May 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Putrescine synthesis - Polyamines, nonprotein amino acids and ...of Horticulture and Landscape Architecture - Purdue University (fwd)
by Jim Choate 25 May '03

25 May '03

---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Sun, 25 May 2003 21:01:17 -0500 From: root <root(a)einstein.ssz.com> To: ravage(a)einstein.ssz.com Subject: Putrescine synthesis - Polyamines, nonprotein amino acids and ...of Horticulture and Landscape Architecture - Purdue University http://www.hort.purdue.edu/rhodcv/hort640c/polyam/po00001.htm

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domestic chemwar, useful for street activists too
by Major Variola (ret.) 25 May '03

25 May '03

For anyone out there who thinks cops lack creativity when it comes to crime fighting, I offer you the Skunk Squad of the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department. Lt. Shaun Mathers and his special assignment unit in Compton kept seeing the same old problems prostitution, drug dealing, arson, etc. in abandoned buildings and other gathering places. They'd round up the bad guys night after night, but the perps were back in no time, and citizens kept screaming for the cops to do something. In a brain-storming session, Lt. Mathers, Deputy Scott Gage and others got a wacky idea that seemed ridiculous at first maybe they could drive loiterers away with an unpleasant odor. No one even took it seriously until Gage bought a few stink bombs in a novelty store, and curiosity led him and Mathers to the Internet to search for something even smellier. If this sounds as if it could have been a plot from "Leave It to Beaver," maybe it's because Lt. Mathers is the younger brother of that show's star, Jerry Mathers. Lt. Mathers reports that The Beav was quite amused by the story that follows. Deputy Gage discovered something called Liquid Fence, an animal repellent that smelled like rotten garlic. The deputies ordered it by mail and tested it at crime scenes, but the odor faded too quickly to be effective. Next they ordered a repellent developed by scientists in New Zealand. It's called Skunk Shot, and crime-fighting may never be the same. Lt. Mathers' crew knew it was onto something when Deputy Gage's wife called him at work to say a package had arrived by mail. Mathers got on the phone and asked her to open it, then heard a horrified scream. "It contaminated my whole garage," Gage says of the Skunk Shot, a synthetic gel that comes in a small tube and reeks of a skunk's best work. The Skunk Squad decided to try the repellent in an abandoned, burned-out motel at 1510 S. Long Beach Blvd. During a two-week stretch in January and February, Mathers' crew had made 30 arrests there. On this particular visit, Mathers' unit arrested six people, including three who had been arrested in the same location the day before. After the perps were carted away, the deputies reached for the Skunk Shot and went to work. "A small amount of the olfactory nuisance was placed on the armrests of two abandoned couches," Mathers wrote in a report. "The odor of the product became immediately apparent." Three hours later, the Skunk Squad returned and found the dilapidated motel empty, a rare sight at the illicit late-night flophouse. The deputies went back again two hours later, and it was still evacuated. >From Mathers' report: "It appears that, at least for that short time," Skunk Shot "was able to do what fences, gates and barbed wire," along with multiple arrests, "had been unable to do." The high command was impressed. "If it's one less place you have to worry about," says Capt. Cecil Rhambo (real name), "it's worth it." Especially since deputies are at high risk when entering boarded up properties in nearly total darkness. Sheriff Lee Baca, a proponent of creative crime-fighting strategies, couldn't have been more pleased when I filled him in on the details of Mathers' operation. "Crime, in and of itself, is a nasty odor," quipped the top cop. "We're in a time when people don't want to hear excuses, and if we can come up with ways to fix a problem ways as ingenious as this my hat is off" to Mathers, Gage and deputies Dan Drysol, Matt VanderHorck and Brad Molner. Mathers has since moved on to a desk job at headquarters, but he rejoined his former crew one day last week and made me an honorary member of the Skunk Squad. Our first stop was at that abandoned motel on Long Beach Boulevard. This time Mathers and Gage rousted two squatters, one of whom was cleaning his crack pipe. Then Gage donned rubber gloves and smeared Skunk Shot, which looks like Vaseline, around the room. In the interest of public service, I stood there as the odor permeated the place and clocked through my sinuses, at least until my eyes crossed and I was ready to gag. My mind reeled as I thought of all the places I'd like to dab this stuff. Gang hangouts. Drug corners. Hollywood pitch meetings. "It's non-toxic, non-flammable, non-staining," Gage said, and neither the deputy nor the criminal gets hurt. "There's no down side to this." Except that Skunk Shot doesn't work as well in breezy, open areas. Even in tighter spots, it usually wears off in a couple of days. In another unit at the motel, the Skunk Squad became engaged in a war against an industrious crew of squatters who fought back with air fresheners. "We'd hit 'em with Skunk Shot, and they'd come back with Glade," Mathers said. A day or two after being driven away holding their noses, the squatters would return with all manner of auto air fresheners and aerosol cans, trying to overpower the skunk odor. Outside the unit, I found an empty can of Airwick, Country Berries scent. Hey, better to trade foul odors than speeding bullets. "I wish I had paid a lot closer attention in chemistry class," says Mathers, who figures there must be a way to brew an even more offensive, longer-lasting odor. After fouling the motel, my Skunk Squad partners and I rolled to a notorious underpass at Rosecrans and Tamarind. For months, deputies had made hundreds of arrests there to no avail. And then, a few months ago, they brought out their stinky new friend. On our arrival, no one was there. "I credit Skunk Shot with cutting the crowd by as much as two-thirds here," said Gage, who has been buying the stuff online and paying out of his own pocket. It costs $12 a tube, and you can skunk about five locations per tube. Gage, going above and beyond the call, has already spent more than $100. Unfortunately the odor isn't wretched enough to scare criminals straight. It just pushes them along. But it's more effective than relying on bureaucracy to clear abandoned properties, and it brings relief to neighbors, even if it comes at a cost. When the Skunk Squad arrived at an abandoned apartment complex on Spring Street near Compton Boulevard, I went next door and talked to Marlon Terrell and Joe Manley. "You get people doing their dope in there," said Terrell as deputies brought out three squatters in handcuffs. When I explained the place was being skunked by deputies, Manley said he'd rather smell a skunk than worry about having a bunch of freeloaders next door. David Garcia, who lives on the other side of the apartments, said he's afraid squatters are going to burn the block down. After Deputy Gage applied Skunk Shot, I led Garcia in to have a whiff. "Woahhh!" he wailed, reeling back on his heels. Garcia wanted to know where he could buy some Skunk Shot. "Look what you've done," Mathers said to me. "Now we've got vigilante skunkers." In the last stop on our shift, the Skunk Squad returned to the abandoned motel where the repellent had been applied two hours earlier. The place still reeked, and we found not a soul. Crime doesn't sleep in the naked city. But it's on the run in Compton, and holding its nose. http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-lopez25may25,1,687547.column?coll=l… ---- I believe Jim Bell used butyric acid on the domestic terrorists he targeted. Wonder how the fckpartners of riot police would feel about their spouses reeking for a few days after every WTO meet..

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[cs/0305035] P is not equal to NP (fwd)
by Jim Choate 25 May '03

25 May '03

http://xyz.lanl.gov/abs/cs.CC/0305035 -- ____________________________________________________________________ We are all interested in the future for that is where you and I are going to spend the rest of our lives. Criswell, "Plan 9 from Outer Space" ravage(a)ssz.com jchoate(a)open-forge.org www.ssz.com www.open-forge.org --------------------------------------------------------------------

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Americans, the other white meat
by Major Variola (ret.) 25 May '03

25 May '03

Jabarrah told his interrogators some Qaeda code: Market meant Malaysia. Hotel was the Philippines. White meat was an American. http://www.msnbc.com/news/917895.asp?0cv=KB10 I suppose "mad cow" would be a good codeword for the USG...

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Navajo Code Talkers' Dictionary (fwd)
by Jim Choate 25 May '03

25 May '03

http://www.history.navy.mil/faqs/faq61-4.htm -- ____________________________________________________________________ We are all interested in the future for that is where you and I are going to spend the rest of our lives. Criswell, "Plan 9 from Outer Space" ravage(a)ssz.com jchoate(a)open-forge.org www.ssz.com www.open-forge.org --------------------------------------------------------------------

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P <> NP: The paper
by Jim Choate 25 May '03

25 May '03

Enjoy, either way it turns out. -- ____________________________________________________________________ We are all interested in the future for that is where you and I are going to spend the rest of our lives. Criswell, "Plan 9 from Outer Space" ravage(a)ssz.com jchoate(a)open-forge.org www.ssz.com www.open-forge.org -------------------------------------------------------------------- [demime 0.97c removed an attachment of type APPLICATION/pdf which had a name of lanl_PNotEqNP.pdf]

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Complexity classes P and NP - Wikipedia (fwd)
by Jim Choate 24 May '03

24 May '03

http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complexity_classes_P_and_NP -- ____________________________________________________________________ We are all interested in the future for that is where you and I are going to spend the rest of our lives. Criswell, "Plan 9 from Outer Space" ravage(a)ssz.com jchoate(a)open-forge.org www.ssz.com www.open-forge.org --------------------------------------------------------------------

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CNN.com - Proposed law: $500 per unwanted spam - May. 24, 2003 (fwd)
by Jim Choate 24 May '03

24 May '03

http://www.cnn.com/2003/TECH/internet/05/24/spam.bill.reut/index.html -- ____________________________________________________________________ We are all interested in the future for that is where you and I are going to spend the rest of our lives. Criswell, "Plan 9 from Outer Space" ravage(a)ssz.com jchoate(a)open-forge.org www.ssz.com www.open-forge.org --------------------------------------------------------------------

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BBC monitoring Internet censorship in China (fwd)
by Jim Choate 24 May '03

24 May '03

http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=9659 -- ____________________________________________________________________ We are all interested in the future for that is where you and I are going to spend the rest of our lives. Criswell, "Plan 9 from Outer Space" ravage(a)ssz.com jchoate(a)open-forge.org www.ssz.com www.open-forge.org --------------------------------------------------------------------

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Why I Could Never Be a Lawyer
by Tim May 24 May '03

24 May '03

Or, rather, why I would likely do poorly in law school, and even if I managed to pass, would likely hate the kinds of b.s. little trials that 99% of lawyers have to work on to earn a living. In writing that last mini-rant about the Second Amendment and the "incorporation doctrine" and why the courts have not made it clear that states may not violate the Second any more than they may violate the First or the Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, etc., I realized something expressed by this analogy: memorizing baroque law:understanding principles of systems :: memorizing baroque Unix and security protocols:understanding physics and math. In English, the talent for being able to memorize a lot of often confusing and contradictory law is related to the talent for being interested in basic economic or system principles in the same way that the talent for understanding arcane Unix and security protocols is related to the talent for understanding math or physics. I confess, I'm not a "Unix geek." I skip most messages which talk about SSL, DNS, and the intricacies of Linux or BSD or the like. More and more "security" and crypto seems to be about this kind of stuff. It reminds me a lot of the law, where one just has to absorb thousands of cases and bits of "lore" about precedents and statutes. I would bog down, I expect, in not being able to simultaneously grok the Bill of Rights AND the aforementioned "incorporation doctrine" mess. Also, unlike many in the law business (at least as I see them being interviewed on video and in print), I don't see any "majesty" in the law. What I see instead is a massive deviation from the "kernel" of a largely self-running machine based on core (kernel) principles of "you leave me alone and I'll leave you alone" kinds of Schelling points. The law has become a baroque collection of "buttinsky" exceptions and mix-ins and overrides. (A mess of "before" and "after" methods, in Lisp terms.) Now I don't mean to insult any of those here who can write learnedly about the Unix-flavored hacks and about all nine layers of TCP/IP (or is TCP/IP just one of the layers of some other byzantine cake? I never bothered to learn the equivalent of "King Philip Could Only Find Good Strawberries"--Kingdom, Phylum, Class, Order, Family, Genus, Species. The world needs all kinds. And right now, security and crypto seems to be mostly about knowing lots and lots of pieces of cruft. I surmise that the same skills--including the ability to absorb seemingly unrelated and even contradictory bits of stuff--useful for programmers are useful for lawyers. Which may be why several current or former Cypherpunks have become lawyers or are in law school. Gaak! And GAK! Two sayings appeal to me more: "Never memorize anything you can look up." --Einstein. "Think deeply about simple things." --motto of Ross Summer School, quoted often by physicist and mathematician John Baez. --Tim May "Stupidity is not a sin, the victim can't help being stupid. But stupidity is the only universal crime; the sentence is death, there is no appeal, and execution is carried out automatically and without pity." --Robert A. Heinlein

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