Monthly Archives: February 2020

Civic Issues 3: Data Privacy and the Coronavirus

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As the burgeoning technological and manufacturing sectors in China fuel an economic boom, the growing middle class within the nation is rapidly adopting a variety of technologies. However, even as Chinese technologies race ahead of American progress, their developers and distributors are guided by the hand of an authoritarian government. Historically, individual privacy protections within China when it comes to technological advances have been practically nonexistent, lapsing behind the inadequacy and technological illiteracy of US policymakers into explicitly politically-motivated restrictions on technological use and implementation. One well-known example of this is China’s infamous so-called “Great Firewall of China”, which restricts internet access across the nation. During times of conflict and public dissent, when social media usage by protesters cannot be contained, access to the entire internet within a region may be blocked off. Less dramatic than this is the constant filtering of Chinese internet and social media functions. Topics that the Chinese authoritarian government does not want people talking about or searching for yield no search results on the internet and cannot be posted on social media. These topics go from the obviously political (for example, the famous photographs of the tragedy in Tienanmen square) to the seemingly benign (content relating to Winnie the Pooh hs been blocked after people started pointing out that Chinese president Xi Jinping supposedly looks like the cartoon bear). Disobeying these protocols in China has real-world consequences, as the nation arrests thousands of people each year for “internet crimes” and puts them in prisons and detention camps that the outside world knows very little about. During the first 10 months of 2019, for example, the Chinese government arrested 60,000 suspects on charges of internet crimes as part of a renewed campaign to clean up its internet. Another example of a newly developing arena of Chinese government use of the internet to control the behavior of the masses is the social credit system it has been experimenting with and slowly implementing across regions of the country. Such systems assign scores relating to an individual’s trustworthiness and respectability by measuring a variety of social and legal infractions, such as traffic violations.

All this demonstrates the way China’s government is unafraid to explicitly shape and direct the internet. So when the question of big data and individual privacy is raised, it’s no surprise that the Chinese government handles vast quantities of personal data directly. Just as there is no cultural expectation of a free internet, there is also no cultural expectation of individual privacy.

The use of big data to track diseases is a promising arena of future data use. In fact, it’s already implemented all over the world in several ways; American health authorities, for example, watch Google trends to see who is searching for symptoms of a particular disease in order to map its spread. However, the government ideally does not have the individual, identified information of each person in such a situation. Instead, the goal is differential privacy: looking at a corpus of data for patterns without connecting them to individuals. Though it might seem like a situation like an alarming epidemic might make this privacy less of a priority, there are benefits to differential privacy even in such situations. For example, the United States frequently conceals the identities of victims of high-profile diseases simply to the general metropolitan area they live in. There are many reasons for this, one being the simple truth that making individuals identifiable under media scrutiny creates an environment in which other victims may hesitate to report their illness and be subjected to similar scrutiny.

With all this context, it likely comes as no surprise that China has not made differential privacy its first priority in using data to try to model the spread of the current coronavirus outbreak, COVID-19. In some parts of China, citizens buying fever and cough medications currently have to register with their real names to allow for authorities to follow up with them about their illness. In other parts, full names are required to board the subway. Verifying one’s identity by scanning a QR code is now required for buses, trains, and taxis across much of the country. These sorts of developments make it much easier to pinpoint who is spreading the disease, where hotspots are developing, and who may be attempting to disobey quarantine orders. However, it’s jarring to consider the way the government knows one’s approximate whereabouts at all times in China in such a system, especially when one considers the slim likelihood that such a system would be dismantled entirely after the outbreak. The epidemic seems to be an excuse, according to some, for the government to collect even more data from citizens, barring them transport if they refuse to comply. This data, combined with the information they already have on all citizens, creates an unsettling corpus.

How would people respond to a similar outbreak in the US? There might be more resistance due to a cultural expectation of freedom. However, US data collection, though far behind China’s transgressions, is a topic of fierce legislative power, weighed down by much misunderstanding. How might the US handle a situation like this? What are China’s motives with this development?

Sources cited in this post:

https://www.scmp.com/tech/apps-social/article/3052232/coronavirus-accelerates-chinas-big-data-collection-privacy

https://www.chinadaily.com.cn/a/201911/15/WS5dcdf2ada310cf3e3557777c.html

 

Civic Issues 2: Keeping US Tech out of China

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For years, the current president and his administration have harped on the dangers of China eclipsing the United State in numerous forms of industry. Perhaps the greatest of these supposed threats is China’s burgeoning technological sector. The tone of panic and us-versus-them mentality of many lawmakers discussing technological globalism raises some questions. In particular, how much of this protectionism is justified? More importantly, is it an effective step towards profit and progress, or is clueless emotional sentiment sending us backwards?

These questions have been on the mind of many readers this week, as the Commerce Department considers a new set of rules which would allow the United States government to bar transactions between American and Chinese technology firms. These rules won’t just effect US tech companies attempting to procure parts from China, either; they also impact American firms seeking to export products abroad. More specifically, they are considering measures such as limiting the number of export licenses that may be held by a company that sells products to, or shares intellectual property with, China. A variety of US technology firms are responding with increased panic to the notion that the government might cut them off from suppliers of parts at any point, without notice or reason besides vague protectionism. Though Trump’s administration has been idly discussing similar proposals for months, the new proposed rules have legislative force behind them that previous discussions of the issue lacked.

In turn, foreign firms are starting to shun American firms and their products, fearing that these rules, if put into place, would prevent their American suppliers from creating their technological products.

In particular, this month, Trump has considered restricting sales of aircraft parts to China. This discussion and potential policy is part of a larger effort on behalf of the Trump administration to keep “sensitive information” out of China. This concern about vague trade secrets is the reason high-tech industries in particular have been the target of the brunt of this scrutiny. Companies such as General Electric, for example, might no longer be able to sell jet engines, because General Electric sells airplane parts to China as part of a larger multinational corporate airfare trade system.

Though these rules might have been drafted in order to keep business within the United States, ironically, the threat of these rules is causing businesses to move more and more of their research and development facilities to locations outside the United States, in order to guarantee timely, uninterrupted access to trade with China in the uncertain future. Investment and planning for new development is increasingly being turned to locations outside the United States, which are safe from these rules.

In fact, the very jobs Trump’s administration may be trying to protect, in the microchip industry and other similar manufacturing sectors of the tech industry, are most threatened by these rules. Because the market for their products is being threatened, US companies are accelerating the speed at which they transfer jobs in manufacturing to facilities overseas. In turn, this lack of US manufacture money ceases to fund research and development within the United States. Individual talented scientists and researchers gravitate towards company centers in other nations, with less stringent trade regulations. Though this brain drain might seem like a small issue at first, when combined with the redirected flow of investment away from the United States, it is nothing to sneeze at.

The most threatening factor of the rules, to the industry, is how broad and far-reaching they are. According to the New York Times, “The proposed rule would allow the commerce secretary to block transactions involving technology that was tied to a “foreign adversary” and that posed a significant risk to the United States.” This is a rule so vague that companies have every right to be worried about how it might be applied. It follows a history of vague and threating trade restrictions with China, such as the one with Chinese telecommunications company Huawei last year, which allowed the US government to block the purchase of technology designed by a “foreign adversary”. With rules so vague already in place, it is possible that technological protectionism could take effect in trade with any number of countries.

Why is it that, despite the outcry from real corporations, policies and rules promoting blind protectionism continue to be developed? What makes people so passionately drawn to economic protectionism and fear around technology? What sorts of misunderstandings drive this fear, and how could our society and government clear them up in order to take economically productive steps in the future? These are all questions to ponder in relation to this issue.

 

Sources for this post:

Live Laugh Libum (Roman Sacrifice Bread, 160 BC)

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Last week I made libum, another of many baked items detailed in the recipes section of Cato’s De Agricultura, the oldest surviving piece of Latin prose, which was composed around 160 BC, though it is safe to assume its recipes had been traditional in the countryside for centuries prior. The English translation of today’s original recipe may be found in the University of Chicago’s translated version of the manuscript here: http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Cato/De_Agricultura/E*.html

That’s right! Despite the terrible response to the previous week’s experiment, I decided to make another of Cato’s baked goods. This one, libum, is one of the more famous baked goods of ancient Rome, referenced in the poetry of Horace and Ovid as a baked good regularly prepared both for personal consumption and as a sacrifice to the gods. It’s sort of an incredibly dense, doughy, unleavened bread. This one has a similar ingredients list to savillum. Here’s my recipe, after converting Roman pounds into grams into cups, as with the previous Cato recipe:

3.5 cups “fresh cheese”

2.66 cups flour

2 eggs

bay leaves

Mix all ingredients thoroughly and knead the dough for a few minutes. Divide into two mini-loaves and let them sit for fifteen minutes to firm up. Line the bottom of a greased glass casserole dish (or actual bread pan, or cookie sheet, or whatever. I own one casserole dish, okay?) with bay leaves. Place the two loaves atop the leaf-lined sheets, and bake until thoroughly cooked and golden.

I wasn’t sure how I felt about this bread — I guess I’m going to call it bread — while I was making it. I’m never quite sure how I feel about bay leaves, and those are really the only thing giving this lump of ricotta, flour, and eggs any semblance of flavor. However, the aroma of the baking bread made me hopeful. Once again, I was left disappointed by the lack of whole wheat flour in the downtown area, and was left to use the same all-purpose flour as the previous week, producing two extremely white loaves.

As soon as I took the two golden loaves from the oven, I knew this was unlike anything I had ever seen before. It looks like bread, but there’s very little actual crust formed around the outside. The consistency of the crust is comparable to the waxy crust on some kinds of cheeses. It sort of looks like cheese, too. I guess what I’ve done is created a loaf of heavily diluted cheese.

It’s much less dessert-like than the previous Roman baking experiment. This is definitely a plain bread item that may be enjoyed with sweet and savory toppings. We tried our standard gamut of toppings (salt, black currant jam, marmalade artfully lifted from a hotel buffet, honey, Old Bay) and all were delighted by the combination of creamed honey and this sacrificial bread.

The similarities to actual bread cease as soon as you pick up a loaf. It’s heavier and more dense than anyone expected. It’s almost comical, watching someone’s face change as the brick of baked bread is placed into their hands. The taste of the bay leaves dominates the flavor of the bread, as expected. The leaves also left some pretty imprints on the flat sides of the loaves.

However, despite the bay taste, the bread pairs well with both sweet and savory toppings. Below the not-crust, the consistency of the bread itself is not bread-like, but far more dense and doughy. Again, it seems like we just created an extremely-diluted wheel of cheese. Surprisingly, it does not seem raw or undercooked, and was not as dry as I had expected it might be.

Overall, reviewers rated libum, particularly when topped with honey or marmalade, much higher than they did savillum. Personally, I have to disagree. Though it probably just reflects on my personal tastes and what I ate as a child, the gentle, barely-there sweetness and the light qualities of the savillum appealed to me much more than the dense, hearty libum.

I suppose it’s up to you to decide, which is to say: please help me eat this bread. If you see anything you’d like to try, comment and I’ll bring you some. I just finished the sweet potato pudding less than a week ago. So many of my meals consist of ancient mush. Please help me.

Overall, a decent experiment. Not something I’d personally be inclined to make again, but it was a surprising hit among friends. I was hoping to make a joke along the lines of “if this is all they offered their gods, I can see why Mount Vesuvius did what it did” but I really can’t. This is decent.

I guess plain white bread is a safe bet anywhere.

The Barber of Savillum (Roman Cheesecake, 160 BC)

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Today we’re making savillum, one of many baked desserts detailed in the recipes section of Cato’s De Agricultura, the oldest surviving piece of Latin prose, which was composed around 160 BC, though it is safe to assume its recipes had been traditional in the countryside for centuries prior. The English translation of today’s original recipe may be found in the University of Chicago’s translated version of the manuscript here: http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Cato/De_Agricultura/E*.htmlSeveral of these ancient Roman pastries have been called “Cato’s Cheesecake” due to their containing cheeses processed in a variety of ways, ounce for ounce, none is more cheesecake-like in its composition than savillum. Here is the recipe, in English, with the quantities I used (the original listed quantities in Roman pounds, which I had to convert to grams and then to cups):

3.5 cups “fresh cheese”

1.25 cups flour

3 eggs

6 tbsp honey, plus more for the top of the pastry

poppyseeds

My first disappointment came when I couldn’t find any whole wheat flour at Target and had to go the less-traditional white flour route. Alas. Life goes on. When it comes to the usual choices for cheese-based pastries (cream cheese vs. ricotta), I ended up going with ricotta, because its composition (just milk, whereas cream cheese is made of milk and cream) is more similar to the “fresh” cheeses available in the Roman country in Cato’s time. As the original recipe said, I baked the mixture of flour, egg, cheese, and honey, until it was thoroughly done, then took it out, covered it in more honey and poppyseeds, and cooked it for another few minutes. The original recipe recommends baking the pastry covered, but I didn’t have a cover for my casserole dish, so there’s another difference between the original and mine. The steam from covered baking might have made the savillum slightly less dense. I probably won’t ever know. Here’s how mine turned out:

I don’t think it’s that bad, but many people disagreed with me on this one. Very dense. Interesting texture. Here’s a tally of how my sample of college students felt about this one:

Number of people whose opinion was entirely positive: |||

Number of people who expressed neutral to positive opinions: |||||

Number of people who expressed neutral to negative opinions: ||||

Number of people who said it “tastes like homemade playdough”: |||

Number of people who spit it out immediately: ||

Regardless, I’m sitting here eating it for breakfast, and I don’t think it’s terrible. Not too sweet, not too flavorful, mostly just a flat, pale, doughy, dense piece of something. Vaguely edible, mildly sweet. In my opinion, not terrible. However, I’m quickly learning that others value flavor much, much more than I do. I often view food as a means to an end when others view it as art. Anyway, here are some pictures.

 

 

 

Civic Issues 1: Technological Illiteracy and the Iowa Caucus

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This semester, I plan to write about issues of technology, and particularly privacy in politics and public policy. Individual privacy is an issue that is increasingly prevalent in this technical age, with more and more data created and stored about everyone at all times. There is so much misinformation and ambiguity clouding this issue, both among policymakers and among ordinary civilians. I hope to increase my literacy about these issues and spread an interest in remaining up-to-date on these topics.

Though it’s not every day that a major privacy is headlines the news, at this point it’s probably at least a monthly occurrence. This week, I’m going to reflect on the Iowa Caucus disaster from the perspective of privacy risks and the technological illiteracy rife in politics today.

For those who don’t know: the results of the caucus have been delayed and muddled by the use of an app, developed by a consulting group called Shadow for the Democratic National Convention, as part of the DNC’s attempt to portray technological prowess and simplify the caucus process. But oh, were it so simple. The app ended up malfunctioning, releasing unhelpful error messages to thousands of voters. The DNC had attempted to use what they called “security by obscurity”, not releasing any details about the app, the group that released it, or the security vetting it had gone through before using it for the caucuses.

Here are some facts we know now about the app and its developers. The app was developed in the two month before the caucuses, and the consulting group was paid about $60,000, much less than expected for the development of any decently functional app at such a large scale. The app was so rushed that it was distributed through two different beta-testing platforms, rather than normal distribution platforms, which made the proces much more complicated for voters. In fact, the consulting group did not even pay for the full plans of the beta-testing software, relying on the limited free version for the rollout of the app. The instructions for the app and its improperly explained two-factor identification system left many users confused, with some of them sharing pictures on social media containing sensitive voter information. Shadow’s past ventures have been rejected by various political groups, including the campaign of Joe Biden, who said the group “did not pass our security checklist”. Finally, when volunteers saw the disaster coming ahead of the caucuses, the Democratic National Convention did not adjust their plans. All this suggests not only incompetence on behalf of the developers, but also negligence, ignorance, and a willingness to compromise security for a tech-savvy image on behalf of the DNC.

How does something like this happen, and how is there not enough accountability in government to condemn those responsible for the issue? The answer is the general public lack of understanding regarding how technology works, and when it should and shouldn’t be trusted with something as essential as elections. Though this news event is not directly on the topic of my blog, I believe it is a good introduction to why technological literacy is an essential part of political discussions of civic issues. Though there were paper backups for the caucus information, the entire fiasco caused public unrest and distrust of the political system’s handling of technology, though this is certainly not the first time this has happened. With such a precarious development, there was potential for so much more to go wrong. Even with no actual malicious actors, this lack of literacy is a threat to information security. The surrounding conspiracy theories, confusion, and individual leaks of information will continue to make the process more complicated than it needs to be, and the delay in caucus results only raises political tensions. In the coming months, I hope to discuss some of these relevant issues, in order to make myself a more responsible citizen.

Source for facts on the Iowa Caucus app: https://www.theverge.com/2020/2/5/21123337/iowas-caucus-fracas-tech-literacy

The Proof is in the Pudding: Sweet Potato Pudding (England, 1640)

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This week’s recipe was provided by the Grenville family of England, who kept a recipe book between 1640 and 1750. It was delivered to me through an article on the website of the Folger Shakespeare Library.

Hello everyone! It is week one of historical cooking and I am diving right in with an interesting recipe from 17th-century England. Dig your petticoats and felt hats out of your closet! We’re travelling back to the English Interregnum.

On one hand, this recipe is easier than some others, because it is not very old compared to some other recipes I plan to explore, it was originally written in English, and it has been adapted with clear meanings for all words and quantities for each ingredient.

On the other hand, it’s a pudding. It requires peeling seven potatoes. And all I have is a small butter knife.

Here’s the recipe for this sweet potato pudding dessert:

  • 3 lbs sweet potatoes
  • 3/4 lb butter
  • 1/2 cup sherry [I substituted orange juice as a fun and legal treat]
  • 1/2 tsp cinnamon
  • 5 eggs

That’s it.

One thing that stands out here to the contemporary baker is that there is no salt in this recipe. I briefly wondered whether it was worth sacrificing what might otherwise be a good balanced pudding to the absolute aversion to flavor that characterizes English cuisine. I decided to remain faithful to the recipe. No salt. We’ll come back to that.

I did some conversions and found out that 3 pounds of sweet potatoes equal about seven sweet potatoes from McLanahan’s, so that is what I did. Next, the recipe calls for boiling the potatoes. Since I only own a tiny little saucepan, I boiled half of the potatoes and microwaved the other half at the same time. This might be cheating, because the Grenvilles did not have microwave ovens. Nonetheless, the microwaved potatoes retained much more color, texture, and flavor than the boiled ones. Also, cutting the potatoes into cubes to boil them was rather difficult, as I was using the only knife I own, a single tiny butter knife from IKEA.

Did I mention I peeled all those potatoes with that knife?

I’d never baked pudding before, which was an interesting challenge, since I had no idea how to tell when the jiggling mess was finished.

The book for scale here makes the pudding look really small, though the truth is that The Complete Works of William Shakespeare are just really big.

My thoughts on this recipe: It’s not bad! It’s mildly sweet because of the potatoes. The pudding feels rather dense and has a lot of moisture. Considering that I mixed and mashed everything with a single small IKEA fork, I think the consistency was surprisingly decent, though it could be improved with modern mixing and mashing tools. I hadn’t been aware just how much of a difference the lack of salt made, though, until my friends started pouring salt on top of their pudding. Also, this is a TON of butter. It tastes a concoction that is at least 20% butter, since that’s exactly what it is. If I were to adapt this recipe into something I might make regularly, I would make the following adjustments: I would add another 2-3 eggs and another potato the balance out the texture, and I would add salt, and a few other seasonings (maybe nutmeg and ginger?). Orange juice was a good sherry substitute, but I think I might try other fruit juices, or mixtures of juices. You couldn’t taste the orange juice right away unless you knew it was there, but the flavor was still prominent. We tried serving the pudding on its own, with salt, with Old Bay seasoning, with various plain crackers and biscuits, and with vanilla ice cream. On top of the plain biscuits, this was a light and interesting snack. This being a rich and sweet-potato-heavy dish, it would make a great addition to an extravagant meal like a Thanksgiving dinner. I’m also curious how this would fare as a cheesecake variant. I’m tempted to replace some of the butter and sweet potatoes with cream cheese and bake this again with a graham cracker crust. Overall? I’d give it 3.5/5 stars. With some modern tweaks, I could easily see it becoming a 4/5.

Here are some reviews from a wide variety of people I found and coaxed into trying 1640 pudding at 1 AM yesterday:

“I like this.” (Pause.) “I don’t like this.” (Extended pause.) “This tastes familiar in the most terrifying way. This tastes how sleep paralysis feels.”

“It’s better with salt.”

“It’s better with Old Bay.”

“Needs salt. 3.5/5 stars.”

“Without salt, I can’t rate this because it tastes like nothing. It smells really good. With salt, it tastes the way it smells. 4/5 stars.”

“Without salt, I’d give it a 5.3/10. With salt, it’s a solid 7.6/10. Texture: -4/10. Visual appeal: 0/10. Tastes really good paired with more orange juice.”

“This needs salt it needs salt please put salt in it. It needs salt. It’s wet but it would have been worse if it were dry. A disturbing but correct amount of moisture.”

“It isn’t too wet or too dry but it’s just wet and the texture makes me uncomfortable. Unfortunate that it had to be this way.”

“I like this. I like it as a dessert. Nice and light.”

“I don’t like this as a dessert. If someone told me this was dessert I would slap them. It’s good as a snack. Not as a dessert. What did people even do for fun in the 1640s?”

“This reminds me of an outlet without an outlet cover.”

I’m looking forward to tackling some simpler vegetable dishes next week.

New Year, New Passion: Historical Cooking

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Blogging about the minutia of Shakespeare’s productions this semester has been fun. However, I think it’s time for me to move on. When I consider more blog posts I might write about Shakespeare, only one idea really stands out to me as something I really, really want to do. The entire semester, I’ve been idly entertaining the idea of cooking a Shakespearean dinner. I’ve made lists of courses and snacks of Elizabethan and Jacobean England I might cook and assemble for a group of modern-day students to rate and review. Of course, I continued putting this idea off, searching for things that were easier to do each week as I ran out of time to blog. Therefore, after much time and deliberation, I have decided to do just what I’ve been putting off this entire semester. That’s right: historical cooking.

I like cooking. I like history. I’ve been putting both interests off in college this year. An entire Shakespearean supper seems intimidating to me right now; for one thing, I don’t know how to cook a bird. However, just one ancient or historical recipe a day? That’s something I think I could manage.

So where am I going to get my recipes? I’ve found some fascinating resources. One is the manuscript of Apicius, a gourmet cookbook from ancient Rome. It’s an extensive book of slightly vague, hotly-contested recipes, likely attributed not to a single chef, but to many chefs, tied together by a name closely associated with cooking in Latin. Another resource is the Yale library of clay tablets from Ancient Babylon. Several of these contain recipes. I’ve also found recipe sources from ancient Mesopotamia, Victorian England, and every time and space in between. Throughout this semester, I hope to cook my way through a wide array of settings, discussing the cultural context for each dish and discussing what modern people think of it, as I attempt to follow each recipe as closely as I can with the limited resources of a college student.

Let’s get cooking.