to hack.  When he was twelve years old, he successfully used social engineering to bypass the punch card system used by the Los Angeles bus system.  After that time, Mitnick would go on to become the world’s most wanted hacker.  He successfully social engineered some of the world’s most prominent companies, including: Motorola, Nokia, Sun Microsystems, and the Digital Equipment Corporation.  His motive was simple: he had an insatiable drive to figure out how his target systems worked.  Unlike some other hackers, Mitnick was motivated purely by the challenge; he wasn’t seeking to steal money or cause damage to the systems that he penetrated.

Eventually, after about two years on the run, Mitnick was arrested by the Federal Bureau of Investigation at an apartment in Raleigh, North Carolina.  He served five years in prison, including a stint in solitary confinement because authorities feared that he was able to whistle launch codes into a telephone and activate missiles at NORAD.  After his release, Mitnick became a computer security consultant, which enabled him to continue hacking with the permission of his clients.

Discussion

Mitnick’s story is engaging both to the technical reader and to the non-technical reader. Although Mitnick does share specific details about his technical exploits, an inexperienced computer user could still follow his story and understand the basic strategies Mitnick used to gain unauthorized access to computer systems and telephone switches.  Mitnick’s primary means of gaining access to such systems was not technical; he used social engineering to gain the access he was seeking.  Social engineering, as a tactic, is distinguishable from other types of security breaches by its reliance on the human element of security.  The formula is simple: people generally trust those who have rational explanations for their requests.  The chief goal for the social engineer is to build trust between the engineer and his target.  This trust might be built by fabricating plausible stories, appropriating the identity of legitimate employees, learning the vocabulary unique to the target’s work environment, and using all of these tactics to build an exploitative relationship where the target then voluntarily gives the social engineer what he wants.

Mitnick’s story serves as a cautionary tale.  By demonstrating how easily he was able to hack into computer systems by manipulating people, Mitnick’s story encourages us to become more vigilant about the seemingly innocuous requests people may make of us in the future.  Though Mitnick’s motives were not to harm other people, it can be easy to see how other people may try to use social engineering to facilitate acts of terrorism.  Mitnick’s story also shows us the level of ignorance society had back in the 1990s toward all aspects of technology – a level of ignorance that has likely only marginally decreased in more recent decades.  While Mitnick’s actions were certainly illegal, it’s easy to root for the pre-arrestee hacker while reading the book.  There is a level of ingenuity and determination that Mitnick had in those days that is admirable despite the fact that his actions were criminal.  It’s that ingenuity and determination that many in the world of tech have come to admire about Kevin.  It has, indeed, made him the world’s most famous (former) hacker and a credible computer consultant.

For more info about Mitnick and his book, I suggest you consult the following sources:

• Triangulation, episode 21
• Mitnick Security Consulting
• 2600′s interview of Mitnick
• An FBI Press Release about Mitnick’s sentence

Live Twitter feed at a presentation about Volunteer Technical Communities at the IAEM-USA 2011 annual conference in Las Vegas, Nevada.

One of my favorite presentations at the IAEM-USA 2011 annual conference in Las Vegas last month was one titled, “Volunteer Technical Communities—The New Volunteers. What is CrisisCommons and Why Should you Care?”  Just prior to the conference, I posted about the potential of the open-source software community to play a role in emergency management (see this post) as it pertains to modelling risk with geographic information systems.  As it turns out, I wasn’t aware of the fact that open-source solutions already exist and have been deployed in disasters before.  Though I haven’t had the time to investigate these programs or the communities that develop them, I’m excited to share this information with others.  From what I heard at the presentation, these tools and communities seem promising.  So let me link-spam you with a few links:

• SlideShare presentation about the CrisisCommons
• Sahana Software Foundation
• Crisis Commons
• Random Hacks of Kindness (RHoK)
• Open Street Map

These are just a few interesting links I thought I should share with those of you who study or work in emergency management, homeland security, etc.  If any of you have used or, perhaps, even participated in the development of these tools, please comment below and share your experience and knowledge with me.

President Abraham Lincoln is known largely for his role as The Great Emancipator and for keeping the United States united amidst the Civil War.  It was a role that eventually cost Lincoln his life.  But years before he was President, another affliction nearly cost Lincoln his life as well – depression.  Lincoln’s depression was so severe, he became suicidal as a young man.  It was well known among people who knew Lincoln that our sixteenth president was often a man of gloom, but history swept Lincoln’s depression under the rug for a while.  Only recently has Lincoln’s depression received renewed interest.

Discussion

Joshua Wolf Shenk, author of Lincoln’s Melancholy: How Depression Challenged a President and Fueled His Greatness, may have said it best himself:

“Whatever greatness Lincoln achieved cannot be explained as a triumph over personal suffering.  Rather, it must be accounted for as an outgrowth of the same system that produced that suffering.  This is not a story of transformation but one of integration.  Lincoln didn’t do great work because he solved the problem of his melancholy.  The problem of his melancholy was all the more fuel for the fire of his great work.”

These days, depression is often discussed in terms of its negative consequences.  In Lincoln’s Melancholy, Shenk challenges us to see not only the maladaptive characteristics of depression, but also its potential adaptive qualities.  He suggests that though depression made Lincoln feel like “the most miserable man living” early in his life, Lincoln’s experience with depression made him see reality as it needed to be seen at a time when our country was on the brink of falling apart.  Lincoln’s depression, Shenk notes, was both a terrible affliction that challenged Lincoln throughout the course of his life and a benefit that helped shape Lincoln’s legacy.

I first discovered Lincoln’s depression in a Wall Street Journal article titled, “Depression in Command: In times of crisis, mentally ill leaders see what others don’t.”  The article discusses many historical figures who have dealt with depression: Winston Churchill, Mahatma Gandhi, and Martin Luther King Jr.  The article goes on to explain how depression may enhance leadership during times of crisis.  To quote the Journal:

“Normal” nondepressed persons have what psychologists call “positive illusion”—that is, they possess a mildly high self-regard, a slightly inflated sense of how much they control the world around them.  Mildly depressed people, by contrast, tend to see the world more clearly, more as it is.

Then, the article discusses how Lincoln saw the world more clearly and how his clear vision influenced his decisions:

Few recall that Lincoln was not a consistent abolitionist. He always opposed slavery, but until 1863 he also opposed abolishing it, which is why he was the compromise Republican candidate in 1860. Lincoln preferred a containment strategy. He simply wanted to prevent slavery’s expansion to the West, after which, he believed, it would die out gradually.

When the Civil War came, Lincoln showed himself to be flexible and pragmatic as a strategist, willing to admit error and to change generals as the situation demanded. He was not the stereotypical decisive executive, picking a course of action and sticking with it. He adapted to a changing reality and, in the end, prevailed.

The book discusses Lincoln’s eventual change from a strategy of containment to a strategy of abolition.  It also discusses, in detail, his decision to change commanders as circumstances changed during the Civil War.  Much of the book focuses on Lincoln’s life before achieving political success; it outlines his failures as a politician and his initial struggle with depression, including his attempts to have a doctor treat him for it.

But Shenk’s greatest achievement with Lincoln’s Melancholy is, arguably, his keen understanding of the nature of depression.  Without such an ability, Shenk would be unable to see how depression shaped Lincoln’s life.  For many, depression is an incurable, but manageable disease.  Shenk’s realization that Lincoln struggled with depression throughout his whole life (despite Lincoln’s achievements as President) reveals that Shenk is adept as a student of psychology as much as he is as a student of history.  Shenk’s observation shed light on how Lincoln’s depression both threatened his life and how it made Lincoln a better leader.

Dr. Nassir Ghaemi, author of the above-linked Journal article may have summed up this book best in his closing line: “Their weakness is the secret of their strength.”

First, a quote by the authors of the article:

A 2007 National Research Council study entitled ‘Improving Disaster Management: The Role of IT in Mitigation, Preparedness, Response, and Recovery’ proclaimed ‘federal, state and local agencies should embrace . . . open source software and open standards development” to complement traditional IT acquisition.’

The authors first point to a study suggesting that open source software and open standards development should be a goal for emergency management.  Excellent.

But why should we care?  Consider the following:

“Proprietary, stand alone, and single-user disaster management systems prevent efficient data gathering and sharing capabilities and result in circumscribed utility and productivity. Thus, the shortsighted HAZUS system architecture hampers the field of disaster mitigation, and as the software quietly (and unofficially) becomes a tool for response and recovery efforts, a redesign for expanded functionality and improved performance is even more imperative.”

In emergency management, we often discuss interoperability.  Mainly, the discussion tends to be about interoperable communications.  But, perhaps, if we define interoperability differently by expanding its definition, we could define interoperability as a notion that includes interoperability of software code.  In essence, this means that using an open source solution would ensure that people who rely on the information produced by HAZUS are not tied to proprietary software.  Instead, an interoperable software package would be based on open standards.

From the journal:

“The real need is to replace the proprietary, standalone desktop version of HAZUS with a three-tier, distributed architecture based on open source design and development principles. The three tiers should include: (1) a data tier (on the server), where the database resides; (2) a business logic tier (also on the server); and (3) a client tier, which displays the user interface to control the program. The system should include a substantial application programming interface (API) and a rich, web-based user interface. Application logic, including complex risk analysis models, should be decoupled from the application code and be represented in an editable, expert system called a “rule engine.” Last, and as an essential driver of future growth and usage, a new open-source project called OpenHAZARDs should be created to reach these goals.”

Perhaps the most compelling feature of an open-source version of HAZUS is that the risk analysis models would be separate from the application code.  Why, if government agencies and other organizations decide ESRI’s product is no longer suitable, should they force other software developers to start from the beginning.  Why not allow them to develop upon risk analysis models that have already been used and, perhaps, allow those models to be improved by people outside of ESRI?

I’m not a software developer, so my description of the technical benefits of an open-source alternative to HAZUS might be a little off-base.  But, I think it’s something that people in emergency management should consider.

Back when I was a high school student, I was an editor for the school newspaper.  Of course, high school newspapers are trivial in the grand scheme of things, but I still remember what it felt like to look over my own work (as well as the work of my peers).  I deeply enjoyed it.  I could easily sit at my desk for hours and fret over the tiniest of grammatical errors or a particular phrase that just didn’t sound quite right.  I remember the feeling of elation I had when I finally figured out how to concisely express my ideas exactly the way I intended.  As cliche as this may sound, it was like a lightbulb turned on in my head and I was ecstatic to have figured it all out.

It has been a while since I’ve experienced that feeling in college, though I’ve tried my best to re-capture that feeling in the papers I’ve written for my emergency management classes.  The problem is this: many of the papers I’ve written for emergency management classes didn’t give me the same creative spark.  The purpose of many of those papers was simply to re-organize information about the given disaster I was studying.  (Though I did have some fun writing a paper where I placed the Centralia coal disaster in Akron.  We were supposed to choose an atypical disaster for a given area and Akron doesn’t have anthracite coal mines in this area, but I digress.)

I’ve begun to re-capture that feeling of elation in my current GIS class.  Unlike its predecessor, this class features a couple of large projects and that’s it.  No tests, no stupid clicker quizzes, and no pointless exercises.  Just minimal direction from the professor and the freedom to do whatever I see fit.  I’ve quickly found that the motivated high school newspaper editor within is making a subtle comeback as a I’ve delved into my current mapping project.  In editing maps with ArcGIS, here are a few quick thoughts on what I’ve discovered:

• All the elements of the map must work together, in unison, to accomplish the same goal as a book, essay, or other written document.
• The placement, color, size, and shape of all the elements highly influences the above-mentioned uniformity.
• Even minor errors, such as the incorrect placement of a point, are truly irritating to me.
• Struggling to figure out how to accomplish a given task in the software is, for me, akin to struggling to find the right words to express my ideas in written form.

In editing spatial data for display to others, I’ve found that there is just as much benefit to being detail-oriented as there is when I edit papers for myself or others.  In creating and editing my current map, I’ve found relief and excitement in the simplest of things: discovering how to remove a portion of a street that doesn’t exist anymore, moving a point from one spot to another, selecting and displaying features with categorical attributes, etc.  Even building the database, which everyday users of this map do not need to see, was an exercise that brought out the red-pen wielding editor in me.

Perhaps it’s silly, but I miss that type of work and my GIS class is only highlighting that fact.

The terms of the bargain people make with social networks — you swap personal information for convenient access to their sites — have been shifting, with the companies that operate the networks collecting ever more information about their users. That information can be sold to marketers. Some younger people are becoming more cautious about what they post. “When you give up that data, you’re giving it up forever,” Mr. Salzberg said. “The value they give us is negligible in the scale of what they are doing, and what we are giving up is all of our privacy.”

The Diaspora group was inspired to begin their project after hearing a talk by Eben Moglen, a law professor at Columbia University, who described the centralized social networks as “spying for free,” Mr. Salzberg said.

So, if you are one of the many people who are bitching about the newest changes in Facebook, check out Diaspora when it opens up to the public.  Then, host your own server and quit your bitching.