Surreal Saturday: Cupcake Cannon (YouTube)

OK. Cupcakes? Check. Cannon that shoots cupcakes with 125 psi pressure? Check. Camera that shoots slow-mo at 700 FPS? Check. Willing idiots? Check. Ready... (via Gizmodo)

Drive-by Reviews Of Analytic Methods (ADVAT.blogspot.com)

Everyone has heard of a drive-by shooting but what about a "drive-by review"?

I am teaching a graduate seminar in Advanced Analytic Techniques this term. The core of the course is a series of student projects that hyperfocus on the application of a particular analytic technique (such as patent analysis or social network analysis) to a discrete topic (such as the political situation in Turkey or the future of oil and gas exploration in the Caspian Sea). The best of these projects wind up in The Analyst's Cookbook.

Each week, however, in addition to diving deep into these individual techniques and topics, we also work as a group to come to some conclusions about a number of other techniques. In preparation, each of the students selects, reads and summarizes a number of articles on whichever technique is under the microscope for the week.

They then post these summaries and links to the full text of the articles on our Advanced Analytic Techniques blog. Each Thursday, we sit down and have a discussion about the readings. We also run a short exercise using the technique. From the combination of discussion and exercise, we try to answer four questions:

• How do we define this technique?
• What are the strengths and weaknesses of this technique?
• How do you do this technique (Step by step)?
• What was our experience like when we tried to apply this technique?

Once we think we have pretty good answers to these questions, we post what we have developed to the blog in order to capture our collective thinking on the technique in question.

Obviously, this is where the term "drive-by review" comes from. Such an exercise only serves to familiarize the students with the technique under consideration. The blog format, however, permits us to open this series of exercises up to practitioners, academics and intel studies students at other institutions for comment and additional insights -- which is what I am doing with this post.

This year, due to the very large size of the class, we are actually able to do a little comparative analysis. I have divided the team into two halves. We explore the techniques collectively but each team comes to it own conclusions independently. It is sort of like getting a second opinion after a visit to the doctor.

Last week we took a look at Delphi and this week we are examining Roleplaying. Over the last couple of weeks we have looked at Best Practices, Red Teaming and Imagery Analysis.

Don't hesitate to jump in! We learn from your experience and expertise.

The Whole Of The Cyberthreat In A Single Tweet (Scribd.com)

According to ReadWriteWeb, Raffi Krikorian, a developer for Twitter, posted a complete version of a single "tweet", or 140 character Twitter message, this weekend on Scribd.com.

You can see the results for yourselves below:

map-of-a-tweet

In addition to the 140 (or less) characters in a tweet, this map shows all of the metadata thrown off by each and every post.

Some of this stuff is harmless but it is surprising how little metadata it takes to uniquely identify a particular computer. Don't believe me? Check out Panopticlick. Based on their fairly clever method, it only takes about 33 bits of data to uniquely ID a computer.

Note, I said ID the computer, not the user behind it. Likewise, knowing which 33 bits of data one needs to hide or dirty up helps the bad guys hide themselves and makes it difficult if not impossible to determine attribution by technical means alone.

More importantly, it leaves the rest of us, who do not know how much personal and identifying data we are providing, at the mercy if those who do. "Those who do" doesn't just include criminals either. It includes corporations and governments as well.

What to do about all of this is beyond me (though I think Jeff Carr at IntelFusion does some of the best thinking on the subject) but it is charts like this one that, for me, highlight the importance of this issue.

Surreal Saturday: The Periodic Table Of Periodic Tables (Flickr via Neatorama)

Nothing more to say, really. Click on the pic or this link to get the full image... (via Neatorama)

The Hidden Pattern Behind Everything We Do (Brsts.com)

"A revolutionary new theory showing how we can predict human behavior..."

"...the patterns of human mobility in an era of total surveillance..."

"Your life may look random to you, but everything from your visits to a web page to your visits to the doctor are predictable, and happen in bursts."

I haven't even had a chance to read Laszlo Barabasi's new book, Bursts, (it doesn't come out until the 29th) but the quotes above (from the book itself, Clay Shirky and Ogi Ogas) have got me pretty excited.

Yes, yes, some of it is back of the book puffery but more important than the quotes is the author. We still use Barabasi's book, Linked, as supplemental reading material in our theory class. It is an intellectually rich, yet still accessible, look at the emerging science of networks and I heartily recommend it.

Now, it seems that Barabasi thinks he can make some accurate predictions regarding human behavior. This, of course, is going to be of definite interest to intelligence analysts. I will hold comments until I actually get to see the book but, given the reputation of the author...let's just say my spider sense is tingling.

One of the most fascinating things Barabasi is doing in advance of the release of his book is a little social experiment. You can go to the Bursts website and "adopt" a word from the book (You can see my certificate above -- I got the word "along").

Once you adopt a word, you can gain points by guessing other words in the book. As you and others who are playing the game do so, the book gradually becomes revealed to all of the players. Top point scorers also get signed free copies of the book from Barabasi.

I am just guessing but I suspect that Barabasi thinks that the data generated from the activity of the players will confirm some aspect (or many aspects) of his predictive model. I can see where number of participants might well come in bursts (My posting this to my blog may cause, for example, a burst of activity). I can see where sections of the book will be uncovered by the participants in bursts of activity and how the number of books sold might also occur in predictable bursts. I can also see how one burst might be predictive of the next burst.

Pure speculation, of course, but even if I am wrong, the Bursts game is fun (and a clever piece of marketing strategy) and the game of trying to figure out what Barabasi is up to this time is even funner.