Tetherd Cow Ahead

OK, so I was prepared to get off the soapbox with this, but the Fairfax newspapers’ seriously relentless stance on this is just too galling. The above image ran in the Sydney Morning Herald today as the masthead for this article.

The front page used another more evocative phrase:

You read the story and judge whether it’s about Apple, or about something else entirely. In my opinion, it fairly reeks of ulterior motive. Stilgherrian, Currawong, call me overly sensitive if you will, but tell me this is all about sales-worthy copy! There is serious malice here. You don’t keep on running these kinds of stories unless you have an agenda. Apple is a cult because they make something that people like? How is that? A statement like ‘Apple is not my friend: Why you shouldn’t trust a ‘cult” is so coloured with judgemental negative pronouncement that it is barely two quotation marks away from slander. It is plainly nothing more than mud-slinging.

I apologize for running another of these posts dear Acowlytes, but I’m filing evidence here. I will state it in no uncertain terms – the Fairfax media is willfully laying the boot into Apple.

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Thanks to Universal Head for the heads up.

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A few days ago in my post iPods Will Kill You! a couple of commenters thought I might be over-analyzing the current trend for the Fairfax media (among others) to be engaging in Apple-bashing. Naturally enough, my antennae have been quivering ever since, on the lookout for some further substantiation of my claim. Indeed, the ink was hardly dry on that post before Universal Head pointed out another instance in the Sydney Morning Herald the very next day.

And this morning, this, under the headline ‘Smart phone, pity criminals are proving even smarter’:

The global obsession with the iPhone is not only becoming a threat to security: an entire criminal industry has sprung up around it, says the head of the Australian Crime Commission.

The story goes on to detail how the head of the ACC, John Lawler, ‘said’ at an Australian Institute of Criminology conference, that Apple’s iPhone was a veritable treasure trove of criminal opportunity.

Only thing is, if you read the article carefully, Mr Lawler is never quoted once as having said anything of the sort. He never specifically names the iPhone in any of his attributed quotes. He certainly mentions ‘personal communication devices’ and ‘instant services’ but these are catchall phrases that cover a lot of ground

Now, I’m not saying that Mr Lawler didn’t actually mention the iPhone during his presentation, but there is no evidence of that in this article. The thing is, the piece is written in such a way that a casual reader could easily come away with the impression that he did.

Applying a little critical thinking to this story reveals it to be a wonderland of misdirection. Let me guide you through:

The global obsession with the iPhone…

The ‘obsession’ with the iPhone is no more an obsession than is the desire to own any other popular product. This so-called obsession is an invention of the media. People like their iPhones because they are useful and appealing. Why is that obsessive? Popularity doesn’t equal obsession, it just equals popularity. If anyone is obsessed with the iPhone, it’s the newspapers. They’re the ones obsessively telling us at every opportunity about how we’re obsessed with the iPhone.

This year Apple’s chief financial officer told a shareholder meeting that more than 70 Fortune 100 companies were either using or trying out iPhones, and it was rapidly replacing the BlackBerry as the must-have business phone.

This sentence follows quickly on the heels of Mr Lawler’s quote, deftly conflating the two paragraphs to give the inference that this was also said by him. The intention is obviously to imply to the reader that he also went on to say, in the next paragraph:

But unlike the BlackBerry and other smartphones, the iPhone does not allow a company’s IT staff to install and upgrade its own security software, leaving business networks at risk of penetration.

Whether nor not these are Mr Lawler’s thoughts (and this is far from clear), a discerning person can only respond SO WHAT? The banality of this statement is profound on so many levels. How many people with BlackBerries have security software installed by their IT department? I’d wager next to none. And, even if they do, what the heck does that entail? Some password protection? You can do that on the iPhone. Encrypted files? You can do that on the iPhone. A kill switch? The iPhone has that. What we’re supposed to believe here is that IT departments are the be-all and end-all of security – a myth kept in circulation largely by IT departments. The ultimate security on any system has to do with user responsibility. If the IT departments of corporations are really concerned about security they would do well to spend less time trying to solve problems with tech fixes and instead devote some serious energy to teaching their users some basic computer hygiene. My iPhone is secure. You can’t get my data if you find and steal my phone. And if you did steal it, I would remotely kill it (if you hadn’t already done it yourself by attempting to circumvent the security). Does the ACC think this is impossible on a iPhone? I don’t believe they’re that naive.

And anyway, let’s say the contention is true. Do we really want to compare it to the security of the open-system Android, or the plethora of Nokias, Samsungs and Sonys out there? Or perhaps the new Windows 7 phone? (Windows – now there’s a secure and virus-free environment!) The fact is that, as popular as the iPhone is, it is still well and truly outnumbered by other brands. This being the case, rather than be concerned with the security-catastrophe-that-is to-come when iPhones rule the planet, why is this story not about the security disaster that is already in place?

Mr Lawler also said the increasing ubiquity of the phone meant that criminals were finding more and more opportunities to use it to intrude, to steal and to defraud.

Well, DUH. I can’t even comment on this, except to say that once again this is not a direct quote from John Lawler. Why is the reporter giving us Mr Lawler’s non-specific-brand terms like ‘communications devices’ in direct first-person quotes and yet attributing anything about the iPhone at second hand? I’ll tell you exactly why – because if Mr Lawler didn’t single out the iPhone by name in his talk, it’s very easy for the reporter to say he intended ‘the phone’ in a much more general sense (as in ‘the mobile phone’). With that in mind, read that paragraph again and you’ll see what I mean. The English language is a sublimely slippery substance.

In fact, the next direct quote from John Lawler again mentions only ubiquitous technology:

”With the explosive uptake of personal communication devices there are certainly already opportunities that appeal to organised criminals,” said Mr Lawler.

That’s a sensible, if very general observation. Organised criminals use mobile phones! So do librarians.

Even the desire for the phone is creating a burgeoning black market, he said.

Yes, as has the desire for PS3s, Gucci handbags and cigarettes. Black markets spring up anywhere and everywhere that there is an item of value that can be produced without imprimatur and sold for less than a legitimate vendor’s prices. This is perhaps a point of interest, but hardly the stuff of news.

The most disturbing thing about this whole pile of non-news is that in the course of less than one day it’s been disseminated so widely that trying to search for any actual information about what John Lawler might really have said at the Institute of Criminology conference turns up only myriads of requoted versions of the Fairfax article. Pretty much all of them bandying around headlines like ‘iPhone Poses Threat to Security!’ Hundreds of dumb zines and tech blogs have just taken the Fairfax article completely at face value without an ounce of critical appraisal. Most of them quote the article word for word. Some of them get opinions from their own ‘experts’ expounding the crumminess of the iPhone’s security. Many of them plainly have vested interests or agendas. ((If you have time, go read some of the ones linked in the Google search. It is an astounding (and depressing) eye-opening example of uncritical re-mouthing of something that has low information and high titillation value.)) If this is not about trying to denigrate Apple products, then it has that sum effect anyway. Everyone who uncritically picked up this story did so because it felt good to put the boot in.

I would sincerely like to know what John Lawler said at that conference. Did he single out iPhones as promoting such a large and serious security problem? If so, what were his reasons, given that iPhones are no less secure than many other devices on the market? ((I’m not claiming that iPhones are the Fort Knox of mobile phones, by the way – just that as security risks go – as devices – they’re neither here nor there. They could be better, sure, but they are decent enough if you take the trouble to use their security features properly.)) Or did he, as I suspect, merely mention the iPhone as one of a growing number of mobile personal communication and computation devices that should take security more seriously?

I will continue to investigate this as I am able, but if anyone was at that conference, or has any more information, I’d love to hear from you.

That example par excellence of stellar journalistic accomplishment The Melbourne Age, tells us this morning that iPods and iPads are nothing less than the Typhoid Mary of the looming global apocalyptic pandemic. Well, they stop just short of putting it exactly like that, but it is hard to understand why they’re running an article headlined ‘Apple Store Teeming With Germs’, if not to warn good citizens about the looming plague.

Because they surely wouldn’t be doing it just to bash Apple…

The story, if you haven’t guessed, is that demonstration models of the abovementioned devices on display in Apple stores, can transfer germs from one prospective customer to another – a concept that seems to send the journalist responsible for this rubbish (one Asher Moses) ((Well, I guess he’s not entirely responsible. Like pretty much all modern journalism it’s just a story recycled from somewhere else – in this case, The New York Daily News.)) into virtual paroxysms of hand-wringing. The article give us all kinds of ominous facts and figures, with commentary by various and sundry ‘experts’, about how iGadgets in Apple stores (mentioned solely and specifically) are contaminated with various kinds of icky bacteria. It’s all so very ewwwwww. ((It’s hardly surprising that the bacteria mentioned are in evidence – they are among the most common on the planet.))

In a further attempt to give the story credence, Mr Moses happily goes on to conflate a completely separate dataset with his speculation. He breathlessly inform us that Britain’s Which? magazine, in consultation with a ‘hygiene’ expert, examined a sample of 30 (unnamed brand) mobile phones and found that:

…the average handset carries 18 times more potentially harmful germs than a flush handle in a men’s toilet.

O.M.G!

Aside from the fact that a study like that (even if it is executed properly) is completely irrelevant to this story, ((Consider this – the flush handle in a men’s toilet is probably cleaned at least once a day, if not more frequently. It is NOT a good benchmark against which to measure anything except other things that get cleaned as frequently. It’s irrelevant in respect to phones (inasmuch as you could choose ANYTHING which doesn’t get cleaned much with which to compare it – tv remotes, say, or car keys) and it’s certainly meaningless in terms of iPads in Apples stores unless you have some kind of tangible link. This is a journalist using data recklessly and indiscriminately to attempt to add weight to an article that is lighter than The Zero.)) please to note the journalistic weasel word ‘potentially’ in that quote. Let me give you a Tetherd Cow Ahead rephrasing of that:

•Experts find that stairs are potentially life threatening!

•Experts find that water is potentially lethal!

•Experts find that newspapers are potentially dangerous to your mental health! (Oh wait. That’s true no matter how you look at it).

This stupid piece of scare-mongering fluff is a shining example of why I will be happy to see newspapers go the way of the town crier, and hopefully, their owners and editors hauled off by tumbrel. Honestly – what is the point of such a story?

Let me ask you, Mr Moses, why isn’t this piece about the thousands of other things that are touched by human hands in the course of a normal day? Like escalator handrails? Or lift buttons? Or money? Or salt shakers in McDonalds? Or ATMs? Or public phones? Or demonstration products belonging to other electronics goods retailers????

Could it be, perhaps, that the mileage you would get out of that might not be so… convenient… to your purpose of trashing a successful company that makes products that promise to be the biggest threat to your livelihood since the advent of television?

The Guardian reports today the shock horror story of the decade – if you’re a dedicated ‘horrorcore’ hip-hop fan, anyway.

It turns out that the Insane Clown Posse – those rapper doyens of the crass, the violent and the sexist – known for such moving lyrics as:

I stab people, 4, 5 people everyday
I tried to see a shrink to stop that shit but it ain’t no FUCKing way

…and:

I grabbed her by her neck
And I bounced her off the walls
She said it was an accident and then apologized
But I still took my elbow and blackened both her eyes

…and:

If I was a king all bitches would blow me
Big bag piles of jewels for my homies
We would go to war and take everybody’s land
No clothes allowed for female citizens

…have, all this time, been Evangelical Christians.

My mind flip-flops between being flabbergasted and entirely unsurprised. Flabbergasted because I find it hard to believe that people who call themselves Christians can write these kinds of things, and then unsurprised because I guess I can. And it’s not that the Juggalo ringleaders have suddenly had a Road to Damascus moment, either – they say that they’ve been Christians all along.

Apparently, their music is all just an act, cunningly crafted to sneak up on all those unsuspecting fans of theirs and deliver the message of God under the cover of necrophilia, dismemberment, rape and murder. Not since the Spanish Inquisition has morality been so deeply confused. ((My observation here is that if this is true, then they are treating the people that buy their music with the utmost disrespect – firstly, they are trading on being something that they are not in order to disseminate some dubious moral agenda, and secondly they think their audience is stupid. Which may be true, but doesn’t that just smack of cynical exploitation?!))

This is how Violent J (Joseph Bruce), one of the two figureheads of ICP, puts it:

To get attention, you have to speak their language. You have to interest them, gain their trust, talk to them and show you’re one of them. You’re a person from the street and speak of your experiences. Then at the end you can tell them God has helped me out like this and it might transfer over instead of just come straight out and just speak straight out of religion.

This was the same Violent J who was arrested on an aggravated battery charge after allegedly striking an audience member thirty times with his microphone at a concert in New Mexico. Apparently you need to physically show ‘them’ that you’re ‘one of them’ as well. That’s a slippery slope for which I wouldn’t want to attempt to mount a moral defense.

Recently, as part of their overt ‘coming out’ the Clowns released this video of their song Miracles, in which they apparently find everything miraculous, including UFOs, fog, and the Pyramids: ((How magnets, the Pyramids, UFOs and ghosts fall into the category of Miracles Wrought By God is kinda hard to fathom…))

It appears that they use the term miraculous here in a religious sense, rather than as hyperbole. In other words, they are rapping about all these ‘miracles’ as literal Works of God. The clue is the part of the lyric that says:

Fucking magnets, how do they work?
And I don’t wanna talk to a scientist
Y’all motherfuckers lying, and getting me pissed

Yep, it’s those evil scientists at it again. As one science blogger has put it, the video

…is not only dumb, but enthusiastically dumb, endorsing a ferocious breed of ignorance that can only be described as militant. The entire song is practically a tribute to not knowing things.

Indeed, in 1998 Spin magazine said that ICP were offensive “not for their obscenity, but for their stupidity” and after reading the Guardian interview I linked above, I am inclined to agree (there are some real clangers, but I’ll leave them for you to discover). In a manner that is the modus operandi of all the most blinkered fundamentalists, the ICP eschews any level of intellectuality or reason or knowledge in favour of simplistic, slack-jawed religious naiveté. What’s more, they seem baffled by the torrents of criticism they have received from the science community over their silly song. Violent J:

I figured most people would say, ‘Wow, I didn’t know Insane Clown Posse could be deep like that.’ But instead it’s, ‘ICP said a giraffe is a miracle. Ha ha ha! What a bunch of idiots.’

Yeah, see, the problem is, Violent J, that your observations aren’t so much deep as breathtakingly banal…

Plant a little seed and nature grows
Niagara falls and the pyramids
Everything you believed in as kids
Fucking rainbows after it rains
there’s enough miracles here to blow your brains

… and, to be frank, it’s terrible music to boot – the rap in this song is possibly the worst I’ve ever heard. Take away the trademark in-your-face offensiveness and Insane Clown Posse just have nothing at all to offer.

As it stands, for all their ghetto posturing and murderous carnival grotesquerie, I say that the Insane Clown Posse are nothing more than Insipid Clown Pussies. It takes guts to look the universe squarely in the face and endure all the uncomfortable consequences of the realization of the measure of your insignificance. ((Conversely, it takes no guts at all to beat up a woman, and it follows that to write a ‘song’ about doing so is the work of a very tiny soul indeed. Don’t spin me your ‘whatever it takes to get the Lord’s message through’ bullshit, you hypocrites.)) Religion, especially the brains-on-the-floor flavour of religion offered by Evangelical Christianity, is the ultimate avoidance of facing up to reality. It says, in no uncertain terms, that if you trust everything to God, all will be hunky dory. It’s the easiest of cop-outs for a difficult challenge. In this respect, ((…and possibly others, it has to be said – pardon my cynicism.)) then, it is less confronting to discover that the members of the Insane Clown Posse are Christians, than it would have been to have heard they were philosophers, atheists or scientists.

The cognitive dissonance is deeply disturbing.

You’re probably aware that Google has just launched their ‘predictive’ search engine Google Instant – a web version of the kind of ‘pre’ search which has already made its way into many desktop and phone apps. It’s actually pretty impressive. Not really the kind of news I care about airing here on The Cow, but the reason I bring it up is as a result of this quote, made by Google VP (the usually sensible) Marissa Mayer at the press launch in San Francisco: ((She also used the vacuous phrase ‘It’s a quantum leap forward…’))

We are actually predicting what query you are likely to do and giving you results for that. There is actually a psychic element to it.

No there is not, Marissa. There is actually no psychic element to it. It’s a technological element. PLEASE. The loonies don’t need any more encouragement.

If you answered wooooooooooooo… to the title question, then you were entirely correct! Yes that’s right – today’s post features woo and sound, two of my most favourite subjects.

Well, as we all know, it seems that for treatment of their medical ailments, more and more people are turning to ordinary water, coloured water, crystallized water, flower water, needles, colours, smells, lack of food, enemas and just about every other nutty thing under the sun except actual medicine.

It was only a matter of time before someone realised that there was a niche for an ‘alternative’ medical treatment based on sound. Today on The Cow, I will examine one such treatment ((Oh yes, there are many more than just one. Perhaps I will cover Tama-Do at some later stage…)) – something named Human Bioacoustics, the amazing cure-all featured on a site called NutraSounds. ((Oh dear. Already with the dumb.)) Human Bioacoustics was created by a personage named Sharry Edwards™, ((Yes, that’s right, she’s trademarked her name.)) who claims that her process ‘has unlimited health and wellness potential.’ Unlimited! Human Bioacoustics can make you weller than well!

BioAcoustics Voice Spectral Analysis can detect hidden or underlying stresses in the body that are expressed as disease. The vocal print can identify toxins, pathogens and nutritional supplements that are too low or too high. In addition, vocal print can be used to match the most compatible treatment remedy to each client. The introduction of the proper ((If you don’t do it ‘properly’, it won’t work…)) low frequency sound to the body, indicated through voice analysis, has been shown ((By whom?)) to control ((‘Control’? What does that mean?)): pain, body temperature, heart rhythm and blood pressure. It has also been shown to regenerate body tissue ((Body tissue regenerates anyway. This means nothing.)) and alleviate ((Alleviate? In what way?)) the symptoms of many diseases (in some cases, even those considered to be incurable). ((Note the equation of the symptoms with the disease itself – a common ploy of pseudoscentific medicine))

Oh yes, there it is! Gobbledigook piled on balderdash layered on crapola. I’ve given you a helping hand with the shifty language and vague promises. I wonder why the disclaimer that is hidden away at the bottom of the NutraSound pages in very small print isn’t placed in slightly closer proximity to the above paragraph?

Disclaimer: Human BioAcoustics, as originated by Sharry Edwards, M.Ed., does not diagnose or prescribe for medical or psychological conditions nor does it claim to prevent, treat, mitigate or cure such conditions. HBA researchers do not provide diagnosis, care, treatment or rehabilitation of individuals, nor apply medical, mental health or human development principles.

Hmm. On the one hand Human Bioacoustics cures everything and then, somehow, when it comes down to a real-world, write-your-name-here-in-blood guarantee, it doesn’t. Is Ms Edwards a little nervous about getting her ass sued off, one wonders? She certainly isn’t shy of making unsubstantiated claims though. In big bold print on her bio page:

Edwards was named scientist of the year in 2001 for her work in BioAcoustic Biology.

Really? Scientist of the Year! Very impressive! That’s not something you could just make up! Let’s see what teh internets have to say about that! Oh, right, here it is. The award was presented to her by a body called the International Association of New Science. Funny… all those links are either dead or seem to point back to organizations with which Sharry Edwards™ has affiliations. She was given the award by her pals! ((Searching on International Association of New Science turns up some frightening crosslinks. The IANS appears to have been concocted by Dr Brian O’Leary a UFO ‘expert’ and Cleve Backster, who is quite famous for writing books about communicating with plants. The frightening part is that the IANS name also appears in conjunction with legitimate research into climate change. These people are being given government money for their idiotic beliefs… If you follow the links even further, it’s worse – there are ties to the whole anti-vaccination hoodoo and a whole other world of medical stupidity.)) Elsewhere she claims that all her work is peer reviewed. I think she is (obviously purposely) conflating the concept of scientific peer review (which is a strenuous intellectual process designed to weed out errors and bad science) with the idea that you get a few of your ‘peers’ to peruse what you’re doing and give you the thumbs up. ((This is what really gets my goat with these kinds of people – they shamelessly trade on the credentials that genuine science affords, while simultaneously bashing all its accomplishments as worthless. If you adopt science, you adopt science. Play properly by its rules, not by some airy fairy ones that you make up yourself! Otherwise, stay off its turf and name yourselves as the magic peddlers that you really are.))

(By this logic, you, my Faithful Cowpokes, could all agree that I was Scientist of the Year and I could boast that on Tetherd Cow! In fact, what a good idea – I need a few endorsements so that I too can plaster it across my banner! Feel free to wax lyrical!)

The phenomenal power of Human Bioacoustics is completely free to all and sundry in the form of the nanoVoice™ ((Yep, Ms Edwards has her whole racket trademarked up the wazoo.)) program, software which is, sadly, only available for PC. ((Well, technically it could be installed under Virtual PC on my Mac, apparently, but I ain’t running VPC just for this piece of crap.)) Of course, you can only freely download the ‘micro’ version – you have to pay (surprise) for the real deal. ((Curious, when the organization that produces it boasts that it is ‘non profit’…)) nanoVoice ‘uses frequency-based biomarkers within the frequencies of your voice to allow you an enlightening peek into your Secret Self.’

I bet you didn’t even know you had ‘frequencey-based biomarkers’ hidden inside your voice. I certainly didn’t and I’ve been working as a professional sound person for thirty years.

This is how it works, as near as I can make out from reading about it: you load a recording of your voice into the program and it analyzes the ‘frequencies’ ((There are those goddamned frequencies again. Teh woo just loves the vibrations and the frequencies!)) and spits out a bar graph in a rainbow of colours. Here’s what the colours supposedly mean (click to get the full chart):

Gee, now what do all those vague waffly non-specific phrases remind me of… oh, that’s it – the local paper’s astrology section! There are some classic howlers:

Yellow (E): ‘uses words first to convey messages and meaning’

Oh yeah, like that’s not going to apply to everyone except mute people.

Green/Blue (G): ‘likes to mix and manage the physical aspects of life’

What? That could mean just about ANYTHING.

Blue (G#): ‘wants to make a difference’

Oh please.

The colours are also arbitrarily tied to various kinds of organs and body parts. When I say ‘arbitrarily’ I mean that there is absolutely no scientific substantiation to say that, for example, the colour green has anything to do with your kidneys, or that the colour blue ‘retrieves nutrients from your bowel’. This is just utter, unmitigated hogwash. And Sharry Edwards™ knows it, or else she wouldn’t have put the comprehensive disclaimer on her site. ((I’m sure she justifies the disclaimer by saying that she ‘was forced to do it’ by the ‘system’ which ‘persecutes her for her beliefs’. A song that we’ve heard many times before.))

For an example of nanoVoice’s extraordinary powers of deduction, you can amuse yourself by visiting an analysis of Mr Mel Gibson’s phone ‘conversation’ with his estranged wife Oksana Grigoreiva, in which he uses bad language, racist terms and is generally an obnoxious prat. I want to say two thing here: first of all, the pages of unbelievable rubbish that you will find here could be attributed to just about anyone, viz:

You have an unusual sense of time. Not having all the information needed to make a decision stresses you. Your reputation is very important to you. You will go to great lengths to protect it. It is important to you that spirituality be a part of everyday life. You think that feeding the mind is just as important as feeding the body. You are aware of how painful thoughtless words can be. You push yourself and others to finish the job. You love new ideas that mean you can have a project to work on. A sense of belonging is important to you.

… and secondly, these ‘frequency’ analyses were made from a telephone recording. To someone like me who knows anything about sound, this constitutes the epitome of ridiculousness. Telephones severely restrict the frequencies of voices, in order to squeeze intelligibility down the lines. Ms Edwards is asking us to believe that her software uses inherent voice ‘frequencies’ to make its divinations, but is simultaneously independent of frequency restrictions. It is the utmost peak of buffoonery. Not only that, it demonstrates without any equivocation, that Sharry Edwards is completely ignorant about how sound works. ((Oh, I’m sure she’d come up with some piece of silliness to ‘explain’ how she can get readings from a telephone conversation – I’d be disappointed if she couldn’t!))

Like many similar pseudoscientific concepts, Human Bioacoustics uses as its basic modus operandi the general ignorance of most people in a specific field of expertise. Few people understand how sound works, but to someone like me who does, Human Bioacoustics, nanoVoice, ‘vocal profiling’ and the ‘Institute of Bioacoustic Biology’ look about as convincing as a pig in a tuxedo.