Hang On To Your Wallets

The government is coming to help. With the assistance of the National Science Foundation, a whole bunch of researchers are looking at replacing the internet.

NEW YORK - Although it has already taken nearly four decades to get this far in building the Internet, some university researchers with the federal government's blessing want to scrap all that and start over.

The idea may seem unthinkable, even absurd, but many believe a "clean slate" approach is the only way to truly address security, mobility and other challenges that have cropped up since UCLA professor Leonard Kleinrock helped supervise the first exchange of meaningless test data between two machines on Sept. 2, 1969.

The Internet "works well in many situations but was designed for completely different assumptions," said Dipankar Raychaudhuri, a Rutgers University professor overseeing three clean-slate projects. "It's sort of a miracle that it continues to work well today."

No longer constrained by slow connections and computer processors and high costs for storage, researchers say the time has come to rethink the Internet's underlying architecture, a move that could mean replacing networking equipment and rewriting software on computers to better channel future traffic over the existing pipes.

Even Vinton Cerf, one of the Internet's founding fathers as co-developer of the key communications techniques, said the exercise was "generally healthy" because the current technology "does not satisfy all needs."

One challenge in any reconstruction, though, will be balancing the interests of various constituencies. The first time around, researchers were able to toil away in their labs quietly. Industry is playing a bigger role this time, and law enforcement is bound to make its needs for wiretapping known.

There's no evidence they are meddling yet, but once any research looks promising, "a number of people (will) want to be in the drawing room," said Jonathan Zittrain, a law professor affiliated with Oxford and Harvard universities. "They'll be wearing coats and ties and spilling out of the venue."

One thing under discussion that the article mentions in passing is authentication. In other words who sent what to whom and when.

The Internet's early architects built the system on the principle of trust. Researchers largely knew one another, so they kept the shared network open and flexible — qualities that proved key to its rapid growth.

But spammers and hackers arrived as the network expanded and could roam freely because the Internet doesn't have built-in mechanisms for knowing with certainty who sent what.

Well, that ought to scare the living hell out of hackers. But it should also be of great concern to individuals who have never abused the internet. This is going to be, shall we say, interesting. I have a sneaking suspicion that I may have some real issues with whatever they come up with.

No Royal Future For France?

The socialist party candidate for the presidency of France, Segolene Royal, appears to be headed for a defeat, according to press reports. Even those who are supposedly in her corner appear to be writing her off as a lost cause.

Fellow Socialist and former Prime Minister Michel Rocard appeared Friday to admit as much when he suggested that only by teaming up with one of her rivals can Royal hope to beat conservative Nicolas Sarkozy, who has kept a step ahead of her in polls all year.

Time is running out for Royal to swing the many undecided voters her way: The first round of voting is April 22, with a run-off on May 6.

"The feeling today is that she's rather on the way to losing the election," said Dominique Reynie of Paris' elite Institute of Political Sciences. Her victory "seems less and less likely," added BVA Institute pollster Jerome Sainte-Marie.

Royal herself brushed off Rocard's suggestion that she and centrist Francois Bayrou join forces to keep out Sarkozy, a pro-American former minister.

"There will be no dealings on my part," she said.

Her worst enemy now may be the polls. Although they still place her second, some have also suggested that only Bayrou could rally enough voters to beat Sarkozy in a run-off. The trouble is Bayrou may never get that far. Polls place him third, which would not get him past the first round.

Rocard did not spell out how a Royal-Bayrou alliance might work in practice. But the fact that the Socialist Party elder — even a somewhat centrist one — suggested that she may not win alone was the latest sign that the election may be slipping from Royal's grasp.

"We must block the road to Sarkozy. It's urgent," Rocard told RTL radio. "I hope that Segolene will be strong enough, but I have the greatest doubt — looking at the polls — that she can win alone in the run-off. And the idea of running alone in these conditions seems to me to be extremely dangerous, almost suicidal."

I guess the bikini trick didn't work, eh? (I expect that her "motherly listening" skills (as the article points out later) are less effective than she had hoped. That or the voters looked at some of her ideas and figured she was completely out of her league - or mind.) The voting hasn't happened yet, so anything could happen. But things don't look too good for Royal at the moment.

Illinois Denies Squirrel Conspiracy

In a shocking cover-up of biblical proportions, or maybe that was bibliographical proportions, the miscreants running Illinois Bureau of Tourism's "Seven Wonders of Illinois" promotion are denying that there is a squirrel conspiracy. (We read the headline and immediately had to read the rest. WE could have written that headline.)

State discounts squirrel conspiracy

Since the white squirrels' disappointing elimination during Week Three of the Illinois Bureau of Tourism's Seven Wonders of Illinois promotion, there has been a flurry of discontent among voters who felt the percentage numbers changed too abruptly during the last few hours of voting that Saturday afternoon.

City Clerk Belinda Henton said she received e-mails and phone calls from white-squirrel supporters who were indignant about the abrupt shift in voting that put Rend Lake and the confluence of the Ohio and Mississippi rivers in the top two spots and left the white squirrels out of contention for Week Four.

Similar stories have surfaced in other regions, such as the Southwestern region's last-minute change-up, as reported in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, that left the front-runner, the Centralia carillon, in last place after two hours of voting that elevated the Great Rivers Scenic Byway from third place with 15 percent of the votes to first with 65 percent.

The carillon did not make it to the final two, much to the disappointment of its supporters, who, like other supporters of eliminated attractions, have voiced questions of the legitimacy of the online voting system.

While the dismay the white squirrels were not in the final two was widespread, Henton does not believe there was any funny business involved.

“We're disappointed,” Henton said, “but you don't know exactly how it happened. They may have been campaigning harder than we were.”

We here at Blue Crab Boulevard believe that we have the answer to this. There was, indeed, a squirrel conspiracy, just not the one they are denying happened. The gray squirrels were a bit miffed that the alpine shock troops of the Animal Uprising™, the white squirrels, were getting a higher billing over the more numerous gray squirrels - who specialize in suicide electrical substation attacks. They were actually getting online to stuff the ballot box. (Being suicide electrical specialists, they also know how to hack computer connections through telephone switching stations. Just remember: the next bug you have may actually be a squirrel. They're branching out.)

Corzine Badly Injured In Crash

New Jersey Gov. Jon S. Corzine appears to have been much more badly hurt in a car crash yesterday than the early reports indicated. He is listed in critical condition this morning. The initial news was of a broken leg - it turns out rather a lot more damage than just the leg happened.

CAMDEN, N.J. - New Jersey Gov. Jon S. Corzine was in critical condition Friday but expected to recover after his motorcade was hit on the Garden State Parkway and crashed into a guardrail, breaking his leg, six ribs, his sternum and fracturing a vertebrae.

Authorities were searching for a pickup truck driver whose actions were blamed for the crash.

Corzine, 60, won't be able to resume his duties as governor for several days, if not weeks, and he won't walk normally for months, his doctor said. Fortunately, he did not suffer any brain damage in the crash, said Dr. Robert Ostrum, who performed two hours of surgery on the governor Thursday night at Cooper University Hospital.

"He's in serious shape, but he's alive and going to survive. Hopefully, he'll be back to work in a few weeks," said state Senate President Richard Codey, who took over as acting governor, speaking Friday on WNBC-TV.

Corzine was in the front passenger's seat of a sport utility vehicle driven by a state trooper when a white pickup truck swerved to avoid a red pickup truck that had moved onto the highway from the shoulder, State Police Superintendent Rick Fuentes said. The white pickup hit the passenger side of the SUV, sending it skidding into a guardrail. The red pickup left the scene.

The report says that it is unclear if Corzine was wearing a seat belt. Judging by the extent of the injuries, I'm not sure how he could have been. The broken sternum and ribs indicate a severe impact against something very hard. I suppose that will eventually come out, one way or the other. But I hope he has a quick recovery, nonetheless.

Whatever You Do, Don’t Let Them See This

Scientists are pretty well certain the the huge, carnivorous dinosaur, tyrannosaurus rex has a living relative in today's world. Under no circumstances should you let the relatives see any news about this. The results could be dreadful. So do the world a favor and do not tell the chickens.

Scientists have at last uncovered the closest living relative of the mighty Tyrannosaurus rex, the most feared and famous of all the dinosaurs. For the first time, researchers have managed to sequence proteins from the long-extinct creature, leading them to the discovery that many of the molecules show a remarkable similarity to those of the humble chicken.

The research provides the first molecular evidence for the notion that birds are the modern-day descendants of dinosaurs, as well as overturning the long-held palaeontological assumption that delicate organic molecules such as DNA and proteins are completely destroyed during the process of fossilisation over hundreds of thousands of years. It also hints at the tantalising prospect that scientists may one day be able to emulate Jurassic Park by cloning a dinosaur.

Mary Schweitzer, a palaeontologist at North Carolina State University and the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences, led a team of researchers in analysing the 68m-year-old leg bone of a T-rex, recovered in 2003 in Montana. To her surprise, she found that it still contained a matrix of collagen fibres, a protein that gives bone its structure and flexibility. Working with colleagues at Harvard University Medical Centre and with the help of equipment normally used to identify and sequence tiny amounts of protein in human cancers, Prof Schweitzer managed to extract and sequence seven different T-rex proteins.

Somehow, the thought of the huge, scary dinosaur that is always depicted in the movies making clucking noises instead of a roar is rather amusing. Imagine Jurassic Park's complete change in tone if the tyrannosaurus had been going "buck-gawk" while chasing the car. Actually, we here at Blue Crab Boulevard are hopeful that this turns out to be a prank. The chickens may have slipped something into the sample, after all.

New Life

The Brits are performing a complete overhaul the clipper ship Cutty Sark. The ship is essentially being dismantled (it already is pretty well taken apart) and will be completely restored. Built in 1869, the ship was pretty well obsolete even when she was launched. The age of steam was already well underway and Cutty Sark would remain only about 16 years in the tea trade she was built for.

The outer hull has been removed to reveal a vast upside-down “ribcage”. All 490 original timber planks are being taken out to be treated and the frame is being electrolysed to remove corrosive chloride. The ship was meant to be in service for only 20 or 30 years; last November was her 137th birthday.

Here's the Cutty Sark website with more news about the overhaul. They bill the ship as the last of the tea clippers.