Our Viral Symbiotes

About 8% of our DNA may have come from ancient viruses that infiltrated our cells, where they established permanent residence.

Viral "Fossils" in Our DNA

The human genome includes 100,000 pieces of "ancient viral DNA." Recent studies of what function, if any, this "fossil" DNA might perform in our bodies suggest that it may play a vital role in boosting our immune systems. Amazingly, viruses that invade our cells sometimes not only become part of our chromosomes but become inheritable. The article summarizes the process thusly:

"When a type of virus known as a retrovirus infects a cell, it converts its RNA into DNA, which can then become part of a human chromosome. Once in a while, retroviruses infect sperm and egg cells and become 'endogenous,' meaning they are passed down from generation to generation."

In science-fiction treatments of traditional monsters such as vampires and werewolves, this ability of some retroviruses could be invoked to rationalize how a naturally evolved creature of a different species could convert a human victim—or willing host—into a member of the "monster" species.

When Walt Whitman declared, "I contain multitudes," he wrote truer than he could have suspected. That quote features in the title of a book by Ed Yong, I CONTAIN MULTITUDES: THE MICROBES WITHIN US AND A GRANDER VIEW OF LIFE, about microbiomes inside animals and especially humans, in the context of a vision of our bodies as "living islands" with millions of inhabitants.

On a totally different topic, but harking back to some of my earlier posts, here is a detailed article about the intelligence of octopuses, to which I've alluded more than once in the past. As the article says, they're probably the closest to intelligent aliens of any species we currently know. Cool!

Another Path to Intelligence

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

Nuts

If you wish to read about testicles, this is not the venue. At least, not this day. Nor do I intend to discuss a staple of the vegan diet.

This is about copyright-related news that does not make sense.

Yesterday, on a very prestigious forum for authors, in a thread about ebook piracy, one correspondent opined, "It's just downloading..."

In fact, it is the downloading that creates multiple, perfect, illegal copies.

Meanwhile, on one of the most-watched financial channels, a panel was discussing Artificial Intelligence, and the scraping of social media sites for privately-taken and also commercially-taken photographs for commercial exploitation and facial recognition technology.

The one aspect that the anchor and panelists never mentioned at all was the massive copyright infringement.
Anyone who takes a photograph owns the copyright to that photograph. If you post a selfie, you do not automatically grant Clearview AI or anyone else a license to sell your face to the fuzz.

Sputnik news has the scoop:
https://sputniknews.com/science/202002061078248616-facebook-demands-facial-recognition-startup-stop-scraping-images-from-platform-/

Even that very informative article glosses over a very important term: "publicly available".
https://www.lawinsider.com/dictionary/publicly-available

There is a difference between something being available to view, and available to copy and re-publish and distribute.

Another nutty misunderstanding that is prevalent among pirates is of "public domain".
https://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/Public-domain

Just because someone uploaded an illegal copy of a novel to a website does not mean that that novel is lawfully in the public domain.  Not if the author is still alive, or deceased within the last 70 years.

Likewise, those who are curious about their ancestors and long lost relatives do not necessarily intend to donate to a government DNA database. If Heritage/Ancestry/ 23&Me keeps pestering you to give permission for your DNA to be used for "research", do not agree. They've probably already sold your DNA is a job lot and are trying to clean up their bases.

If you gave a spit, you'd better keep a diary, and have an alibi for every hour of every day and night!

Allegedly, Amazon is getting in on the use of  faked or fake people to avoid having to pay royalties to real people.  If one is famous --or merely attractive and popular-- and they have multiple views of your face and tracks of your voice, there's no limit to the liberties "they" can take.

Chris Castle writes:
https://musictechpolicy.com/2020/02/07/the-singularity-is-nigh-amazon-fake-brand-personality-follows-chinas-fake-news-presenter-with-us-right-of-publicity-infringement/

Also Amazon-related, there was one rare victory this last week against the inexorable incursions of Amazon and AI on authors' rights was that of the Association of American Publishers against Audible Captions.
https://publishingperspectives.com/2020/02/copyright-coup-as-association-american-publishers-succeeds-in-audible-captions-case/

Copyrighting anything including one's photographs is not as expensive as one might imagine. Wiki How explains the steps:
https://www.wikihow.com/Copyright-Photographs

Copyright.gov has the fee schedule in effect from 2014, (and one can copyright a batch of photographs for one fee.)
https://www.copyright.gov/about/fees.html

Act quickly. Copyright registration costs are likely to rise by more than 20% this coming Spring 2020. Except for batches of photographs. No increase is proposed for that.
https://www.copyright.gov/rulemaking/feestudy2018/proposed-fee-schedule.pdf

Finally, the Copyright Alliance.org is asking (again) for action to encourage Oregon Senator #JustOne Ron Wyden to stop his opposition to anything that might improve copyright protections for authors, musicians and other creators.

https://copyrightalliance.org/ca_post/why-is-senator-wyden-the-only-obstacle-standing-between-americas-creators-and-justice/?_zs=TqSBb&_zl=bOTw1

One of his felon-friendly* rationales for blocking the #CASEAct is that mere downloaders ought not to face any disincentive for "stealing" or "sharing" copyrighted content that the creators rely on to pay their bills #MySkillsPayBills.

Apparently, @RonWyden would also like to change Fair Use from a defense for defendants to a negative proposition --i.e. that the infringement was not fair use-- to be proven by the plaintiffs.

That's just nuts!

All the best,

Rowena Cherry 
SPACE SNARK™ http://www.spacesnark.com/ 

*PS....copyright infringement is not a felony. 

Biology and Free Will

The September issue of NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC features a short piece titled "Why You Like What You Like." It explores the biological basis of likes and dislikes, attraction and repulsion. It cites the discovery that the Toxoplasma organism can make rats unafraid of cats and may possibly cause "increased anxiety" in humans. Other examples of biological influences on tastes and behavior include genetic links to aversion to broccoli, preferences in sexual partners, and conservative or liberal political tendencies.

The author expresses dismay at the realization that he's been wrong all this time in believing "my likes and dislikes were formed through careful deliberation and rational decision-making." The findings detailed in this article don't come as that much of a shock to me. It seems like an obvious truism that most of the time we "can't help" liking or disliking things or people. As for political, philosophical, or religious tendencies, our genes may predispose us to see the world a certain way, but surely they don't totally control our choices. The article itself acknowledges this fact, because "embedded within your genome, there are many potential versions of you." The science of epigenetics has revealed many environmental factors that influence the way genes are expressed; chemicals, protein interactions, and even the microbes living inside us can affect our DNA. Those influences still imply that we don't have the conscious control we think we do, though.

"There are biological gremlins driving every action and personality trait that you assumed were of your own volition." Again, I've never assumed my personality traits were chosen by my "own volition," and I doubt many people think that way. Personality comes as part of the start-up package. Moreover, "driving" doesn't necessarily mean "controlling." After this somewhat pessimistic summary of the evidence, the author acknowledges that very fact and assures us we aren't "destined to be slaves of our DNA." With heightened awareness of how genes and other biological factors shape our minds and behavior, we may develop more efficient ways to change the traits we consider undesirable. So he does allow room for free will. So do the scientists who maintain that consciousness itself is an illusion, by the very act of making that claim. For an illusion to exist, there must be a mind—a consciousness—to embrace that illusion.

Even at the mid-twentieth-century heyday of the "blank slate," radical malleability of human character, environment-is-destiny position, one of the primary fictional exemplars of that belief, BRAVE NEW WORLD, allows for free will. At least one character conditioned from the moment of conception to fit into Huxley's utopia of programmed happiness questions his society and its culture. Our ability as authors to write interesting stories would be severely limited if we and our readers believed our characters couldn't have any freedom of choice.

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

Data And Betrayal

Take international, data-related tit-for-tat.

Microsoft allegedly argues that, if the Supreme Court of the United States (S.C.O.T.U.S.) decides that the US Department of Justice (D.O.J.) can --unilaterally-- use a search warrant to seize emails that are stored on foreign servers that are outside the USA, will that mean that foreign governments--any foreign governments, including China, Russia, North Korea-- can unilaterally seize emails stored on US servers inside the USA?

For more information, read "Do search warrants have extraterritorial effect", penned by legal blogger Andrew Smith for Corker Binning of the UK.

https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=5940f95e-1a9f-42a3-8879-f9483cc6a612

If copyleftists are to be believed, everything one writes is "data" or "information"... and (snort) "information wants to be free".  Unfortunately, as in George Orwell's "Animal Farm" all (metaphorical) animals are equal but some are more equal than others.

Some information is expected to be free when you give it up, but not so much if you want it back.

The brilliant and businesslike Kristine Kathryn Rusch writes a wide ranging cautionary tale of promises made and apparently broken, of confidentiality and access to ones own analyzed data.

https://kriswrites.com/2018/02/07/business-musings-confidential-business-information/

There's a moral: keep your business secrets secret.

Talking of giving away "data", or having it taken from one without one's consent, this writer is reminded of "The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks" by Rebecca Skloot. How many mothers, I wonder, who wish to harvest their cord blood for freezing, discover that the hospital appropriates (without permission) a quantity of cord blood for their own research and rations the amount that the patient may have... of her own cord blood?

Does anyone else wonder about the information one freely gives, or even pays to give to Ancestry.com or 23-and-me?  Could one's spit come back to bite one? If the government secretly does the same with the DNA held by the spit-analyzing services as it does with the location data held by smart phone companies, well, what a brave new world we live in. 


From Germany, business writers Hans-Edzard Busemann and Nadine Schimrozik discuss a Berlin regional court's opinion of some Facebook tricky settings and use of personal data.

https://www.investing.com/news/technology-news/german-court-rules-facebook-use-of-personal-data-illegal-1230837

There's a lot of "permissionless innovation" about, and an assumption by the Big Data guys that everyone knows -- just because they live and breathe-- what Big Data is doing (an unreasonable assumption, if you ask me), and that it is perfectly fine to assume that everyone is okay with their data being exploited unless they proactively opt out.  So certain permissions are pre-checked in "Settings", and a user (or a non-user) has to find those settings and actively change them. Who has time?

It is all too easy for advertisers to stalk us, spy on us, and harass us, and even to force us to pay (if one has a pay-per-minute telephone plan... or if one buys ones own paper and toner for ones faxes) to receive their pitches. I'm not okay with that.

On the other side of the coin, Facebook may not be all that friendly to those who advertise, either.

Michael Alvear (an interesting man who claims that he got bored stiff writing a sex advice column) looks into
"Facebook's Epic Fail" as a source of a good return on investment for writers to advertise.

http://writingforaliving.us/results-facebook-advertising-survey-authors/

Maybe, if an author is paying $0.40 per click, and the royalty he receives on an book sale is $0.40 or less,
it's not a business model that will work for most.... but one should read Alvear's advice in full.

Facebook is also in the Lexology news for illegality in its "mean clicques groups". One would think that there would be nothing wrong with forming an intimate group to revile ones lower ranking co-workers, right? Wrong.

Legal blogger David J. Pryzbylski, writing for Barnes and Thornburg LLP gives the legal lowdown on a team of local lovelies who set up a supposedly secret and exclusive Facebook group, and excluded some of their team members, thereby violating the National Labor Relations Act.

https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=a1693e57-2c39-4934-a981-28e9c1926cca

Should one infer that the teamsters did not know what the Germans know about Facebook's default settings?

On a final note... a musical one, and nothing (much) to do with Facebook or privacy... but pertaining to betrayal and restoring fairness, if you will: please support The Classics Act.

Musicians and their heirs have been cheated out of royalties for years, simply because of a loophole in the law that allowed big business to not pay royalties to the copyright owners of music released before 1972.
How is it fair that the creators of a musical work from 1971 get nothing from Sirius and its like, while creators of a similar musical work released in 1973 get paid?

There's a petition. http://musicfirstcoalition.org/action-center/support-the-classics-act/
If you live in the USA, and provide your zip code etc it will go to your Congressmen and Congresswomen.

Thank you.
All the best,
Rowena Cherry