Matt McIntosh at Catallarchy points out that the effective U.S. tariff rates on imports are significantly higher on the poorest countries. For example, Bangladesh paid about the same amount in tariffs on exports to the U.S. as France ($331 million vs. $330 million), despite only exporting $2.53 billion in goods to France’s $30.023 billion. That’s a 14.1% tariff on Bangladesh, where the per-capita GDP is $370, versus a 1.1% tariff on France, where the per-capita GDP is $24,170. By abolishing tariffs, we could instantly provide significant benefits to the poorest countries, as well as to U.S. poor, by reducing the cost of goods like clothing.

Over at Multipolarity Memes there’s a post about a short (though large), 3D-rendered, animation of a hypothetical nanofactory. Now, I’ll be the first to admit that I’m no expert at this stuff, but I did take some intermediate chemistry and physics classes in college, so the animation immediately raises a number of questions in my mind; viz.: At that size, can they realistically assume that the envisioned structures will be as rigid as they make them out to be? What about Brownian motion? What about transfer of heat—especially given that there are, presumably, chemical reactions taking place, and these reactions will involve energy transfers? What type of bonding is happening at the transfer points? Chemical reactions don’t happen magically—and they don’t happen without some energy input or energy release—neither of which are being obviously represented in the video. It’s a pretty fantasy, but how realistic is it, really? ...

For the third year in a row, DHS gets an F for protecting its computer systems: Most federal agencies that play key roles in the war on terror are doing a dismal job of protecting their computers and information networks from hackers and viruses, according to portions of a report to be released by a key congressional oversight committee Thursday. The Department of Homeland Security, which is charged with setting the government’s cyber security agenda, earned a grade of F for the third straight year from the House Government Reform Committee. Other agencies whose failing marks went unchanged from 2004 include the departments of Agriculture, Defense, Energy, State, Health and Human Services, Transportation, and Veterans Affairs. ...

BLDGblog has some great photos of the rifts opening up in the ground in central Ethiopia, where parts of the Afar triangle have already sunk to more than 100 meters below sea level. What’s now a 37-mile-long fissure will apparently take a million years to reach full ocean status.

The 30th meeting of the Skeptics Circle is up at Paige’s Page.

Worried about biological weapons that can be specifically targeted to, say, disable the ability to store memories, cause the autoimmune system to attack myelin (i.e., mimic multiple sclerosis), or target specific ethnic groups? If not, you might be after you read this article from Technology Review. Unfortunately, some of these things may even be feasible to produce with old technology that is easily available–and if they aren’t now, they will be. (Via Bruce Schneier’s blog.)

I don’t know how they got my email address–I’ve never been (and never will be) a registered Republican. From: “Chairman Matt Salmon” [email protected] To: [my email address] Subject: Arizona Republican Party Roundup - March 15, 2006 Date: Wed, 15 Mar 2006 10:53:37 -0600 Attention Republican Clubs and Organizations - Submit your events to [email protected] In This Issue: Chairman Salmon on the Death of State Senator Marilyn Jarrett Capitol Update Kyl Immigration Provisions Moving Forward … Paid for by the Arizona Republican Party (602) 957-7770 Not authorized by any candidate or candidate committee. —————————————- This email was sent by: Republican Party of Arizona 3501 N 24th Street Phoenix, AZ, 85016, USA/[email protected] actual email came from ExactTarget.com, whose anti-spam policy says: Anti-SPAM at ExactTarget ExactTarget believes, practices, and requires its clients to practice only permission-based e-mail marketing. Our clients certify that they will use our software only to send e-mails to customers and prospects that have directly consented (opted-in) to receive their e-mail. They are forbidden to transmit unsolicited commercial e-mail (spam) via our system. ...

Ed Felten writes about a new paper that discusses the possibility of RFID tags being used to exploit flaws in RFID reader software to propagate a virus. The paper, authored by Melanie Rieback, Bruno Crispo, and Andy Tanenbaum of Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam, includes a description of a proof-of-concept the authors developed. By including a SQL injection flaw in the reader software they wrote, and RFID tag containing appropriate malicious code, the reader then propagated the malicious code by writing it to new RFID tags. If such a flaw exists in real reader code, the potential exists for a virus to be transmitted from reader to reader via RFID tags, with each infected reader writing the virus out to additional tags. BTW, this is the same Andy Tanenbaum who wrote the classic textbook Operating Systems: Design and Implementation and developed Minix, which inspired Linus Torvalds to create Linux. Rieback gave a talk at last year’s “What the Hack” hacker conference in Amsterdam on “Fun and Mayhem with Radio Frequency Identification.”

Bruce Schneier reports on a case of “police department privilege escalation," where, because California allows transit companies to create their own police departments, Yosef Maiwandi was able to do so. He created the San Gabriel Valley Transit Authority, a nonprofit operating out of an auto repair shop that gives bus rides to disabled people and senior citizens. He then created the San Gabriel Valley Transit Authority Police Department, and made Stefan Eriksson a deputy police commissioner of their anti-terrorism division, and gave him business cards. Eriksson is the guy who went drunk driving in a million-dollar Ferrari Enzo that crashed into a telephone pole in Malibu–he claims he was the passenger, but no other driver has been found. UPDATE (March 19, 2006): There’s now video that shows Eriksson and another person–Trevor Karney–in the Ferrari.

NASA’s 2009 Mission to Mars will carry the Mars Science Laboratory, which includes a cell-phone-sized device capable of identifying minerals in the Martian soil. The device, designed by Robert Downs at the University of Arizona, shoots a laser at materials to be identified, causing its atoms to vibrate at different frequencies and generate a detectible signal. The process, known as Raman spectroscopy, is a quantum mechanical process that earned its discoverer, Sir Chandrasekhara Venkata Raman, the Nobel prize in physics in 1930. Excerpts from an interview with Downs: I know that Miami Police Department has about 220,000 spectra of all the illicit drugs that are out there in the world. You just take these things; you can shoot them and ten second later you know what they’re holding: is it baby powder, is it cocaine? Really easy to tell. This little white powder that came in envelopes that the post office was getting. Bonner Denton has a demonstration he uses upstairs. He takes a bottle of Tylenol, a white plastic container and the pills are inside. You can shoot the Raman and a laser goes through that white plastic, it identifies the three parts of Tylenol and it tells you what the plastic is made out of. It works on leaves. I can identify the species of trees by shooting their leaves. I don’t think the biologists are aware of this yet. … There is about just over 4000 mineral species that are known and we’ve shot about 700 of them so far; so, one fifth of the way. I think it will be about a six-year project to complete everything we know found on Earth. And we’re also looking at the meteorites as well with the NASA people.(Via jwz’s blog.)