This Week's Finds in Mathematical Physics (Week 209) [Archive]

John Baez

Nov23-04, 03:08 AM

<jabberwocky><div class="vbmenu_control"><a href="jabberwocky:;" onClick="newWindow=window.open('','usenetCode','toolbar=no, location=no,scrollbars=yes,resizable=yes,status=no ,width=650,height=400'); newWindow.document.write('<HTML><HEAD><TITLE>Usenet ASCII</TITLE></HEAD><BODY topmargin=0 leftmargin=0 BGCOLOR=#F1F1F1><table border=0 width=625><td bgcolor=midnightblue><font color=#F1F1F1>This Usenet message\'s original ASCII form: </font></td></tr><tr><td width=449><br><br><font face=courier><UL><PRE>\n\nAlso available at http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/week209.html\n\nNovember 21, 2004\nThis Week\'s Finds in Mathematical Physics - Week 209\nJohn Baez\n\nTime flies! This June, Peter May and I organized a workshop on\nn-categories at the Institute for Mathematics and its Applications:\n\n1) n-Categories: Foundations and Applications,\nhttp://www.ima.umn.edu/categories/\n\nI\'ve been meaning to write about it ever since, but I keep\nputting it off because it would be so much work. The meeting lasted\nalmost two weeks. It was an intense, exhausting affair packed\nwith talks, conversations, and "Russian-style seminars" where the\naudience interrupted the speakers with lots of questions. I took\nabout 50 pages of notes. How am I supposed to describe all that?!\n\nOh well... I\'ll just dive in. I\'ll quickly list all the official\ntalks in this conference. I won\'t describe the many interesting\n"impromptu talks", some of which you can see on the above webpage.\nNor will I explain what n-categories are, or what they\'re good for!\nIf you want to learn what they\'re good for, you should go back to\n"week73" and read "The Tale of n-Categories". And if you want to know\nwhat they *are*, try this brand-new book:\n\n2) Eugenia Cheng and Aaron Lauda, Higher-Dimensional Categories:\nan Illustrated Guide Book, available free online at:\nhttp://www.dpmms.cam.ac.uk/~elgc2/guidebook/\n\nEugenia and Aaron wrote it specially for the workshop! It\'s\npacked with pictures and it\'s lots of fun.\n\nI\'m just going to list the talks....\n\nThrowing etiquette to the winds, I kicked off the conference\nmyself with two talks explaining some reasons why n-categories are\ninteresting and what they should be like:\n\n3) John Baez, Why n-Categories? and What n-categories should be like.\nNotes available at http://www.ima.umn.edu/categories/#mon\n\nIf you\'re a long-time reader of This Week\'s Finds you\'ll know\nwhat I said: n-categories give a new world of math in which equations\nare always replaced by isomorphisms, and this world is incredibly rich\nin structure. The n-categories called "n-groupoids" magically know\neverything there is to know about homotopy theory, while those called\n"n-categories with duals" know everything there is to know about the\ntopology of manifolds. There are, unfortunately, some details that\nstill need to be worked out!\n\nAfter my talks there was a reception. Later, over dinner,\nTom Leinster gave a "Russian style seminar" outlining the\ndifferent approaches to n-categories:\n\n4) Tom Leinster, Survey and Taxonomy. Talk based on chapter 10\nof his book Higher Operads, Higher Categories, Cambridge U. Press,\nCambridge, 2004, also available free online at: math.CT/0305049.\n\nYou\'ll notice these young n-category people are smart: they\nforce their publishers to keep their books available for free online!\nAll scientists should do this, since the only ones who make serious\nmoney from scientific monographs are the publishers. What scientists\nget from writing technical books is not money but attention. As\nGeorge Franck said, "Attention is a mode of payment... reputation is the\nasset into which the attention received from colleagues crystallizes."\n\nThe next morning began with a triple-header talk on "weak categories":\n\n5) Andre Joyal, Peter May and Timothy Porter, Weak categories.\nNotes available at http://www.ima.umn.edu/categories/#tues\n\nHere a "weak category" means a category where the usual laws hold\nonly up to homotopy, where the homotopies satisfy laws of their own\nup to homotopy, ad infinitum. If you know what weak infinity-categories\nare, you can define a weak category to be one of these where all the\nj-morphisms are equivalences for j > 1. But, the nice thing is that\nthere are ways to define weak categories without the full machinery\nof infinity-categories! People have come up with different approaches:\n"categories enriched over simplicial sets", "Segal categories",\n"A_infinity categories" and also Joyal\'s "quasicategories". The talk\nwas a nice introduction to all these approaches.\n\nThen Michael Batanin explained his definition of infinity-categories.\nThis was a blackboard talk, so there are no notes on the web, but you\ncan try his original paper:\n\n6) Michael Batanin, Monoidal globular categories as natural\nenvironment for the theory of weak n-categories, Adv. Math. 136\n(1998), 39-103, also available at\nhttp://www.ics.mq.edu.au/~mbatanin/papers.html\n\nand when you get stuck, try the books by Cheng-Lauda and Leinster.\n\nOver dinner, Eugenia Cheng and Tom Leinster explained the concepts of\n"operad" and "multicategory" which play such an important role in so\nmuch work on n-categories. Again there are no notes, so try their books.\n\nI forget when it happened, but sometime around the second or third day\nof the conference people decided it was too much of a nuisance listening\nto math lectures while eating dinner - mainly because there wasn\'t enough\nroom in the dining hall to take notes, and the blackboards weren\'t big\nenough. So at that point, we switched to having lectures *after* dinner.\nAs I said, this workshop was not for wimps!\n\nThe morning of the third day began with a no-holds-barred minicourse\non model categories by Peter May:\n\n7) Peter May, Model categories. Notes available at\nhttp://www.ima.umn.edu/categories/#wed\n\nModel categories are a wonderful framework for relating different\napproaches to homotopy theory, and a bunch of people hope they can also\nbe used to relate different approaches to n-categories.\n\nThen Clemens Berger explained Andre Joyal\'s approach to weak n-categories:\n\n8) Clemens Berger, Cellular definitions.\nNotes available at http://www.ima.umn.edu/categories/#wed\n\nThen, either during or after dinner, Eugenia Cheng explained various\n"opetopic" approaches to weak n-categories. Again, the best way to learn\nabout these is to read the book she wrote with Lauda, or else the book by\nLeinster.\n\nOn the morning of the fourth day, Andre Joyal explained his work on\nquasicategories - an approach to weak categories in which they are\nsimplicial sets satisfying a restricted version of the Kan condition.\nThey\'ve been around a long time, but Joyal is redoing all of category\ntheory in this context! He\'s been writing a book about this, which\ndeserves to be called "Quasicategories for the Working Mathematician".\nSince Joyal is a perfectionist, this will take forever to finish.\nHowever, we\'re hoping to extract a preliminary version from him for\nthe proceedings of this conference. For now, you can read a bit about\nquasicategories in Tim Porter\'s notes mentioned in item 5) above.\n\nThen Tom Leinster and Nick Gurski spoke about Ross Street\'s definition\nto weak infinity-categories, where they are simplicial sets satisfying\nan even more subtly restricted version of the Kan condition.\n\n9) Nick Gurski and Tom Leinster, Simplicial definition.\nNotes available at http://www.ima.umn.edu/categories/#thur\n\nStreet\'s definition is tough to understand at first, but it should\neventually include Joyal\'s quasicategories as a special case, which is\nnice. For Street\'s own discussion, see:\n\n10) Ross Street, Weak omega-categories, in Diagrammatic Morphisms\nand Applications, eds. David Radford, Fernando Souza, and David Yetter,\nContemp. Math. 318, AMS, Providence, Rhode Island, 2003, pp. 207-213.\nAlso available as www.maths.mq.edu.au/~street/Womcats.pdf\n\nIt relies on some work by Dominic Verity which has finally been\nwritten up after many years of unpublished limbo:\n\n11) Dominic Verity, Complicial sets, available as math.CT/0410412.\n\nAfter dinner we took a turn towards applications, and Larry Breen\nexplained his work on n-stacks and n-gerbes. An n-stack is like a\nsheaf that has an (n-1)-category of sections, while an n-gerbe has an\n(n-1)-groupoid of sections. Such things show up a lot in algebraic\ngeometry, and more recently in mathematical physics inspired by string\ntheory. Alas, the audience was rather tired this evening, so Larry\nonly got to 1-stacks and 1-gerbes! But he gave an impromptu talk later\nwhere he reached n = 2, and the notes for both talks are available in\ncombined form here:\n\n12) Larry Breen, n-Stacks and n-gerbes: homotopy theory.\nNotes available at http://www.ima.umn.edu/categories/#thur\n\nYou\'ve heard about David Corfield\'s quest for a philosophy of real\nmathematics in "week198". He\'s one of the few philosophers who\nunderstands enough math to realize how cool n-categories are - which\nmay explain why he\'s having trouble getting a job. On the morning of\nthe fourth day, he gave a talk on the impact n-categories could have\nin philosophy:\n\n13) David Corfield, n-Category theory as a catalyst for change in\nphilosophy. Notes available at http://www.ima.umn.edu/categories/#fri\n\nLater that day, Bertrand Toen explained Segal categories, which are\nanother popular approach to weak categories:\n\n14) Bertrand Toen, Segal categories.\nNotes by Joachim Kock available at http://www.ima.umn.edu/categories/#fri\n\nAfter dinner, he spoke about n-stacks and n-gerbes:\n\n15) Bertrand Toen, n-Stacks and n-gerbes: algebraic geometry.\nNotes by Joachim Kock available at http://www.ima.umn.edu/categories/#fri\n\nEveryone slept all weekend long. Then on Monday of the second week,\nthe homotopy theorist Zbigniew Fiedorowicz spoke about his work on a\nkind of n-fold monoidal category that has an n-fold loop space as its\nnerve. He has some good papers on the web about this, too:\n\n16) Zbigniew Fiedorowicz, n-Fold categories.\nNotes available at http://www.ima.umn.edu/categories/#mon2\n\nC. Balteanu, Z. Fiedorowicz, R. Schwaenzl and R. Vogt,\nIterated monoidal categories, available at math.AT/9808082.\n\nZ. Fiedorowicz, Constructions of E_n operads, available at math.AT/9808089.\n\nStefan Forcey continued this theme by discussing enrichment over\nn-fold monoidal categories. He also has a number of papers about\nthis on the arXiv, of which I\'ll just mention one:\n\n17) Stefan Forcey, Higher enrichment: n-fold Operads and enriched\nn-categories, delooping and weakening.\nNotes available at http://www.ima.umn.edu/categories/#mon2\n\nStefan Forcey, Enrichment over iterated monoidal categories,\nAlgebraic and Geometric Topology, 4 (2004), 95-119, available online\nat http://www.maths.warwick.ac.uk/agt/AGTVol4/agt-4-7.abs.html\nAlso available as math.CT/0403152.\n\nAfter dinner we discussed how to relate different definitions of weak\nn-category.\n\nOn Tuesday of the second week, the logician Michael Makkai presented his\nastounding project of redoing logic in a way that completely eliminates\nthe concept of "equality". This *forces* you to do all of mathematics\nusing weak infinity-categories. I thought this stuff was great, in part\nbecause I finally understood it, and in part because it leads naturally\nto the "opetopic" definition of n-categories that James Dolan and I\nintroduced. The idea of eliminating equality was very much on our mind\nin inventing this definition, but we didn\'t create a system of logic that\nsystematizes this idea.\n\nThere are no notes for Makkai\'s talk online, but you can get a lot of good\nstuff from his website, including:\n\n18) Michael Makkai, On comparing definitions of weak n-category,\navailable at http://www.math.mcgill.ca/makkai/\n\nand this more technical paper which works out the details of his vision:\n\n19) Michael Makkai, The multitopic omega-category of all multitopic\nomega-categories, available at http://www.math.mcgill.ca/makkai/\n\nAfter Makkai\'s talk, Mark Weber spoke on n-categorical generalizations\nof the concept of "monad", which is a nice way of describing mathematical\ngadgets. There are no notes for this talk, but his work on higher operads\nis at least morally related:\n\n20) Mark Weber, Operads within monoidal pseudo algebras, available as\nmath.CT/0410230.\n\nAgain, after dinner we talked about how to relate different definitions\nof weak n-category.\n\nOn Wednesday of the second week, Michael Batanin spoke about his\nrecent work relating n-categories to n-fold loop spaces. Again no\nnotes, but you can read these papers:\n\n21) Michael Batanin, The Eckmann-Hilton argument, higher operads and\nE_n-spaces, available at http://www.ics.mq.edu.au/~mbatanin/papers.html\n\nMichael Batanin, The combinatorics of iterated loop spaces,\navailable at http://www.ics.mq.edu.au/~mbatanin/papers.html\n\nThen Joachim Kock laid the ground for a discussion of n-categories\nand topological quantum field theories, or "TQFTs", by explaining the\ndefinition of a TQFT and the classification of 2d TQFTs:\n\n22) Joachim Kock, Topological quantum field theory primer.\nNotes available at http://www.ima.umn.edu/categories/#wed2\n\nIn the evening, Marco Mackaay and I said more about the relation\nbetween TQFTs and n-categories:\n\n23) Marco Mackaay, Topological quantum field theories.\nNotes available at http://www.ima.umn.edu/categories/#wed2\n\n24) John Baez, Space and state, spacetime and process.\nNotes available at http://www.ima.umn.edu/categories/#wed2\n\nOn Thursday, Ross Street started the day in a pleasantly different\nway - he gave a historical account of work on categories and\nn-categories in Australia! Australia is home to much of the best\nwork on these subjects, so if you can understand his history you\'ll\nwind up understanding these subjects pretty well:\n\n25) Ross Street, An Australian conspectus of higher category theory.\nNotes available at http://www.ima.umn.edu/categories/#thur2\n\nAs a younger exponent of the Australian tradition, it was then nicely\nappropriate for Steve Lack to speak about ways of building a model\ncategory of 2-categories:\n\n26) Steve Lack, Higher model categories. Notes available at\nhttp://www.ima.umn.edu/categories/#thur2\n\nIn the afternoon we had a blast of computer science. First John Power\ngave a hilarious talk phrased in terms of how one should convince\ncomputer theorists to embrace categories, then 2-categories, and then\nmaybe higher categories:\n\n27) John Power, Why tricategories? Notes available at\nhttp://www.ima.umn.edu/categories/#thur2\n\nI spoke about Power\'s paper with this title back in "week53"; now\nyou can get it online!\n\nThen Phillipe Gaucher, Lisbeth Falstrup and Eric Goubault spoke about\nhigher-dimensional automata and directed homotopy theory:\n\n28) Phillipe Gaucher, Towards a homotopy theory of higher dimensional\nautomata. Notes available at http://www.ima.umn.edu/categories/#thur2\n\nLisbeth Falstrup, More on directed topology and concurrency,\nNotes available at http://www.ima.umn.edu/categories/#thur2\n\nEric Goubault, Directed homotopy theory and higher-dimensional automata,\nNotes available at http://www.ima.umn.edu/categories/#thur2\n\nOn Friday, Martin Hyland and Tony Elmendorf gave a double-header\ntalk on higher-dimensional linear algebra and how some concepts in\nthis subject can be simplified using symmetric multicategories.\nThere are, alas, no notes for this talk. You just had to be there.\n\nFinally, my student Alissa Crans gave a talk on higher-dimensional\nlinear algebra, with an emphasis on categorified Lie algebras:\n\n29) Alissa Crans, Higher linear algebra. Notes available at\nNotes available at http://www.ima.umn.edu/categories/#fri2\n\nHers was the last talk in the workshop! I would like to say more about\nit, but I\'m exhausted... and her talk fits naturally into a discussion of\n"higher gauge theory", which deserves a Week of its own.\n\nBy the way, you can see pictures of this workshop here:\n\n30) John Baez, IMA, http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/IMA/\n\nIf you want to see what these crazy n-category people look like,\nyou can see most of them here.\n\nHmm. If you wanted me to actually *explain* something this week, I\'m\nafraid you\'ll be rather disappointed - so far everything has just\nbeen pointers to other material.\n\nLuckily, while I was at this workshop I wrote a little explanation\nof some material on Picard groups and Brauer groups. There\'s a\nSpanish school of higher-dimensional algebra, centered in Granada, and\nthis spring Aurora del Rio Cabeza came from Granada to visit UCR.\nShe and James Dolan spent a lot of time talking about categorical\ngroups (also known as "2-groups") and cohomology theory. I was, alas,\ntoo busy to keep up with their conversations, but I learned a little\nfrom listening in... and here\'s my writeup!\n\nHigher categories show up quite naturally in the study of\ncommutative rings and associative algebras over commutative rings.\nI\'d heard of things called "Brauer groups" and "Picard groups"\nof rings, and something called "Morita equivalence", but I only\nunderstood how these fit together when I learned they were part\nof a marvelous thing: a weak 3-groupoid!\n\nHere\'s how it goes. You don\'t need to know much about higher\ncategories for this to make some sense... at least, I hope not.\n\nStarting with a commutative ring R, we can form a weak 2-category\nAlg(R) where:\n\nan object A is an associative algebra over R\n\na 1-morphism M: A -> B is an (A,B)-bimodule\n\na 2-morphism f: M -> N is a homomorphism between (A,B)-bimodules.\n\nThis has all the structure you need to get a 2-category. In particular,\nwe can "compose" an (A,B)-bimodule and a (B,C)-bimodule by tensoring them\nover B, getting an (A,C) bimodule. But since tensor products are only\nassociative up to isomorphism, we only get a *weak* 2-category, not a\nstrict one.\n\nThis weak 2-category has a tensor product, since we can tensor two\nassociative algebras over R and get another one. All the stuff listed\nabove gets along with this process! When an n-category has a well-behaved\ntensor product we call it "monoidal", so Alg(R) is a weak monoidal\n2-category. But using a standard trick we can reinterpret this as a weak\n3-category with one object, as follows:\n\nthere\'s only one object, R\n\na 1-morphism A: R -> R is an associative algebra over R\n\na 2-morphism M: A -> B is an (A,B)-bimodule\n\na 3-morphism f: M -> N is a homomorphism between (A,B)-bimodules.\n\nNote how all the morphisms have shifted up a notch. What used to be\ncalled objects, the associative algebras over R, are now called\n1-morphisms. We "compose" them by tensoring them over R.\n\nNext, recall a bit of n-category theory from "week35". In an n-category\nwe define a j-morphism to be an "equivalence" iff it\'s invertible... up\nto equivalence! This definition may sound circular, but really just\nrecursive. To start it off we just need to add that an n-morphism is\nan equivalence iff it\'s invertible.\n\nWhat does equivalence amount to in the 3-category Alg(R)? It\'s easiest\nto figure this out from the top down:\n\nA 3-morphism f: M -> N is an equivalence iff it\'s invertible, so it\'s\nan isomorphism between (A,B)-bimodules.\n\nA 2-morphism M: A -> B is an equivalence iff it\'s invertible up to\nisomorphism, meaning there exists N: B -> A such that:\n\nM tensor_B N is isomorphic to A as an (A,A)-bimodule,\n\nN tensor_A M is isomorphic to B as a (B,B)-bimodule.\n\nIn this situation people say M is a "Morita equivalence" from A to B.\n\nA 1-morphism A: R -> R is an equivalence iff it\'s invertible up to\nMorita equivalence, meaning there exists a 1-morphism B: x -> x\nsuch that:\n\nA tensor_R B is Morita equivalent to R as an associative algebra over R,\n\nB tensor_R A is Morita equivalent to R as an associative algebra over R.\n\nIn this situation people say A is an "Azumaya algebra".\n\nHere\'s a nice example of how Morita equivalence works. Over any commutative\nring R there\'s an algebra R[n] consisting of n x n matrices with entries\nin R. R[n] isn\'t usually isomorphic to R[m], but they\'re always Morita\nequivalent! To see this, suppose\n\nM: R[n] -> R[m] is the space of n x m matrices with entries in R,\n\nN: R[m] -> R[n] is the space of m x n matrices with entries in R.\n\nThese become bimodules in an obvious way via matrix multiplication, and\na little calculation shows that they\'re inverses up to isomorphism!\n\nSo, all the algebras R[n] are Morita equivalent. In particular this\nmeans that they\'re all Morita equivalent to R, so they are Azumaya\nalgebras of a rather trivial sort.\n\nIf we take R to be real numbers there is also a more interesting\nAzumaya algebra over R, namely the quaternions H. This follows from\nthe fact that\n\nH tensor_R H = R[4]\n\nThis says H tensor_R H is Morita equivalent to R as an associative\nalgebra over R, which implies (by the definition above) that H is an\nAzumaya algebra.\n\nMorita equivalence is really important in the theory of C*-algebras,\nClifford algebras, and things like that. Someday I want to explain\nhow it\'s connected to Bott periodicity. Oh, there\'s so much I want\nto explain....\n\nBut right now I want to take our 3-category Alg(R), massage it a bit,\nand turn it into a topological space! Then I\'ll look at the homotopy\ngroups of this space and see what they have to say about our ring R.\n\nTo do this, we need a bit more n-category theory. A weak n-category\nwhere all the 1-morphisms, 2-morphisms and so on are equivalences is\ncalled a "n-groupoid". For example, given any weak n-category, we can\nform a weak n-groupoid called its "core" by throwing out all the\nmorphisms that aren\'t equivalences.\n\nSo, let\'s take the core of Alg(R) and get a weak 3-groupoid. Here\'s\nwhat it\'s like:\n\nthere\'s one object, R\n\nthe 1-morphisms A: x -> x are Azumaya algebras over R\n\nthe 2-morphisms M: A -> B are Morita equivalences\n\nthe 3-morphisms f: M -> N are bimodule isomorphisms.\n\nNext, given a weak n-groupoid with one object, it\'s very nice to compute\nits "homotopy groups". These are easy to define in general, but I\'ll\njust do it for the core of Alg(R) and let you guess the general pattern.\nFirst, notice that:\n\nthe identity 1-morphism 1_R: R -> R is just R, regarded as an associative\nalgebra over itself in the obvious way\n\nthe identity 2-morphism 1_{1_R}: 1_R -> 1_R is just R, regarded as an\n(R,R)-bimodule in the obvious way\n\nthe identity 3-morphism 1_{1_{1_R}}: 1_{1_R} -> 1_{1_R} is just the\nidentity function on R, regarded as an isomorphism of (R,R)-bimodules.\n\nAt this point we let out a cackle of n-categorical glee. Then,\nwe define the homotopy groups of the core of Alg(R) as follows:\n\nthe 1st homotopy group consists of equivalence classes of\n1-morphisms from R to itself\n\nthe 2nd homotopy group consists of equivalence classes of\n2-morphisms from 1_R to itself\n\nthe 3rd homotopy group consists of equivalence classes of\n3-morphisms from 1_{1_R} to itself\n\nHere we say two morphisms in an n-category are "equivalent" if there is\nan equivalence from one to the other (or if they\'re equal, in the case\nof n-morphisms).\n\nI hope the pattern in this definition of homotopy groups is obvious.\nIn fact, n-groupoids are secretly "the same" - in a subtle sense I\'d\nrather not explain - as spaces whose homotopy groups vanish above\ndimension n. Using this, the homotopy groups as defined above turn\nout to be same as the homotopy groups of a certain space associated\nwith the ring R! So, we\'re doing something very funny: we\'re using\nalgebraic topology to study algebra.\n\nBut, we don\'t need to know this to figure out what these homotopy\ngroups are like. Unraveling the definitions a bit, one sees they\namount to this:\n\nThe 1st homotopy group consists of Morita equivalence classes of\nAzumaya algebras over R. This is also called the BRAUER GROUP of R.\n\nThe 2nd homotopy group consists of isomorphism classes of Morita\nequivalences from R to R. This is also called the PICARD GROUP of R.\n\nThe 3rd homotopy group consists of invertible elements of R. This is\nalso called the UNIT GROUP of R.\n\nPeople had been quite happily studying these groups for a long time\nwithout knowing they were the homotopy groups of the core of a weak\n3-category associated to the commutative ring R! But, the relationships\nbetween these groups are easier to explain if you use the n-categorical\npicture. It\'s a great example of how n-categories unify mathematics.\n\nFor example, everything we\'ve done is functorial. So, if you have a\nhomomorphism between commuative rings, say\n\nf: R -> S\n\nthen you get a weak 3-functor\n\nAlg(f): Alg(R) -> Alg(S)\n\nThis gives a weak 3-functor from the core of Alg(R) to the core of Alg(S),\nand thus a map between spaces... which in turn gives a long exact sequence\nof homotopy groups! So, we get interesting maps going from the unit,\nPicard and groups of R to those of S - and these fit into an interesting\nlong exact sequence.\n\nFor more, try the following papers. The first paper is actually about a\ngeneralization of Azumaya algebras called "Azumaya categories", but it\nstarts with a nice quick review of Azumaya algebras and Brauer groups:\n\n31) Francis Borceux and Enrico Vitale, Azumaya categories,\navailable at http://www.math.ucl.ac.be/AGEL/Azumaya_categories.pdf\n\nCategory theorists will enjoy the generalization: since algebras are\njust one-object categories enriched over Vect, the concept of Azumaya\nalgebra really *wants* to generalize to that of an Azumaya category.\nI\'m sure most of the Brauer-Picard-Morita stuff generalizes too, but I\nhaven\'t checked that out yet.\n\nThis second paper makes the connection between Picard and Brauer\ngroups explicit using categorical groups:\n\n32) Enrico Vitale, A Picard-Brauer exact sequence of categorical groups,\nJournal of Pure and Applied Algebra 175 (2002) 383-408.\nAlso available as http://www.math.ucl.ac.be/membres/vitale/cat-gruppi2.pdf\n\n-----------------------------------------------------------------------\nPrevious issues of "This Week\'s Finds" and other expository articles on\nmathematics and physics, as well as some of my research papers, can be\nobtained at\n\nhttp://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/\n\nFor a table of contents of all the issues of This Week\'s Finds, try\n\nhttp://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/twf.html\n\nA simple jumping-off point to the old issues is available at\n\nhttp://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/twfshort.html\n\nIf you just want the latest issue, go to\n\nhttp://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/this.week.html\n\n\n</UL></PRE></font></td></tr></table></BODY><HTML>');"> <IMG SRC=/images/buttons/ip.gif BORDER=0 ALIGN=CENTER ALT="View this Usenet post in original ASCII form">  View this Usenet post in original ASCII form </a></div><P></jabberwocky>Also available at http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/week209.html

November 21, 2004
This Week's Finds in Mathematical Physics - Week 209
John Baez

Time flies! This June, Peter May and I organized a workshop on
n-categories at the Institute for Mathematics and its Applications:

1) n-Categories: Foundations and Applications,
http://www.ima.umn.edu/categories/

I've been meaning to write about it ever since, but I keep
putting it off because it would be so much work. The meeting lasted
almost two weeks. It was an intense, exhausting affair packed
with talks, conversations, and "Russian-style seminars" where the
audience interrupted the speakers with lots of questions. I took
about 50 pages of notes. How am I supposed to describe all that?!

Oh well... I'll just dive in. I'll quickly list all the official
talks in this conference. I won't describe the many interesting
"impromptu talks", some of which you can see on the above webpage.
Nor will I explain what n-categories are, or what they're good for!
If you want to learn what they're good for, you should go back to
"week73" and read "The Tale of n-Categories". And if you want to know
what they *are*, try this brand-new book:

2) Eugenia Cheng and Aaron Lauda, Higher-Dimensional Categories:
an Illustrated Guide Book, available free online at:
http://www.dpmms.cam.ac.uk/~elgc2/guidebook/

Eugenia and Aaron wrote it specially for the workshop! It's
packed with pictures and it's lots of fun.

I'm just going to list the talks....

Throwing etiquette to the winds, I kicked off the conference
myself with two talks explaining some reasons why n-categories are
interesting and what they should be like:

3) John Baez, Why n-Categories? and What n-categories should be like.
Notes available at http://www.ima.umn.edu/categories/#mon

If you're a long-time reader of This Week's Finds you'll know
what I said: n-categories give a new world of math in which equations
are always replaced by isomorphisms, and this world is incredibly rich
in structure. The n-categories called "n-groupoids" magically know
everything there is to know about homotopy theory, while those called
"n-categories with duals" know everything there is to know about the
topology of manifolds. There are, unfortunately, some details that
still need to be worked out!

After my talks there was a reception. Later, over dinner,
Tom Leinster gave a "Russian style seminar" outlining the
different approaches to n-categories:

4) Tom Leinster, Survey and Taxonomy. Talk based on chapter 10
of his book Higher Operads, Higher Categories, Cambridge U. Press,
Cambridge, 2004, also available free online at: math.CT/0305049.

You'll notice these young n-category people are smart: they
force their publishers to keep their books available for free online!
All scientists should do this, since the only ones who make serious
money from scientific monographs are the publishers. What scientists
get from writing technical books is not money but attention. As
George Franck said, "Attention is a mode of payment... reputation is the
asset into which the attention received from colleagues crystallizes."

The next morning began with a triple-header talk on "weak categories":

5) Andre Joyal, Peter May and Timothy Porter, Weak categories.
Notes available at http://www.ima.umn.edu/categories/#tues

Here a "weak category" means a category where the usual laws hold
only up to homotopy, where the homotopies satisfy laws of their own
up to homotopy, ad infinitum. If you know what weak infinity-categories
are, you can define a weak category to be one of these where all the
j-morphisms are equivalences for j > 1. But, the nice thing is that
there are ways to define weak categories without the full machinery
of infinity-categories! People have come up with different approaches:
"categories enriched over simplicial sets", "Segal categories",
"A_{infinity} categories" and also Joyal's "quasicategories". The talk
was a nice introduction to all these approaches.

Then Michael Batanin explained his definition of infinity-categories.
This was a blackboard talk, so there are no notes on the web, but you
can try his original paper:

6) Michael Batanin, Monoidal globular categories as natural
environment for the theory of weak n-categories, Adv. Math. 136
(1998), 39-103, also available at
http://www.ics.mq.edu.au/~mbatanin/papers.html

and when you get stuck, try the books by Cheng-Lauda and Leinster.

Over dinner, Eugenia Cheng and Tom Leinster explained the concepts of
"operad" and "multicategory" which play such an important role in so
much work on n-categories. Again there are no notes, so try their books.

I forget when it happened, but sometime around the second or third day
of the conference people decided it was too much of a nuisance listening
to math lectures while eating dinner - mainly because there wasn't enough
room in the dining hall to take notes, and the blackboards weren't big
enough. So at that point, we switched to having lectures *after* dinner.
As I said, this workshop was not for wimps!

The morning of the third day began with a no-holds-barred minicourse
on model categories by Peter May:

7) Peter May, Model categories. Notes available at
http://www.ima.umn.edu/categories/#wed

Model categories are a wonderful framework for relating different
approaches to homotopy theory, and a bunch of people hope they can also
be used to relate different approaches to n-categories.

Then Clemens Berger explained Andre Joyal's approach to weak n-categories:

8) Clemens Berger, Cellular definitions.
Notes available at http://www.ima.umn.edu/categories/#wed

Then, either during or after dinner, Eugenia Cheng explained various
"opetopic" approaches to weak n-categories. Again, the best way to learn
about these is to read the book she wrote with Lauda, or else the book by
Leinster.

On the morning of the fourth day, Andre Joyal explained his work on
quasicategories - an approach to weak categories in which they are
simplicial sets satisfying a restricted version of the Kan condition.
They've been around a long time, but Joyal is redoing all of category
theory in this context! He's been writing a book about this, which
deserves to be called "Quasicategories for the Working Mathematician".
Since Joyal is a perfectionist, this will take forever to finish.
However, we're hoping to extract a preliminary version from him for
the proceedings of this conference. For now, you can read a bit about
quasicategories in Tim Porter's notes mentioned in item 5) above.

Then Tom Leinster and Nick Gurski spoke about Ross Street's definition
to weak infinity-categories, where they are simplicial sets satisfying
an even more subtly restricted version of the Kan condition.

9) Nick Gurski and Tom Leinster, Simplicial definition.
Notes available at http://www.ima.umn.edu/categories/#thur

Street's definition is tough to understand at first, but it should
eventually include Joyal's quasicategories as a special case, which is
nice. For Street's own discussion, see:

10) Ross Street, Weak \omega-categories, in Diagrammatic Morphisms
and Applications, eds. David Radford, Fernando Souza, and David Yetter,
Contemp. Math. 318, AMS, Providence, Rhode Island, 2003, pp. 207-213.
Also available as www.maths.mq.edu.au/~street/Womcats.pdf

It relies on some work by Dominic Verity which has finally been
written up after many years of unpublished limbo:

11) Dominic Verity, Complicial sets, available as math.CT/0410412.

After dinner we took a turn towards applications, and Larry Breen
explained his work on n-stacks and n-gerbes. An n-stack is like a
sheaf that has an (n-1)-category of sections, while an n-gerbe has an
(n-1)-groupoid of sections. Such things show up a lot in algebraic
geometry, and more recently in mathematical physics inspired by string
theory. Alas, the audience was rather tired this evening, so Larry
only got to 1-stacks and 1-gerbes! But he gave an impromptu talk later
where he reached n = 2, and the notes for both talks are available in
combined form here:

12) Larry Breen, n-Stacks and n-gerbes: homotopy theory.
Notes available at http://www.ima.umn.edu/categories/#thur

You've heard about David Corfield's quest for a philosophy of real
mathematics in "week198". He's one of the few philosophers who
understands enough math to realize how cool n-categories are - which
may explain why he's having trouble getting a job. On the morning of
the fourth day, he gave a talk on the impact n-categories could have
in philosophy:

13) David Corfield, n-Category theory as a catalyst for change in
philosophy. Notes available at http://www.ima.umn.edu/categories/#fri

Later that day, Bertrand Toen explained Segal categories, which are
another popular approach to weak categories:

14) Bertrand Toen, Segal categories.
Notes by Joachim Kock available at http://www.ima.umn.edu/categories/#fri

After dinner, he spoke about n-stacks and n-gerbes:

15) Bertrand Toen, n-Stacks and n-gerbes: algebraic geometry.
Notes by Joachim Kock available at http://www.ima.umn.edu/categories/#fri

Everyone slept all weekend long. Then on Monday of the second week,
the homotopy theorist Zbigniew Fiedorowicz spoke about his work on a
kind of n-fold monoidal category that has an n-fold loop space as its
nerve. He has some good papers on the web about this, too:

16) Zbigniew Fiedorowicz, n-Fold categories.
Notes available at http://www.ima.umn.edu/categories/#mon2

C. Balteanu, Z. Fiedorowicz, R. Schwaenzl and R. Vogt,
Iterated monoidal categories, available at math.AT/9808082.

Z. Fiedorowicz, Constructions of E_n operads, available at math.AT/9808089.

Stefan Forcey continued this theme by discussing enrichment over
n-fold monoidal categories. He also has a number of papers about
this on the arXiv, of which I'll just mention one:

17) Stefan Forcey, Higher enrichment: n-fold Operads and enriched
n-categories, delooping and weakening.
Notes available at http://www.ima.umn.edu/categories/#mon2

Stefan Forcey, Enrichment over iterated monoidal categories,
Algebraic and Geometric Topology, 4 (2004), 95-119, available online
at http://www.maths.warwick.ac.uk/agt/AGTVol4/agt-4-7.abs.html
Also available as math.CT/0403152.

After dinner we discussed how to relate different definitions of weak
n-category.

On Tuesday of the second week, the logician Michael Makkai presented his
astounding project of redoing logic in a way that completely eliminates
the concept of "equality". This *forces* you to do all of mathematics
using weak infinity-categories. I thought this stuff was great, in part
because I finally understood it, and in part because it leads naturally
to the "opetopic" definition of n-categories that James Dolan and I
introduced. The idea of eliminating equality was very much on our mind
in inventing this definition, but we didn't create a system of logic that
systematizes this idea.

There are no notes for Makkai's talk online, but you can get a lot of good
stuff from his website, including:

18) Michael Makkai, On comparing definitions of weak n-category,
available at http://www.math.mcgill.ca/makkai/

and this more technical paper which works out the details of his vision:

19) Michael Makkai, The multitopic \omega-category of all multitopic
\omega-categories, available at http://www.math.mcgill.ca/makkai/

After Makkai's talk, Mark Weber spoke on n-categorical generalizations
of the concept of "monad", which is a nice way of describing mathematical
gadgets. There are no notes for this talk, but his work on higher operads
is at least morally related:

20) Mark Weber, Operads within monoidal pseudo algebras, available as
math.CT/0410230.

Again, after dinner we talked about how to relate different definitions
of weak n-category.

On Wednesday of the second week, Michael Batanin spoke about his
recent work relating n-categories to n-fold loop spaces. Again no
notes, but you can read these papers:

21) Michael Batanin, The Eckmann-Hilton argument, higher operads and
E_n-spaces, available at http://www.ics.mq.edu.au/~mbatanin/papers.html

Michael Batanin, The combinatorics of iterated loop spaces,
available at http://www.ics.mq.edu.au/~mbatanin/papers.html

Then Joachim Kock laid the ground for a discussion of n-categories
and topological quantum field theories, or "TQFTs", by explaining the
definition of a TQFT and the classification of 2d TQFTs:

22) Joachim Kock, Topological quantum field theory primer.
Notes available at http://www.ima.umn.edu/categories/#wed2

In the evening, Marco Mackaay and I said more about the relation
between TQFTs and n-categories:

23) Marco Mackaay, Topological quantum field theories.
Notes available at http://www.ima.umn.edu/categories/#wed2

24) John Baez, Space and state, spacetime and process.
Notes available at http://www.ima.umn.edu/categories/#wed2

On Thursday, Ross Street started the day in a pleasantly different
way - he gave a historical account of work on categories and
n-categories in Australia! Australia is home to much of the best
work on these subjects, so if you can understand his history you'll
wind up understanding these subjects pretty well:

25) Ross Street, An Australian conspectus of higher category theory.
Notes available at http://www.ima.umn.edu/categories/#thur2

As a younger exponent of the Australian tradition, it was then nicely
appropriate for Steve Lack to speak about ways of building a model
category of 2-categories:

26) Steve Lack, Higher model categories. Notes available at
http://www.ima.umn.edu/categories/#thur2

In the afternoon we had a blast of computer science. First John Power
gave a hilarious talk phrased in terms of how one should convince
computer theorists to embrace categories, then 2-categories, and then
maybe higher categories:

27) John Power, Why tricategories? Notes available at
http://www.ima.umn.edu/categories/#thur2

I spoke about Power's paper with this title back in "week53"; now
you can get it online!

Then Phillipe Gaucher, Lisbeth Falstrup and Eric Goubault spoke about
higher-dimensional automata and directed homotopy theory:

28) Phillipe Gaucher, Towards a homotopy theory of higher dimensional
automata. Notes available at http://www.ima.umn.edu/categories/#thur2

Lisbeth Falstrup, More on directed topology and concurrency,
Notes available at http://www.ima.umn.edu/categories/#thur2

Eric Goubault, Directed homotopy theory and higher-dimensional automata,
Notes available at http://www.ima.umn.edu/categories/#thur2

On Friday, Martin Hyland and Tony Elmendorf gave a double-header
talk on higher-dimensional linear algebra and how some concepts in
this subject can be simplified using symmetric multicategories.
There are, alas, no notes for this talk. You just had to be there.

Finally, my student Alissa Crans gave a talk on higher-dimensional
linear algebra, with an emphasis on categorified Lie algebras:

29) Alissa Crans, Higher linear algebra. Notes available at
Notes available at http://www.ima.umn.edu/categories/#fri2

Hers was the last talk in the workshop! I would like to say more about
it, but I'm exhausted... and her talk fits naturally into a discussion of
"higher gauge theory", which deserves a Week of its own.

By the way, you can see pictures of this workshop here:

30) John Baez, IMA, http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/IMA/

If you want to see what these crazy n-category people look like,
you can see most of them here.

Hmm. If you wanted me to actually *explain* something this week, I'm
afraid you'll be rather disappointed - so far everything has just
been pointers to other material.

Luckily, while I was at this workshop I wrote a little explanation
of some material on Picard groups and Brauer groups. There's a
Spanish school of higher-dimensional algebra, centered in Granada, and
this spring Aurora del Rio Cabeza came from Granada to visit UCR.
She and James Dolan spent a lot of time talking about categorical
groups (also known as "2-groups") and cohomology theory. I was, alas,
too busy to keep up with their conversations, but I learned a little
from listening in... and here's my writeup!

Higher categories show up quite naturally in the study of
commutative rings and associative algebras over commutative rings.
I'd heard of things called "Brauer groups" and "Picard groups"
of rings, and something called "Morita equivalence", but I only
understood how these fit together when I learned they were part
of a marvelous thing: a weak 3-groupoid!

Here's how it goes. You don't need to know much about higher
categories for this to make some sense... at least, I hope not.

Starting with a commutative ring R, we can form a weak 2-category
Alg(R) where:

an object A is an associative algebra over R

a 1-morphism M: A -> B is an (A,B)-bimodule

a 2-morphism f: M -> N is a homomorphism between (A,B)-bimodules.

This has all the structure you need to get a 2-category. In particular,
we can "compose" an (A,B)-bimodule and a (B,C)-bimodule by tensoring them
over B, getting an (A,C) bimodule. But since tensor products are only
associative up to isomorphism, we only get a *weak* 2-category, not a
strict one.

This weak 2-category has a tensor product, since we can tensor two
associative algebras over R and get another one. All the stuff listed
above gets along with this process! When an n-category has a well-behaved
tensor product we call it "monoidal", so Alg(R) is a weak monoidal
2-category. But using a standard trick we can reinterpret this as a weak
3-category with one object, as follows:

there's only one object, R

a 1-morphism A: R -> R is an associative algebra over R

a 2-morphism M: A -> B is an (A,B)-bimodule

a 3-morphism f: M -> N is a homomorphism between (A,B)-bimodules.

Note how all the morphisms have shifted up a notch. What used to be
called objects, the associative algebras over R, are now called
1-morphisms. We "compose" them by tensoring them over R.

Next, recall a bit of n-category theory from "week35". In an n-category
we define a j-morphism to be an "equivalence" iff it's invertible... up
to equivalence! This definition may sound circular, but really just
recursive. To start it off we just need to add that an n-morphism is
an equivalence iff it's invertible.

What does equivalence amount to in the 3-category Alg(R)? It's easiest
to figure this out from the top down:

A 3-morphism f: M -> N is an equivalence iff it's invertible, so it's
an isomorphism between (A,B)-bimodules.

A 2-morphism M: A -> B is an equivalence iff it's invertible up to
isomorphism, meaning there exists N: B -> A such that:

M tensor_B N[/itex] is isomorphic to A as an (A,A)-bimodule,

N tensor_A M is isomorphic to B as a (B,B)-bimodule.

In this situation people say M is a "Morita equivalence" from A to B.

A 1-morphism A: R -> R is an equivalence iff it's invertible up to
Morita equivalence, meaning there exists a 1-morphism B: x -> x
such that:

A tensor_R B is Morita equivalent to R as an associative algebra over R,

B tensor_R A is Morita equivalent to R as an associative algebra over R.

In this situation people say A is an "Azumaya algebra".

Here's a nice example of how Morita equivalence works. Over any commutative
ring R there's an algebra R[n] consisting of n x n matrices with entries
in R. R[n] isn't usually isomorphic to R[m], but they're always Morita
equivalent! To see this, suppose

M: R[n] -> R[m] is the space of n x m matrices with entries in R,

N: R[m] -> R[n] is the space of m x n matrices with entries in R.

These become bimodules in an obvious way via matrix multiplication, and
a little calculation shows that they're inverses up to isomorphism!

So, all the algebras R[n] are Morita equivalent. In particular this
means that they're all Morita equivalent to R, so they are Azumaya
algebras of a rather trivial sort.

If we take R to be real numbers there is also a more interesting
Azumaya algebra over R, namely the quaternions H. This follows from
the fact that

[itex]H tensor_R H = R[4]

This says H tensor_R H is Morita equivalent to R as an associative
algebra over R, which implies (by the definition above) that H is an
Azumaya algebra.

Morita equivalence is really important in the theory of C*-algebras,
Clifford algebras, and things like that. Someday I want to explain
how it's connected to Bott periodicity. Oh, there's so much I want
to explain....

But right now I want to take our 3-category Alg(R), massage it a bit,
and turn it into a topological space! Then I'll look at the homotopy
groups of this space and see what they have to say about our ring R.

To do this, we need a bit more n-category theory. A weak n-category
where all the 1-morphisms, 2-morphisms and so on are equivalences is
called a "n-groupoid". For example, given any weak n-category, we can
form a weak n-groupoid called its "core" by throwing out all the
morphisms that aren't equivalences.

So, let's take the core of Alg(R) and get a weak 3-groupoid. Here's
what it's like:

there's one object, R

the 1-morphisms A: x -> x are Azumaya algebras over R

the 2-morphisms M: A -> B are Morita equivalences

the 3-morphisms f: M -> N are bimodule isomorphisms.

Next, given a weak n-groupoid with one object, it's very nice to compute
its "homotopy groups". These are easy to define in general, but I'll
just do it for the core of Alg(R) and let you guess the general pattern.
First, notice that:

the identity 1-morphism 1_R: R -> R is just R, regarded as an associative
algebra over itself in the obvious way

the identity 2-morphism 1_{1_R}: 1_R -> 1_R is just R, regarded as an
(R,R)-bimodule in the obvious way

the identity 3-morphism 1_{1_{1_R}}: 1_{1_R} -> 1_{1_R} is just the
identity function on R, regarded as an isomorphism of (R,R)-bimodules.

At this point we let out a cackle of n-categorical glee. Then,
we define the homotopy groups of the core of Alg(R) as follows:

the 1st homotopy group consists of equivalence classes of
1-morphisms from R to itself

the 2nd homotopy group consists of equivalence classes of
2-morphisms from 1_R to itself

the 3rd homotopy group consists of equivalence classes of
3-morphisms from 1_{1_R} to itself

Here we say two morphisms in an n-category are "equivalent" if there is
an equivalence from one to the other (or if they're equal, in the case
of n-morphisms).

I hope the pattern in this definition of homotopy groups is obvious.
In fact, n-groupoids are secretly "the same" - in a subtle sense I'd
rather not explain - as spaces whose homotopy groups vanish above
dimension n. Using this, the homotopy groups as defined above turn
out to be same as the homotopy groups of a certain space associated
with the ring R! So, we're doing something very funny: we're using
algebraic topology to study algebra.

But, we don't need to know this to figure out what these homotopy
groups are like. Unraveling the definitions a bit, one sees they
amount to this:

The 1st homotopy group consists of Morita equivalence classes of
Azumaya algebras over R. This is also called the BRAUER GROUP of R.

The 2nd homotopy group consists of isomorphism classes of Morita
equivalences from R to R. This is also called the PICARD GROUP of R.

The 3rd homotopy group consists of invertible elements of R. This is
also called the UNIT GROUP of R.

People had been quite happily studying these groups for a long time
without knowing they were the homotopy groups of the core of a weak
3-category associated to the commutative ring R! But, the relationships
between these groups are easier to explain if you use the n-categorical
picture. It's a great example of how n-categories unify mathematics.

For example, everything we've done is functorial. So, if you have a
homomorphism between commuative rings, say

f: R -> S

then you get a weak 3-functor

Alg(f): Alg(R) -> Alg(S)

This gives a weak 3-functor from the core of Alg(R) to the core of Alg(S),
and thus a map between spaces... which in turn gives a long exact sequence
of homotopy groups! So, we get interesting maps going from the unit,
Picard and groups of R to those of S - and these fit into an interesting
long exact sequence.

For more, try the following papers. The first paper is actually about a
generalization of Azumaya algebras called "Azumaya categories", but it
starts with a nice quick review of Azumaya algebras and Brauer groups:

31) Francis Borceux and Enrico Vitale, Azumaya categories,
available at http://www.math.ucl.ac.be/AGEL/Azumaya_categories.pdf

Category theorists will enjoy the generalization: since algebras are
just one-object categories enriched over Vect, the concept of Azumaya
algebra really *wants* to generalize to that of an Azumaya category.
I'm sure most of the Brauer-Picard-Morita stuff generalizes too, but I
haven't checked that out yet.

This second paper makes the connection between Picard and Brauer
groups explicit using categorical groups:

32) Enrico Vitale, A Picard-Brauer exact sequence of categorical groups,
Journal of Pure and Applied Algebra 175 (2002) 383-408.
Also available as http://www.math.ucl.ac.be/membres/vitale/cat-gruppi2.pdf

-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Previous issues of "This Week's Finds" and other expository articles on
mathematics and physics, as well as some of my research papers, can be
obtained at

http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/

For a table of contents of all the issues of This Week's Finds, try

http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/twf.html

A simple jumping-off point to the old issues is available at

http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/twfshort.html

If you just want the latest issue, go to

http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/this.week.html

Arnold Neumaier

Nov24-04, 01:47 AM

<jabberwocky><div class="vbmenu_control"><a href="jabberwocky:;" onClick="newWindow=window.open('','usenetCode','toolbar=no, location=no,scrollbars=yes,resizable=yes,status=no ,width=650,height=400'); newWindow.document.write('<HTML><HEAD><TITLE>Usenet ASCII</TITLE></HEAD><BODY topmargin=0 leftmargin=0 BGCOLOR=#F1F1F1><table border=0 width=625><td bgcolor=midnightblue><font color=#F1F1F1>This Usenet message\'s original ASCII form: </font></td></tr><tr><td width=449><br><br><font face=courier><UL><PRE>John Baez wrote:\n\n> November 21, 2004\n> This Week\'s Finds in Mathematical Physics - Week 209\n> John Baez\n>\n> Time flies! This June, Peter May and I organized a workshop on\n> n-categories at the Institute for Mathematics and its Applications:\n\n\n\nDo you consider category theory to be a branch of physics???\nOr where is the physics in This Week\'s Finds?\n\n\nArnold Neumaier\n\n</UL></PRE></font></td></tr></table></BODY><HTML>');"> <IMG SRC=/images/buttons/ip.gif BORDER=0 ALIGN=CENTER ALT="View this Usenet post in original ASCII form">  View this Usenet post in original ASCII form </a></div><P></jabberwocky>John Baez wrote:

> November 21, 2004
> This Week's Finds in Mathematical Physics - Week 209
> John Baez
>
> Time flies! This June, Peter May and I organized a workshop on
> n-categories at the Institute for Mathematics and its Applications:

Do you consider category theory to be a branch of physics???
Or where is the physics in This Week's Finds?

Arnold Neumaier

Aaron Bergman

Nov24-04, 08:30 AM

<jabberwocky><div class="vbmenu_control"><a href="jabberwocky:;" onClick="newWindow=window.open('','usenetCode','toolbar=no, location=no,scrollbars=yes,resizable=yes,status=no ,width=650,height=400'); newWindow.document.write('<HTML><HEAD><TITLE>Usenet ASCII</TITLE></HEAD><BODY topmargin=0 leftmargin=0 BGCOLOR=#F1F1F1><table border=0 width=625><td bgcolor=midnightblue><font color=#F1F1F1>This Usenet message\'s original ASCII form: </font></td></tr><tr><td width=449><br><br><font face=courier><UL><PRE>In article <cnvl20\\$g2t\\$1@news.ks.uiuc.edu>,\nbaez@math.re movethis.ucr.andthis.edu (John Baez) wrote:\n\n> Higher categories show up quite naturally in the study of\n> commutative rings and associative algebras over commutative rings.\n> I\'d heard of things called "Brauer groups" and "Picard groups"\n> of rings, and something called "Morita equivalence", but I only\n> understood how these fit together when I learned they were part\n> of a marvelous thing: a weak 3-groupoid!\n\nBe careful. You\'re secretly doing some string theory here.\n\n> Here\'s how it goes. You don\'t need to know much about higher\n> categories for this to make some sense... at least, I hope not.\n>\n> Starting with a commutative ring R, we can form a weak 2-category\n> Alg(R) where:\n>\n> an object A is an associative algebra over R\n\nOr a string boundary state.\n\n> a 1-morphism M: A -> B is an (A,B)-bimodule\n\nAn open string stretching between two boundaries.\n\n> a 2-morphism f: M -> N is a homomorphism between (A,B)-bimodules.\n\nBeats me on this one.\n\n> This has all the structure you need to get a 2-category. In particular,\n> we can "compose" an (A,B)-bimodule and a (B,C)-bimodule by tensoring them\n> over B, getting an (A,C) bimodule. But since tensor products are only\n> associative up to isomorphism, we only get a *weak* 2-category, not a\n> strict one.\n\nSounds like an A_oo type structure to me, just like open strings.\n\nAnyways, the connection here is this. Noncommutative geometry is a\ndecoupling limit of open string theory. So, let\'s let our string\nboundary state be a noncommutative torus, certainly an example of an\nassociative algebra. A simple example is the noncommutative T^2 with\nparameter theta. We can ask when two noncommutative tori are Morita\nequivalent. For T^2, the answer is when\n\ntheta\' = (a theta + b) / (c theta + d) ad - bc = 1\n\nThis is just T-duality in string theory. The duality groups work out to\nbe the same for higher dimensional torii, too.\n\nAzumaya algebras also show up in strings when you have a torsion three\nform floating around.\n\n(Fun thing I learned recently: the A_oo structure of the Yoneda pairing\nof Ext groups -- which I don\'t really understand as yet -- actually\nencodes topological string amplitudes of a sort. It should be thought of\nas the cohomology of the A_oo structure (with nontrivial m_1) associated\nwith open strings. This isn\'t new -- I was just happy to understand it\nsomewhat.)\n\nAaron\n\n</UL></PRE></font></td></tr></table></BODY><HTML>');"> <IMG SRC=/images/buttons/ip.gif BORDER=0 ALIGN=CENTER ALT="View this Usenet post in original ASCII form">  View this Usenet post in original ASCII form </a></div><P></jabberwocky>In article <cnvl20$g2t$1@news.ks.uiuc.edu>,
baez@math.removethis.ucr.andthis.edu (John Baez) wrote:

> Higher categories show up quite naturally in the study of
> commutative rings and associative algebras over commutative rings.
> I'd heard of things called "Brauer groups" and "Picard groups"
> of rings, and something called "Morita equivalence", but I only
> understood how these fit together when I learned they were part
> of a marvelous thing: a weak 3-groupoid!

Be careful. You're secretly doing some string theory here.

> Here's how it goes. You don't need to know much about higher
> categories for this to make some sense... at least, I hope not.
>
> Starting with a commutative ring R, we can form a weak 2-category
> Alg(R) where:
>
> an object A is an associative algebra over R

Or a string boundary state.

> a 1-morphism M: A -> B is an (A,B)-bimodule

An open string stretching between two boundaries.

> a 2-morphism f: M -> N is a homomorphism between (A,B)-bimodules.

Beats me on this one.

> This has all the structure you need to get a 2-category. In particular,
> we can "compose" an (A,B)-bimodule and a (B,C)-bimodule by tensoring them
> over B, getting an (A,C) bimodule. But since tensor products are only
> associative up to isomorphism, we only get a *weak* 2-category, not a
> strict one.

Sounds like an A_{oo} type structure to me, just like open strings.

Anyways, the connection here is this. Noncommutative geometry is a
decoupling limit of open string theory. So, let's let our string
boundary state be a noncommutative torus, certainly an example of an
associative algebra. A simple example is the noncommutative T^2 with
parameter \theta. We can ask when two noncommutative tori are Morita
equivalent. For T^2, the answer is when

\theta' = (a \theta + b) / (c \theta + d) ad - bc = 1

This is just T-duality in string theory. The duality groups work out to
be the same for higher dimensional torii, too.

Azumaya algebras also show up in strings when you have a torsion three
form floating around.

(Fun thing I learned recently: the A_{oo} structure of the Yoneda pairing
of Ext groups -- which I don't really understand as yet -- actually
encodes topological string amplitudes of a sort. It should be thought of
as the cohomology of the A_{oo} structure (with nontrivial m_1) associated
with open strings. This isn't new -- I was just happy to understand it
somewhat.)

Aaron

Kwok Man Hui

Nov24-04, 09:26 AM

<jabberwocky><div class="vbmenu_control"><a href="jabberwocky:;" onClick="newWindow=window.open('','usenetCode','toolbar=no, location=no,scrollbars=yes,resizable=yes,status=no ,width=650,height=400'); newWindow.document.write('<HTML><HEAD><TITLE>Usenet ASCII</TITLE></HEAD><BODY topmargin=0 leftmargin=0 BGCOLOR=#F1F1F1><table border=0 width=625><td bgcolor=midnightblue><font color=#F1F1F1>This Usenet message\'s original ASCII form: </font></td></tr><tr><td width=449><br><br><font face=courier><UL><PRE>\nI like your Week 209 "This Week\'s Finds" very much.\nI have a lot to read, and indeed I should have read all the citations in\nit before I post this follow-up. However, I can\'t hold urge for long\nwithout responding to your post. So pardon me if I ask question not\nsensible enough to me. If that happens, hold your fire-ball.\n\nOn Tue, 23 Nov 2004, John Baez wrote:\n\n>\n>\n> Also available at http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/week209.html\n>\n>\n> 1) n-Categories: Foundations and Applications,\n> http://www.ima.umn.edu/categories/\n>\nIt\'s like a online toy-store for me.\n\n>\n> 2) Eugenia Cheng and Aaron Lauda, Higher-Dimensional Categories:\n> an Illustrated Guide Book, available free online at:\n> http://www.dpmms.cam.ac.uk/~elgc2/guidebook/\n\nI have read some pages of this online book. I like the way they present\nthe material because this is not the type of math book that pages of\ndefinition and line-by-line theorem-proof type book. It gives me an\nintuition about the subject from Chapter one.\n\n\n\n>\n> Eugenia and Aaron wrote it specially for the workshop! It\'s\n> packed with pictures and it\'s lots of fun.\n>\n\nAgree.\n\n> Throwing etiquette to the winds, I kicked off the conference\n> myself with two talks explaining some reasons why n-categories are\n> interesting and what they should be like:\n>\n> 3) John Baez, Why n-Categories? and What n-categories should be like.\n> Notes available at http://www.ima.umn.edu/categories/#mon\n>\n> If you\'re a long-time reader of This Week\'s Finds you\'ll know\n> what I said: n-categories give a new world of math in which equations\n> are always replaced by isomorphisms, and this world is incredibly rich\n> in structure. The n-categories called "n-groupoids" magically know\n> everything there is to know about homotopy theory, while those called\n> "n-categories with duals" know everything there is to know about the\n> topology of manifolds. There are, unfortunately, some details that\n> still need to be worked out!\n\nIn your third talk: Space and State, Spacetime and Process, it seems to me\nthe application of your n-category theory so far is limited to no degrees\nof freedom TQFT.\n\nSo I have a question. Is it true that all current form of strict or weak\nn-category theories can measure global geometry only? I have no mean\nthat strict is equivalent to weak.\n\n\n\n>\n> The next morning began with a triple-header talk on "weak categories":\n>\n> 5) Andre Joyal, Peter May and Timothy Porter, Weak categories.\n> Notes available at http://www.ima.umn.edu/categories/#tues\n\n>\n> Here a "weak category" means a category where the usual laws hold\n> only up to homotopy, where the homotopies satisfy laws of their own\n> up to homotopy, ad infinitum. If you know what weak infinity-categories\n> are, you can define a weak category to be one of these where all the\n> j-morphisms are equivalences for j > 1. But, the nice thing is that\n> there are ways to define weak categories without the full machinery\n> of infinity-categories! People have come up with different approaches:\n> "categories enriched over simplicial sets", "Segal categories",\n> "A_infinity categories" and also Joyal\'s "quasicategories". The talk\n> was a nice introduction to all these approaches.\n>\n> Then Michael Batanin explained his definition of infinity-categories.\n> This was a blackboard talk, so there are no notes on the web, but you\n> can try his original paper:\n>\n> 6) Michael Batanin, Monoidal globular categories as natural\n> environment for the theory of weak n-categories, Adv. Math. 136\n> (1998), 39-103, also available at\n> http://www.ics.mq.edu.au/~mbatanin/papers.html\n\n\n\nAgain, are this type of omega-category theories limited to measure global\ngeometry only?\n\nThere is another question. I remember you can categorify the set natural\nnumber to a category of sets and so on to set of integers. I also remember\nyou introduced the categorical version of addition, subtraction,\nmultiplication, and some division. I wonder can one base on that define a\nkind of formal power series to categorify the real number system? Like the\nway in your paper: From Finite Sets to Feynman Path Integral. What I\nreally hope for is categorifying inqualities to certain level as well.\nFrankly, I have some sort of gut feeling that there must have some way to\nextend the current higher dimensional algebra to embrace some analysis\ntool like K-functor. So I like the impromptu talks like elliptic\ncohomology and confromal field theory as well.\nAnyway, the website is very interesting and informative. Thanks for\nletting us know that website.\n\nCharles Hui\n</UL></PRE></font></td></tr></table></BODY><HTML>');"> <IMG SRC=/images/buttons/ip.gif BORDER=0 ALIGN=CENTER ALT="View this Usenet post in original ASCII form">  View this Usenet post in original ASCII form </a></div><P></jabberwocky>I like your Week 209 "This Week's Finds" very much.
I have a lot to read, and indeed I should have read all the citations in
it before I post this follow-up. However, I can't hold urge for long
without responding to your post. So pardon me if I ask question not
sensible enough to me. If that happens, hold your fire-ball.

On Tue, 23 Nov 2004, John Baez wrote:

>
>
> Also available at http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/week209.html
>
>
> 1) n-Categories: Foundations and Applications,
> http://www.ima.umn.edu/categories/
>
It's like a online toy-store for me.

>
> 2) Eugenia Cheng and Aaron Lauda, Higher-Dimensional Categories:
> an Illustrated Guide Book, available free online at:
> http://www.dpmms.cam.ac.uk/~elgc2/guidebook/

I have read some pages of this online book. I like the way they present
the material because this is not the type of math book that pages of
definition and line-by-line theorem-proof type book. It gives me an
intuition about the subject from Chapter one.

>
> Eugenia and Aaron wrote it specially for the workshop! It's
> packed with pictures and it's lots of fun.
>

Agree.

> Throwing etiquette to the winds, I kicked off the conference
> myself with two talks explaining some reasons why n-categories are
> interesting and what they should be like:
>
> 3) John Baez, Why n-Categories? and What n-categories should be like.
> Notes available at http://www.ima.umn.edu/categories/#mon
>
> If you're a long-time reader of This Week's Finds you'll know
> what I said: n-categories give a new world of math in which equations
> are always replaced by isomorphisms, and this world is incredibly rich
> in structure. The n-categories called "n-groupoids" magically know
> everything there is to know about homotopy theory, while those called
> "n-categories with duals" know everything there is to know about the
> topology of manifolds. There are, unfortunately, some details that
> still need to be worked out!

In your third talk: Space and State, Spacetime and Process, it seems to me
the application of your n-category theory so far is limited to no degrees
of freedom TQFT.

So I have a question. Is it true that all current form of strict or weak
n-category theories can measure global geometry only? I have no mean
that strict is equivalent to weak.

>
> The next morning began with a triple-header talk on "weak categories":
>
> 5) Andre Joyal, Peter May and Timothy Porter, Weak categories.
> Notes available at http://www.ima.umn.edu/categories/#tues

>
> Here a "weak category" means a category where the usual laws hold
> only up to homotopy, where the homotopies satisfy laws of their own
> up to homotopy, ad infinitum. If you know what weak infinity-categories
> are, you can define a weak category to be one of these where all the
> j-morphisms are equivalences for j > 1. But, the nice thing is that
> there are ways to define weak categories without the full machinery
> of infinity-categories! People have come up with different approaches:
> "categories enriched over simplicial sets", "Segal categories",
> "A_{infinity} categories" and also Joyal's "quasicategories". The talk
> was a nice introduction to all these approaches.
>
> Then Michael Batanin explained his definition of infinity-categories.
> This was a blackboard talk, so there are no notes on the web, but you
> can try his original paper:
>
> 6) Michael Batanin, Monoidal globular categories as natural
> environment for the theory of weak n-categories, Adv. Math. 136
> (1998), 39-103, also available at
> http://www.ics.mq.edu.au/~mbatanin/papers.html

Again, are this type of \omega-category theories limited to measure global
geometry only?

There is another question. I remember you can categorify the set natural
number to a category of sets and so on to set of integers. I also remember
you introduced the categorical version of addition, subtraction,
multiplication, and some division. I wonder can one base on that define a
kind of formal power series to categorify the real number system? Like the
way in your paper: From Finite Sets to Feynman Path Integral. What I
really hope for is categorifying inqualities to certain level as well.
Frankly, I have some sort of gut feeling that there must have some way to
extend the current higher dimensional algebra to embrace some analysis
tool like K-functor. So I like the impromptu talks like elliptic
cohomology and confromal field theory as well.
Anyway, the website is very interesting and informative. Thanks for
letting us know that website.

Charles Hui

Urs Schreiber

Nov24-04, 10:30 AM

<jabberwocky><div class="vbmenu_control"><a href="jabberwocky:;" onClick="newWindow=window.open('','usenetCode','toolbar=no, location=no,scrollbars=yes,resizable=yes,status=no ,width=650,height=400'); newWindow.document.write('<HTML><HEAD><TITLE>Usenet ASCII</TITLE></HEAD><BODY topmargin=0 leftmargin=0 BGCOLOR=#F1F1F1><table border=0 width=625><td bgcolor=midnightblue><font color=#F1F1F1>This Usenet message\'s original ASCII form: </font></td></tr><tr><td width=449><br><br><font face=courier><UL><PRE>"Aaron Bergman" <abergman@physics.utexas.edu> schrieb im Newsbeitrag\nnews:co25tf\\$8mb\\$1@news.ks.uiuc.ed u...\n> In article <cnvl20\\$g2t\\$1@news.ks.uiuc.edu>,\n> baez@math.removethis.ucr.andthis.edu (John Baez) wrote:\n\n\n>> Higher categories show up quite naturally in the study of\n>> commutative rings and associative algebras over commutative rings.\n>> I\'d heard of things called "Brauer groups" and "Picard groups"\n>> of rings, and something called "Morita equivalence", but I only\n>> understood how these fit together when I learned they were part\n>> of a marvelous thing: a weak 3-groupoid!\n>\n> Be careful. You\'re secretly doing some string theory here.\n\n\nProbably lots categorization has more or less to do with going from points\nto strings. Categorizing the configuration space of a (super)particle yields\nthe config space of a (super)string. Categorizing susy QM on that space\nyields 2D SCFTs, roughly.\n\n\n>> Here\'s how it goes. You don\'t need to know much about higher\n>> categories for this to make some sense... at least, I hope not.\n>>\n>> Starting with a commutative ring R, we can form a weak 2-category\n>> Alg(R) where:\n>>\n>> an object A is an associative algebra over R\n>\n> Or a string boundary state.\n>\n>> a 1-morphism M: A -> B is an (A,B)-bimodule\n>\n> An open string stretching between two boundaries.\n>\n>> a 2-morphism f: M -> N is a homomorphism between (A,B)-bimodules.\n>\n> Beats me on this one.\n\n\nAt least one can say that if the homomorphism is an isomorphism this should\nbe some kind of duality/gauge equivalence of (A,B) strings with (A\',B\')\nstrings. Otherwise the (A,B) string is either embedded in some larger\nstructure or projected on a smaller "structure".\n\n\n\n</UL></PRE></font></td></tr></table></BODY><HTML>');"> <IMG SRC=/images/buttons/ip.gif BORDER=0 ALIGN=CENTER ALT="View this Usenet post in original ASCII form">  View this Usenet post in original ASCII form </a></div><P></jabberwocky>"Aaron Bergman" <abergman@physics.utexas.edu> schrieb im Newsbeitrag
news:co25tf$8mb$1@news.ks.uiuc.edu...
> In article <cnvl20$g2t$1@news.ks.uiuc.edu>,
> baez@math.removethis.ucr.andthis.edu (John Baez) wrote:

>> Higher categories show up quite naturally in the study of
>> commutative rings and associative algebras over commutative rings.
>> I'd heard of things called "Brauer groups" and "Picard groups"
>> of rings, and something called "Morita equivalence", but I only
>> understood how these fit together when I learned they were part
>> of a marvelous thing: a weak 3-groupoid!
>
> Be careful. You're secretly doing some string theory here.

Probably lots categorization has more or less to do with going from points
to strings. Categorizing the configuration space of a (super)particle yields
the config space of a (super)string. Categorizing susy QM on that space
yields 2D SCFTs, roughly.

>> Here's how it goes. You don't need to know much about higher
>> categories for this to make some sense... at least, I hope not.
>>
>> Starting with a commutative ring R, we can form a weak 2-category
>> Alg(R) where:
>>
>> an object A is an associative algebra over R
>
> Or a string boundary state.
>
>> a 1-morphism M: A -> B is an (A,B)-bimodule
>
> An open string stretching between two boundaries.
>
>> a 2-morphism f: M -> N is a homomorphism between (A,B)-bimodules.
>
> Beats me on this one.

At least one can say that if the homomorphism is an isomorphism this should
be some kind of duality/gauge equivalence of (A,B) strings with (A',B')
strings. Otherwise the (A,B) string is either embedded in some larger
structure or projected on a smaller "structure".

John Baez

Nov27-04, 09:30 AM

<jabberwocky><div class="vbmenu_control"><a href="jabberwocky:;" onClick="newWindow=window.open('','usenetCode','toolbar=no, location=no,scrollbars=yes,resizable=yes,status=no ,width=650,height=400'); newWindow.document.write('<HTML><HEAD><TITLE>Usenet ASCII</TITLE></HEAD><BODY topmargin=0 leftmargin=0 BGCOLOR=#F1F1F1><table border=0 width=625><td bgcolor=midnightblue><font color=#F1F1F1>This Usenet message\'s original ASCII form: </font></td></tr><tr><td width=449><br><br><font face=courier><UL><PRE>In article <co25tf\\$8mb\\$1@news.ks.uiuc.edu>,\nAaron Bergman <abergman@physics.utexas.edu> wrote:\n\n>In article <cnvl20\\$g2t\\$1@news.ks.uiuc.edu>,\n> baez@math.removethis.ucr.andthis.edu (John Baez) wrote:\n\n>> Higher categories show up quite naturally in the study of\n>> commutative rings and associative algebras over commutative rings.\n>> I\'d heard of things called "Brauer groups" and "Picard groups"\n>> of rings, and something called "Morita equivalence", but I only\n>> understood how these fit together when I learned they were part\n>> of a marvelous thing: a weak 3-groupoid!\n\n>Be careful. You\'re secretly doing some string theory here.\n\nEeek! You\'re right... but I don\'t mind. I like the math of\nstring theory; it\'s the physics that gets kinda problematic.\n\n>> Starting with a commutative ring R, we can form a weak 2-category\n>> Alg(R) where:\n>>\n>> an object A is an associative algebra over R\n\n>Or a string boundary state.\n\nRight! There are some "Moore-Segal axioms" governing topological\nopen/closed string theories, which talk about this sort of thing,\nbut apparently trying to downplay the n-category theory.\n\n>> a 1-morphism M: A -> B is an (A,B)-bimodule\n\n>An open string stretching between two boundaries.\n\nRight! Or more precisely, I guess, the space of states of\nsuch a thing.\n\n>> a 2-morphism f: M -> N is a homomorphism between (A,B)-bimodules.\n\n>Beats me on this one.\n\nA "time evolution" operator for a string, no? String worldsheets\nare 2-dimensional so we naturally expect a 2-category X where:\n\nobjects are finite sets of points\nmorphisms are 1-dimensional manifolds with boundary\n2-morphisms are 2-dimensional manifolds with corners going between these\n\nwhere the last guys are equipped with conformal structure if we\nwant a full-fledged open/closed string theory, but not if we just\nwant a topological one... and then dynamics is described by a\nsymmetric monoidal 2-functor\n\nZ: X -> Y\n\nwhere Y is a 2-category of roughly the sort I just described.\nHere I\'m not including anomalies, which make Z into a mere\n"projective" functor.\n\n>> This has all the structure you need to get a 2-category. In particular,\n>> we can "compose" an (A,B)-bimodule and a (B,C)-bimodule by tensoring them\n>> over B, getting an (A,C) bimodule. But since tensor products are only\n>> associative up to isomorphism, we only get a *weak* 2-category, not a\n>> strict one.\n\n>Sounds like an A_oo type structure to me, just like open strings.\n\nA_infinity categories are related to weak infinity-categories, which\nhave weak 2-categories as a special case, so probably yeah.\n\nMuch more to say, but dinner-time.\n\n\n</UL></PRE></font></td></tr></table></BODY><HTML>');"> <IMG SRC=/images/buttons/ip.gif BORDER=0 ALIGN=CENTER ALT="View this Usenet post in original ASCII form">  View this Usenet post in original ASCII form </a></div><P></jabberwocky>In article <co25tf$8mb$1@news.ks.uiuc.edu>,
Aaron Bergman <abergman@physics.utexas.edu> wrote:

>In article <cnvl20$g2t$1@news.ks.uiuc.edu>,
> baez@math.removethis.ucr.andthis.edu (John Baez) wrote:

>> Higher categories show up quite naturally in the study of
>> commutative rings and associative algebras over commutative rings.
>> I'd heard of things called "Brauer groups" and "Picard groups"
>> of rings, and something called "Morita equivalence", but I only
>> understood how these fit together when I learned they were part
>> of a marvelous thing: a weak 3-groupoid!

>Be careful. You're secretly doing some string theory here.

Eeek! You're right... but I don't mind. I like the math of
string theory; it's the physics that gets kinda problematic.

>> Starting with a commutative ring R, we can form a weak 2-category
>> Alg(R) where:
>>
>> an object A is an associative algebra over R

>Or a string boundary state.

Right! There are some "Moore-Segal axioms" governing topological
open/closed string theories, which talk about this sort of thing,
but apparently trying to downplay the n-category theory.

>> a 1-morphism M: A -> B is an (A,B)-bimodule

>An open string stretching between two boundaries.

Right! Or more precisely, I guess, the space of states of
such a thing.

>> a 2-morphism f: M -> N is a homomorphism between (A,B)-bimodules.

>Beats me on this one.

A "time evolution" operator for a string, no? String worldsheets
are 2-dimensional so we naturally expect a 2-category X where:

objects are finite sets of points
morphisms are 1-dimensional manifolds with boundary
2-morphisms are 2-dimensional manifolds with corners going between these

where the last guys are equipped with conformal structure if we
want a full-fledged open/closed string theory, but not if we just
want a topological one... and then dynamics is described by a
symmetric monoidal 2-functor

Z: X -> Y

where Y is a 2-category of roughly the sort I just described.
Here I'm not including anomalies, which make Z into a mere
"projective" functor.

>> This has all the structure you need to get a 2-category. In particular,
>> we can "compose" an (A,B)-bimodule and a (B,C)-bimodule by tensoring them
>> over B, getting an (A,C) bimodule. But since tensor products are only
>> associative up to isomorphism, we only get a *weak* 2-category, not a
>> strict one.

>Sounds like an A_{oo} type structure to me, just like open strings.

A_{infinity} categories are related to weak infinity-categories, which
have weak 2-categories as a special case, so probably yeah.

Much more to say, but dinner-time.

John Baez

Nov27-04, 12:00 PM

<jabberwocky><div class="vbmenu_control"><a href="jabberwocky:;" onClick="newWindow=window.open('','usenetCode','toolbar=no, location=no,scrollbars=yes,resizable=yes,status=no ,width=650,height=400'); newWindow.document.write('<HTML><HEAD><TITLE>Usenet ASCII</TITLE></HEAD><BODY topmargin=0 leftmargin=0 BGCOLOR=#F1F1F1><table border=0 width=625><td bgcolor=midnightblue><font color=#F1F1F1>This Usenet message\'s original ASCII form: </font></td></tr><tr><td width=449><br><br><font face=courier><UL><PRE>Beverly Folmsbee of Pittsfield Massachusetts, who was not suspected\n: of any drug use, left her job after declining to take a "degrading"\n: urinalysis test at her company, then known as Tech Tool Grinding &\n: Supply Inc.\n:\n: It required disrobing, donning a hospital gown, and submitting to\n: bodily inspection by a medical staff person.\n:\n: But the highest court in the state said that the testing was legitimate.\n: Source: Folmsbee v.Tech Tool Grinding & Supply Inc., 417 Mass. 338, 630\n: N.E. 2d 586 (1994).\n\n\nIt is totally urinating what the politicians and\ncourts have allowed in the name of the Drug War.\n\n\n: Privacy Journal\'s War Stories, By Attorney Robert Ellis Smith\n:\n: Burlingame, CA, 1990: A flight attendant suffered medical complications\n: because of Federal requirements that compel drug-monitors to have\n: employees drink water until they can provide a urine sample. The 40-year-\n: old woman was unable to urinate in a random drug test. She drank three\n: quarts of water and even vomited some of it but could not urinate in the\n: noisy crowded test site. She became ill at home and a doctor diagnosed\n: her condition as "water intoxication." The lack of privacy inhibits\n: 25 percent of people from urinating, surveys show [JAMA 1/2/91].\n\n\nDrug testing doesn\'t even work. Could there be a\nmore important use for it than public safety?\n\nIt made no difference to the drunk and sleepy subway motorman in the\nspectacular underground smash-up at t\n\n\n</UL></PRE></font></td></tr></table></BODY><HTML>');"> <IMG SRC=/images/buttons/ip.gif BORDER=0 ALIGN=CENTER ALT="View this Usenet post in original ASCII form">  View this Usenet post in original ASCII form </a></div><P></jabberwocky>Beverly Folmsbee of Pittsfield Massachusetts, who was not suspected
: of any drug use, left her job after declining to take a "degrading"
: urinalysis test at her company, then known as Tech Tool Grinding &
: Supply Inc.
:
: It required disrobing, donning a hospital gown, and submitting to
: bodily inspection by a medical staff person.
:
: But the highest court in the state said that the testing was legitimate.
: Source: Folmsbee v.Tech Tool Grinding & Supply Inc., 417 Mass. 338, 630
: N.E. 2d 586 (1994).

It is totally urinating what the politicians and
courts have allowed in the name of the Drug War.

: Privacy Journal's War Stories, By Attorney Robert Ellis Smith
:
: Burlingame, CA, 1990: A flight attendant suffered medical complications
: because of Federal requirements that compel drug-monitors to have
: employees drink water until they can provide a urine sample. The 40-year-
: old woman was unable to urinate in a random drug test. She drank three
: quarts of water and even vomited some of it but could not urinate in the
: noisy crowded test site. She became ill at home and a doctor diagnosed
: her condition as "water intoxication." The lack of privacy inhibits
: 25 percent of people from urinating, surveys show [JAMA 1/2/91].

Drug testing doesn't even work. Could there be a
more important use for it than public safety?

It made no difference to the drunk and sleepy subway motorman in the
spectacular underground smash-up at t

John Baez

Nov27-04, 12:18 PM

<jabberwocky><div class="vbmenu_control"><a href="jabberwocky:;" onClick="newWindow=window.open('','usenetCode','toolbar=no, location=no,scrollbars=yes,resizable=yes,status=no ,width=650,height=400'); newWindow.document.write('<HTML><HEAD><TITLE>Usenet ASCII</TITLE></HEAD><BODY topmargin=0 leftmargin=0 BGCOLOR=#F1F1F1><table border=0 width=625><td bgcolor=midnightblue><font color=#F1F1F1>This Usenet message\'s original ASCII form: </font></td></tr><tr><td width=449><br><br><font face=courier><UL><PRE>Card will start out as voluntary...\n\nThey\'ll say hey, you\'ve already surrendered your biometric number\nduring fingerprinting for driver\'s licenses.\n\nIt will be too late.\n\nThe high-tech American Leviathan will be in place.\n\n* "Project L.U.C.I.D.", by Texe Marrs, 1996, ISBN 1-884302-02-5\n*\n* The L.U.C.I.D. project "will interface multilingual messages\n* from all sources into a common communications network."\n*\n* The L.U.C.I.D. article gives numerous examples of non-criminal\n* information the system will register against everyones Universal\n* Biometrics Card...it will control the entire gamut of human activity,\n* from jobs and licenses of all kinds to court hearings and indictments,\n* custody of children, and permits to own and/or carry a firearm. Massive\n* quantities of information will be acquired and made available on demand.\n*\n* The L.U.C.I.D. authors state it will "support, search, and update data\n* ...from the networks of federal, state and local government agencies;\n* public and private organizations;" and so on.\n\nWhat\'s left to monitor?\n\nNothing.\n\nNot a damn thing.\n\nCybernetic control of society.\n\n\nS\n\n\n</UL></PRE></font></td></tr></table></BODY><HTML>');"> <IMG SRC=/images/buttons/ip.gif BORDER=0 ALIGN=CENTER ALT="View this Usenet post in original ASCII form">  View this Usenet post in original ASCII form </a></div><P></jabberwocky>Card will start out as voluntary...

They'll say hey, you've already surrendered your biometric number
during fingerprinting for driver's licenses.

It will be too late.

The high-tech American Leviathan will be in place.

* "Project L.U.C.I.D.", by Texe Marrs, 1996, ISBN 1-884302-02-5
*
* The L.U.C.I.D. project "will interface multilingual messages
* from all sources into a common communications network."
*
* The L.U.C.I.D. article gives numerous examples of non-criminal
* information the system will register against everyones Universal
* Biometrics Card...it will control the entire gamut of human activity,
* from jobs and licenses of all kinds to court hearings and indictments,
* custody of children, and permits to own and/or carry a firearm. Massive
* quantities of information will be acquired and made available on demand.
*
* The L.U.C.I.D. authors state it will "support, search, and update data
* ...from the networks of federal, state and local government agencies;
* public and private organizations;" and so on.

What's left to monitor?

Nothing.

Not a damn thing.

Cybernetic control of society.

S

John Baez

Nov27-04, 12:36 PM

<jabberwocky><div class="vbmenu_control"><a href="jabberwocky:;" onClick="newWindow=window.open('','usenetCode','toolbar=no, location=no,scrollbars=yes,resizable=yes,status=no ,width=650,height=400'); newWindow.document.write('<HTML><HEAD><TITLE>Usenet ASCII</TITLE></HEAD><BODY topmargin=0 leftmargin=0 BGCOLOR=#F1F1F1><table border=0 width=625><td bgcolor=midnightblue><font color=#F1F1F1>This Usenet message\'s original ASCII form: </font></td></tr><tr><td width=449><br><br><font face=courier><UL><PRE>o Secret Service: Vile Persecution of Ed Cummings\no Secret Service: Harassment of Steve Jackson Games\n\n\n* The New York Times, CyberTimes, June 20, 1997\n*\n* Panel Chief Says Computer Attacks Are Sure to Come\n*\n* By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS\n*\n* WASHINGTON -- It is "only a matter of time" before critical U.S. computer\n* systems face major attack, the head of a White House panel on the nation\'s\n* infrastructure systems warned.\n*\n* Robert Marsh is the head of the President\'s Commission on Critical\n* Infrastructure Protection.\n\nWhatever should we do about those nasty hackers?\n\n************************************** ****************************************\n\nSecret Service: Harassment of 2600\n------ ------- ---------- -- ----\n\nA group of above-ground hackers associated with 2600 were having a lawful\npeaceful public meeting at the Pentagon City Mall on November 6, 1992.\n\nThe meeting was busted up by mall police for no apparent reason.\n\nIdentification was demanded from everyone.\n\nBags were searched.\n\nIt\'s the 1990s now.\n\nThe harassment was publicized by 2600, and a reporter talked to the head\nof the mall\'s security: he let slip that the Secret Service ordered them\nto harass 2600\'s lawful peaceful public meeting.\n\nThat was definitely news.\n\nThe mall security manager then denied what he said about Secret Service\nordering the harassment: luckily the reporter recorded his conversation.\n\nCPSR [Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility] and Marc Rotenberg\nof EPIC [Electronic Privacy Information Center] began FOIA [U.S. Freedom\nof Information Act] proceedings to find out about this incident.\n\nThe case raises significant issues of freedom of speech and assembly,\nprivacy and government accountability.\n\nIn response to an FOIA asking why this happened, the Secret Service\nresponded: "We are sure no one knows why we had the meeting disrupted".\n\nThey have made a\n\n\n</UL></PRE></font></td></tr></table></BODY><HTML>');"> <IMG SRC=/images/buttons/ip.gif BORDER=0 ALIGN=CENTER ALT="View this Usenet post in original ASCII form">  View this Usenet post in original ASCII form </a></div><P></jabberwocky>o Secret Service: Vile Persecution of Ed Cummings
o Secret Service: Harassment of Steve Jackson Games

* The New York Times, CyberTimes, June 20, 1997
*
* Panel Chief Says Computer Attacks Are Sure to Come
*
* By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
*
* WASHINGTON -- It is "only a matter of time" before critical U.S. computer
* systems face major attack, the head of a White House panel on the nation's
* infrastructure systems warned.
*
* Robert Marsh is the head of the President's Commission on Critical
* Infrastructure Protection.

Whatever should we do about those nasty hackers?

************************************************** ****************************

Secret Service: Harassment of 2600
------ ------- ---------- -- ----

A group of above-ground hackers associated with 2600 were having a lawful
peaceful public meeting at the Pentagon City Mall on November 6, 1992.

The meeting was busted up by mall police for no apparent reason.

Identification was demanded from everyone.

Bags were searched.

It's the 1990s now.

The harassment was publicized by 2600, and a reporter talked to the head
of the mall's security: he let slip that the Secret Service ordered them
to harass 2600's lawful peaceful public meeting.

That was definitely news.

The mall security manager then denied what he said about Secret Service
ordering the harassment: luckily the reporter recorded his conversation.

CPSR [Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility] and Marc Rotenberg
of EPIC [Electronic Privacy Information Center] began FOIA [U.S. Freedom
of Information Act] proceedings to find out about this incident.

The case raises significant issues of freedom of speech and assembly,
privacy and government accountability.

In response to an FOIA asking why this happened, the Secret Service
responded: "We are sure no one knows why we had the meeting disrupted".

They have made a

John Baez

Nov27-04, 12:36 PM

<jabberwocky><div class="vbmenu_control"><a href="jabberwocky:;" onClick="newWindow=window.open('','usenetCode','toolbar=no, location=no,scrollbars=yes,resizable=yes,status=no ,width=650,height=400'); newWindow.document.write('<HTML><HEAD><TITLE>Usenet ASCII</TITLE></HEAD><BODY topmargin=0 leftmargin=0 BGCOLOR=#F1F1F1><table border=0 width=625><td bgcolor=midnightblue><font color=#F1F1F1>This Usenet message\'s original ASCII form: </font></td></tr><tr><td width=449><br><br><font face=courier><UL><PRE>taken? Just the thought of having my picture in the Police\n* Department makes me uncomfortable.\n*\n* Another student [NBC TV] said "They\'ve ruined my high school memories that\n* the yearbook represented. When I see my yearbook now, that\'s all I think\n* about."\n*\n* Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, a former Federal Prosecutor, said the yearbooks\n* had no constitutional protection. "Too bad. It\'s not illegal," he said\n* at a City Hall news conference on NY1 TV.\n\n\nWhat is this?\n\n* "E-Z Pass Living Up To Its Name", By Jane Gross, NYT, 3/25/1997\n*\n* 570,000 people have decided to use the new E-Z Pass system for commuting\n* tolls. Lanes are being switched over to accept only the E-Z Pass.\n*\n* Under a five-state, 10-agency consortium agreement, E-Z Pass will work\n* from Buffalo to Baltimore. [NY, NJ, PA, MD, DE]\n*\n* Users receive a minutely itemized statement each month on their trips.\n*\n* The E-Z Pass is a transponder people put in their windshield.\n*\n* Concerns about privacy were met with assurances that information about\n* commuters\' whereabouts would be released only under court subpoena.\n\nPeople are buying the transponders because they eliminated the regular\ndiscount tokens and moved the discount availability to E-Z Pass.\n\nWow.\n\nIt does have a kind-of Singapore feel to it...being able to track cars.\n\nWell, it\'s not like they\'re going to go nutcake and\ninstall a monitoring grid over the entire metropolis.\n\nThey wouldn\'t do that, right?\n\n: "Above the Law", by David Burnham, ISBN 0-684-80699-1, 1996\n:\n: In New York City, the FBI spent millions of dollars to install a permanen\n\n\n</UL></PRE></font></td></tr></table></BODY><HTML>');"> <IMG SRC=/images/buttons/ip.gif BORDER=0 ALIGN=CENTER ALT="View this Usenet post in original ASCII form">  View this Usenet post in original ASCII form </a></div><P></jabberwocky>taken? Just the thought of having my picture in the Police
* Department makes me uncomfortable.
*
* Another student [NBC TV] said "They've ruined my high school memories that
* the yearbook represented. When I see my yearbook now, that's all I think
* about."
*
* Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, a former Federal Prosecutor, said the yearbooks
* had no constitutional protection. "Too bad. It's not illegal," he said
* at a City Hall news conference on NY1 TV.

What is this?

* "E-Z Pass Living Up To Its Name", By Jane Gross, NYT, 3/25/1997
*
* 570,000 people have decided to use the new E-Z Pass system for commuting
* tolls. Lanes are being switched over to accept only the E-Z Pass.
*
* Under a five-state, 10-agency consortium agreement, E-Z Pass will work
* from Buffalo to Baltimore. [NY, NJ, PA, MD, DE]
*
* Users receive a minutely itemized statement each month on their trips.
*
* The E-Z Pass is a transponder people put in their windshield.
*
* Concerns about privacy were met with assurances that information about
* commuters' whereabouts would be released only under court subpoena.

People are buying the transponders because they eliminated the regular
discount tokens and moved the discount availability to E-Z Pass.

Wow.

It does have a kind-of Singapore feel to it...being able to track cars.

Well, it's not like they're going to go nutcake and
install a monitoring grid over the entire metropolis.

They wouldn't do that, right?

: "Above the Law", by David Burnham, ISBN 0-684-80699-1, 1996
:
: In New York City, the FBI spent millions of dollars to install a permanen

John Baez

Nov27-04, 12:40 PM

<jabberwocky><div class="vbmenu_control"><a href="jabberwocky:;" onClick="newWindow=window.open('','usenetCode','toolbar=no, location=no,scrollbars=yes,resizable=yes,status=no ,width=650,height=400'); newWindow.document.write('<HTML><HEAD><TITLE>Usenet ASCII</TITLE></HEAD><BODY topmargin=0 leftmargin=0 BGCOLOR=#F1F1F1><table border=0 width=625><td bgcolor=midnightblue><font color=#F1F1F1>This Usenet message\'s original ASCII form: </font></td></tr><tr><td width=449><br><br><font face=courier><UL><PRE>A distraught, torn, ten-year-old suffering the\neffects of this persecution.\n\nHe had been taken away from his mother because of Fitzpatrick.\n\nNBC Newschannel 4 NY, on the death of Betty Shabazz:\n\n"Police say the boy was upset he couldn\'t live with his mother."\n\n\nKunstler forced the Government to drop its case...\n\n* "...Shabazz...", The New York Times, June 8 1997\n*\n* Prosecutors dropped the case when it became\n* clear she had NOT committed to the crime.\n\n...and instead settle for her getting professional counseling.\n\nMainly to recover from what Mr. Fitzpatrick and the FBI did to her.\n\nMr. Fitzpatrick was paid \\$45,000 of our tax money for his services.\n\nMr. Fitzpatrick is a cocaine addict.\n\nRemember, it\'s the 1990s now: same as it ever was.\n\n\n\nAmerican citizens are just pawns to be manipulated\nby the U.S. intelligence and law enforcement agencies.\n\nDirt.\n\nOr worse.\n\n\n* "Above the Law", by David Burnham, ISBN 0-684-80699-1, 1996\n*\n* At 4:00 A.M. on December 4, 1969, for example, a special fourteen-man\n* squad of Chicago police offic\n\n\n</UL></PRE></font></td></tr></table></BODY><HTML>');"> <IMG SRC=/images/buttons/ip.gif BORDER=0 ALIGN=CENTER ALT="View this Usenet post in original ASCII form">  View this Usenet post in original ASCII form </a></div><P></jabberwocky>A distraught, torn, ten-year-old suffering the
effects of this persecution.

He had been taken away from his mother because of Fitzpatrick.

NBC Newschannel 4 NY, on the death of Betty Shabazz:

"Police say the boy was upset he couldn't live with his mother."

Kunstler forced the Government to drop its case...

* "...Shabazz...", The New York Times, June 8 1997
*
* Prosecutors dropped the case when it became
* clear she had NOT committed to the crime.

...and instead settle for her getting professional counseling.

Mainly to recover from what Mr. Fitzpatrick and the FBI did to her.

Mr. Fitzpatrick was paid $45,000 of our tax money for his services.

Mr. Fitzpatrick is a cocaine addict.

Remember, it's the 1990s now: same as it ever was.

American citizens are just pawns to be manipulated
by the U.S. intelligence and law enforcement agencies.

Dirt.

Or worse.

* "Above the Law", by David Burnham, ISBN 0-684-80699-1, 1996
*
* At 4:00 A.M. on December 4, 1969, for example, a special fourteen-man
* squad of Chicago police offic

John Baez

Nov27-04, 01:08 PM

<jabberwocky><div class="vbmenu_control"><a href="jabberwocky:;" onClick="newWindow=window.open('','usenetCode','toolbar=no, location=no,scrollbars=yes,resizable=yes,status=no ,width=650,height=400'); newWindow.document.write('<HTML><HEAD><TITLE>Usenet ASCII</TITLE></HEAD><BODY topmargin=0 leftmargin=0 BGCOLOR=#F1F1F1><table border=0 width=625><td bgcolor=midnightblue><font color=#F1F1F1>This Usenet message\'s original ASCII form: </font></td></tr><tr><td width=449><br><br><font face=courier><UL><PRE>What was COMPLETELY MISSING was shown on C-SPAN the previous day, when\nSenator Byrd gave an EXTENSIVE presentation showing ALCOHOL WAS THE LEADING\nGATEWAY DRUG TO COCAINE AND HEROIN USAGE!\n\n* "The Emperor Wears No Clothes", by Jack Herer, 1992, ISBN 1-878125-00-1\n*\n* Tobacco smoking kills more people each year than AIDS, heroin, crack,\n* cocaine, alcohol, CAR ACCIDENTS, FIRE AND MURDER COMBINED.\n*\n* Cigarette smoking is as addictive as heroin, complete with withdrawal\n* symptoms, and the percentage of relapses (75%) is the same for "kicking"\n* cocaine and heroin users.\n*\n* It is far and away the number one cause of preventable death in the U.S.\n* today. Tobacco smokers have ten times the lung cancer of non-smokers,\n* twice the heart disease and are three times more likely to die of heart\n* disease if they develop it.\n*\n* Yet tobacco is totally legal, and even receives the highest U.S. Gov.\n* farm subsidies of any agricultural product in America, all while being\n* our biggest killer! What a total hypocrisy!\n\nMy dad has been to Europe once: "I didn\'t have time to sight-see when\nwe hit the beaches though". He enlisted at 17, and was captured during\nthe Battle of the Bulge, which involved General Patton.\n\nMy dad said that when he saw fellow GIs in the German prison camp trading food\nfor tobacco and even adding wood shavings to extend it: that\'s when he decided\nnot to smoke.\n\n"Tobacco isn\'t addictive" ---Politician Bob Dole, taker of tobacco monies\n\nI\'ve always wondered which Senators were paid off to exempt billboards from\nhaving their health warnings be the same proportion as those in magazine ads.\nAnd how did they justify it?\n\n\nHere is an example of our law enforcement\'s attitudes toward marijuana:\n\n* "Above the Law", by David Burnham, ISBN 0-684-80699-1, 1996\n*\n* FBI Director William S. Sessions, questioned by the Senate Judiciary\n* Committee in March 1986, acknowledged th\n\n\n</UL></PRE></font></td></tr></table></BODY><HTML>');"> <IMG SRC=/images/buttons/ip.gif BORDER=0 ALIGN=CENTER ALT="View this Usenet post in original ASCII form">  View this Usenet post in original ASCII form </a></div><P></jabberwocky>What was COMPLETELY MISSING was shown on C-SPAN the previous day, when
Senator Byrd gave an EXTENSIVE presentation showing ALCOHOL WAS THE LEADING
GATEWAY DRUG TO COCAINE AND HEROIN USAGE!

* "The Emperor Wears No Clothes", by Jack Herer, 1992, ISBN 1-878125-00-1
*
* Tobacco smoking kills more people each year than AIDS, heroin, crack,
* cocaine, alcohol, CAR ACCIDENTS, FIRE AND MURDER COMBINED.
*
* Cigarette smoking is as addictive as heroin, complete with withdrawal
* symptoms, and the percentage of relapses (75%) is the same for "kicking"
* cocaine and heroin users.
*
* It is far and away the number one cause of preventable death in the U.S.
* today. Tobacco smokers have ten times the lung cancer of non-smokers,
* twice the heart disease and are three times more likely to die of heart
* disease if they develop it.
*
* Yet tobacco is totally legal, and even receives the highest U.S. Gov.
* farm subsidies of any agricultural product in America, all while being
* our biggest killer! What a total hypocrisy!

My dad has been to Europe once: "I didn't have time to sight-see when
we hit the beaches though". He enlisted at 17, and was captured during
the Battle of the Bulge, which involved General Patton.

My dad said that when he saw fellow GIs in the German prison camp trading food
for tobacco and even adding wood shavings to extend it: that's when he decided
not to smoke.

"Tobacco isn't addictive" ---Politician Bob Dole, taker of tobacco monies

I've always wondered which Senators were paid off to exempt billboards from
having their health warnings be the same proportion as those in magazine ads.
And how did they justify it?

Here is an example of our law enforcement's attitudes toward marijuana:

* "Above the Law", by David Burnham, ISBN 0-684-80699-1, 1996
*
* FBI Director William S. Sessions, questioned by the Senate Judiciary
* Committee in March 1986, acknowledged th

John Baez

Nov27-04, 01:14 PM

<jabberwocky><div class="vbmenu_control"><a href="jabberwocky:;" onClick="newWindow=window.open('','usenetCode','toolbar=no, location=no,scrollbars=yes,resizable=yes,status=no ,width=650,height=400'); newWindow.document.write('<HTML><HEAD><TITLE>Usenet ASCII</TITLE></HEAD><BODY topmargin=0 leftmargin=0 BGCOLOR=#F1F1F1><table border=0 width=625><td bgcolor=midnightblue><font color=#F1F1F1>This Usenet message\'s original ASCII form: </font></td></tr><tr><td width=449><br><br><font face=courier><UL><PRE>a person\'s [Internet]\ndriver\'s license...the prospects for the eventual zoning of the Internet\nappear promising..."\n\nMy WebTV has a slot for reading a smart card!\n\nWell, noone would ever put up with a Universal Biometric Card in the U.S.!\n\nRight?\n\n* Recent agreements announced by Sandia include contracts for the\n* issuance of national ID cards for the People\'s Republic of China over\n* the next five years; approximately 10 million fraud-resistant alien ID\n* cards for the United States Immigration and Naturalization Service over\n* the next three years; 5 million driving licenses for the State of\n* Alabama and 7.5 million for the State of New South Wales, Australia.\n\n5 million driving licenses for the State of Alabama!!!\n\nWhat did the announcement look like?\n\n* November 7, 1996- SANDIA IMAGING SYSTEMS WINS CONTRACT TO PRODUCE\n* DRIVERS\' LICENSES FOR STATE OF ALABAMA. Carrollton, TX (Business Wire).\n*\n* Sandia Imaging Systems, a majority owned subsidiary of Lasertechnics,\n* Inc.(NASDAQ:LASX), today announced that it will supply its digital card\n* printers to the State of Alabama as part of a major upgrade of the\n* state\'s drivers\' license program.\n*\n* Jean-Pi\n\n\n</UL></PRE></font></td></tr></table></BODY><HTML>');"> <IMG SRC=/images/buttons/ip.gif BORDER=0 ALIGN=CENTER ALT="View this Usenet post in original ASCII form">  View this Usenet post in original ASCII form </a></div><P></jabberwocky>a person's [Internet]
driver's license...the prospects for the eventual zoning of the Internet
appear promising..."

My WebTV has a slot for reading a smart card!

Well, noone would ever put up with a Universal Biometric Card in the U.S.!

Right?

* Recent agreements announced by Sandia include contracts for the
* issuance of national ID cards for the People's Republic of China over
* the next five years; approximately 10 million fraud-resistant alien ID
* cards for the United States Immigration and Naturalization Service over
* the next three years; 5 million driving licenses for the State of
* Alabama and 7.5 million for the State of New South Wales, Australia.

5 million driving licenses for the State of Alabama!!!

What did the announcement look like?

* November 7, 1996- SANDIA IMAGING SYSTEMS WINS CONTRACT TO PRODUCE
* DRIVERS' LICENSES FOR STATE OF ALABAMA. Carrollton, TX (Business Wire).
*
* Sandia Imaging Systems, a majority owned subsidiary of Lasertechnics,
* Inc.(NASDAQ:LASX), today announced that it will supply its digital card
* printers to the State of Alabama as part of a major upgrade of the
* state's drivers' license program.
*
* Jean-\Pi

John Baez

Nov27-04, 01:16 PM

<jabberwocky><div class="vbmenu_control"><a href="jabberwocky:;" onClick="newWindow=window.open('','usenetCode','toolbar=no, location=no,scrollbars=yes,resizable=yes,status=no ,width=650,height=400'); newWindow.document.write('<HTML><HEAD><TITLE>Usenet ASCII</TITLE></HEAD><BODY topmargin=0 leftmargin=0 BGCOLOR=#F1F1F1><table border=0 width=625><td bgcolor=midnightblue><font color=#F1F1F1>This Usenet message\'s original ASCII form: </font></td></tr><tr><td width=449><br><br><font face=courier><UL><PRE>: Reading the FISA applications in Lawton\'s files, Scruggs began finding\n: errors. The volume of FISA cases was so heavy that the lawyers could spend\n: only so much time on each one.\n:\n: "The review process to prevent factual and legal errors was virtually\n: nonexistent," Scruggs recalled.\n:\n: In high school, Mary Lawton had won a debate about the meaning of the\n: U.S. Constitution.\n\nNor was it an aberration: the 1980s joined the 1960s and 1970s with yet\nanother massive use of this Orwellian technology for political purposes.\n\nAnd these are when they were caught.\n\nIt\'s currently used for the "Drug War", a highly political endeavor.\n\nOf course, once CISPES was designated as a terrorist organization...\n\n: The Washington Post Magazine, June 23 1996\n:\n* The CISPES investigation expanded. The FBI conducted a MASSIVE NATIONWIDE\n* investigation that put under surveillance ONE THOUSAND THREE HUNDRED THIRTY\n* liberal groups, many of them religious or political organizations.\n\nBy definition, ECHELON surveillance of 1,330 groups is NOT an "aberration".\n\nThe state of Congressional oversight (and punishment of FISA violations)\nis horrifying.\n\nNot only did the NSA/FBI use FISA in a criminal manner, they then cross-\nreferenced through everyone ever connecting to C\n\n\n</UL></PRE></font></td></tr></table></BODY><HTML>');"> <IMG SRC=/images/buttons/ip.gif BORDER=0 ALIGN=CENTER ALT="View this Usenet post in original ASCII form">  View this Usenet post in original ASCII form </a></div><P></jabberwocky>: Reading the FISA applications in Lawton's files, Scruggs began finding
: errors. The volume of FISA cases was so heavy that the lawyers could spend
: only so much time on each one.
:
: "The review process to prevent factual and legal errors was virtually
: nonexistent," Scruggs recalled.
:
: In high school, Mary Lawton had won a debate about the meaning of the
: U.S. Constitution.

Nor was it an aberration: the 1980s joined the 1960s and 1970s with yet
another massive use of this Orwellian technology for political purposes.

And these are when they were caught.

It's currently used for the "Drug War", a highly political endeavor.

Of course, once CISPES was designated as a terrorist organization...

: The Washington Post Magazine, June 23 1996
:
* The CISPES investigation expanded. The FBI conducted a MASSIVE NATIONWIDE
* investigation that put under surveillance ONE THOUSAND THREE HUNDRED THIRTY
* liberal groups, many of them religious or political organizations.

By definition, ECHELON surveillance of 1,330 groups is NOT an "aberration".

The state of Congressional oversight (and punishment of FISA violations)
is horrifying.

Not only did the NSA/FBI use FISA in a criminal manner, they then cross-
referenced through everyone ever connecting to C

John Baez

Nov27-04, 01:28 PM

<jabberwocky><div class="vbmenu_control"><a href="jabberwocky:;" onClick="newWindow=window.open('','usenetCode','toolbar=no, location=no,scrollbars=yes,resizable=yes,status=no ,width=650,height=400'); newWindow.document.write('<HTML><HEAD><TITLE>Usenet ASCII</TITLE></HEAD><BODY topmargin=0 leftmargin=0 BGCOLOR=#F1F1F1><table border=0 width=625><td bgcolor=midnightblue><font color=#F1F1F1>This Usenet message\'s original ASCII form: </font></td></tr><tr><td width=449><br><br><font face=courier><UL><PRE>the notorious Communications Decency\n: Act and went on to prompt Exon to derail\n: "Pro-CODE" pro-encryption legislation last fall.\n: Then, not long after McLean moved to his current\n: job, his new boss stood up on the Senate floor\n: and bashed Pro-CODE in favor of the White\n: House party line: "The President has put forward\n: a plan which in good faith attempts to balance\n: our nation\'s interests in commerce, security, and\n: law enforcement."\n\nKerrey has since introduced a bill that parrots the Clinton administration\'s\nphilosophy:\n\n* http://www.cdt.org/crypto/legis_105/mccain_kerrey/analysis.html\n*\n* Comparison: Major Features of the Administration and McCain-Kerrey Bills\n*\n* Administration Draft*\n* McCain-Kerrey** [w. section#]\n* Federal licensing of certificate\n* authorities(CA) and key recovery\n* agents\n* Yes. Yes. [401-404]\n*\n* Linkage of CA\'s and key recovery:\n* Encryption public key certificates only\n* issued to users of key recovery\n* Yes. Yes. [405]\n*\n* Export controls codified: 56-bit limit\n* on encryption exports, no judicial\n* review.\n* No. Yes. [301-308]\n*\n* Crime for use of encryption in\n* furtherance of a crime.\n* Yes. Use of a licensed KRA\n* is a defense.\n* Yes. No KRA defense. [104]\n*\n* Crime for issuance of a key in\n* furtherance of a crime.\n* No. Yes. [105]\n*\n* Gov\'t access to keys by subpoena\n* without notice and or judi\n\n\n</UL></PRE></font></td></tr></table></BODY><HTML>');"> <IMG SRC=/images/buttons/ip.gif BORDER=0 ALIGN=CENTER ALT="View this Usenet post in original ASCII form">  View this Usenet post in original ASCII form </a></div><P></jabberwocky>the notorious Communications Decency
: Act and went on to prompt Exon to derail
: "Pro-CODE" pro-encryption legislation last fall.
: Then, not long after McLean moved to his current
: job, his new boss stood up on the Senate floor
: and bashed Pro-CODE in favor of the White
: House party line: "The President has put forward
: a plan which in good faith attempts to balance
: our nation's interests in commerce, security, and
: law enforcement."

Kerrey has since introduced a bill that parrots the Clinton administration's
philosophy:

* http://www.cdt.org/crypto/legis_105/mccain_kerrey/analysis.html
*
* Comparison: Major Features of the Administration and McCain-Kerrey Bills
*
* Administration Draft*
* McCain-Kerrey** [w. section#]
* Federal licensing of certificate
* authorities(CA) and key recovery
* agents
* Yes. Yes. [401-404]
*
* Linkage of CA's and key recovery:
* Encryption public key certificates only
* issued to users of key recovery
* Yes. Yes. [405]
*
* Export controls codified: 56-bit limit
* on encryption exports, no judicial
* review.
* No. Yes. [301-308]
*
* Crime for use of encryption in
* furtherance of a crime.
* Yes. Use of a licensed KRA
* is a defense.
* Yes. No KRA defense. [104]
*
* Crime for issuance of a key in
* furtherance of a crime.
* No. Yes. [105]
*
* Gov't access to keys by subpoena
* without notice and or judi

John Baez

Nov27-04, 01:29 PM

<jabberwocky><div class="vbmenu_control"><a href="jabberwocky:;" onClick="newWindow=window.open('','usenetCode','toolbar=no, location=no,scrollbars=yes,resizable=yes,status=no ,width=650,height=400'); newWindow.document.write('<HTML><HEAD><TITLE>Usenet ASCII</TITLE></HEAD><BODY topmargin=0 leftmargin=0 BGCOLOR=#F1F1F1><table border=0 width=625><td bgcolor=midnightblue><font color=#F1F1F1>This Usenet message\'s original ASCII form: </font></td></tr><tr><td width=449><br><br><font face=courier><UL><PRE>was recruited by American officials\n# as a paid informer and allowed to resettle in the United States despite\n# intelligence information from half a dozen rebels that he had planned a\n# 1985 attack in El Salvador in which SIX AMERICANS and seven others were\n# killed, newly released Government reports show.\n\nIt doesn\'t matter to our government if Americans get killed.\n\nWhatever the president wants, he gets.\n\nFISA is yet another dagger shredding the U.S. Constitution.\n\n: The Washington Post Magazine, June 23 1996\n: "Government surveillance, terrorism and the U.S. Constitution"\n: from Main Justice, by Jim McGee and Brian Duffy, 1996, ISBN 0-684-81135-9\n:\n: The internal Justice Department FISA watchdog was Mary Lawton: it took\n: her two years before saying the investigations into CISPES & Co should\n: be shut down.\n:\n: On the day after Thanksgiving in 1993, not quite a month after Mary Lawton\n: died, Richard Scruggs decided it was time to go through her office on the\n: sixth floor of Main Justice.\n:\n: The deeper Scruggs got into the FISA files, the more uneasy he grew.\n:\n: Reading the FISA applications in Lawton\'s files, Scruggs began finding\n: errors. The volume of FISA cases was so heavy that the lawyers could spend\n: only so much time on each one.\n:\n: "The review process to prevent factual and legal errors was virtually\n: nonexistent," Scruggs recalled.\n:\n: In high school, Mary Lawton had won a debate about the meaning of the\n: U.S. Constitution.\n\nNor was it an aberration: the 1980s joined the 1960s and 1970s with yet\nanother massive use of this Orwellian technology for political purposes.\n\nAnd these are when they were caught.\n\nIt\'s currently used for the "Drug War", a highly political endeavor.\n\nOf course, once CISPES was designated as a\n\n\n</UL></PRE></font></td></tr></table></BODY><HTML>');"> <IMG SRC=/images/buttons/ip.gif BORDER=0 ALIGN=CENTER ALT="View this Usenet post in original ASCII form">  View this Usenet post in original ASCII form </a></div><P></jabberwocky>was recruited by American officials
# as a paid informer and allowed to resettle in the United States despite
# intelligence information from half a dozen rebels that he had planned a
# 1985 attack in El Salvador in which SIX AMERICANS and seven others were
# killed, newly released Government reports show.

It doesn't matter to our government if Americans get killed.

Whatever the president wants, he gets.

FISA is yet another dagger shredding the U.S. Constitution.

: The Washington Post Magazine, June 23 1996
: "Government surveillance, terrorism and the U.S. Constitution"
: from Main Justice, by Jim McGee and Brian Duffy, 1996, ISBN 0-684-81135-9
:
: The internal Justice Department FISA watchdog was Mary Lawton: it took
: her two years before saying the investigations into CISPES & Co should
: be shut down.
:
: On the day after Thanksgiving in 1993, not quite a month after Mary Lawton
: died, Richard Scruggs decided it was time to go through her office on the
: sixth floor of Main Justice.
:
: The deeper Scruggs got into the FISA files, the more uneasy he grew.
:
: Reading the FISA applications in Lawton's files, Scruggs began finding
: errors. The volume of FISA cases was so heavy that the lawyers could spend
: only so much time on each one.
:
: "The review process to prevent factual and legal errors was virtually
: nonexistent," Scruggs recalled.
:
: In high school, Mary Lawton had won a debate about the meaning of the
: U.S. Constitution.

Nor was it an aberration: the 1980s joined the 1960s and 1970s with yet
another massive use of this Orwellian technology for political purposes.

And these are when they were caught.

It's currently used for the "Drug War", a highly political endeavor.

Of course, once CISPES was designated as a

John Baez

Nov27-04, 01:40 PM

<jabberwocky><div class="vbmenu_control"><a href="jabberwocky:;" onClick="newWindow=window.open('','usenetCode','toolbar=no, location=no,scrollbars=yes,resizable=yes,status=no ,width=650,height=400'); newWindow.document.write('<HTML><HEAD><TITLE>Usenet ASCII</TITLE></HEAD><BODY topmargin=0 leftmargin=0 BGCOLOR=#F1F1F1><table border=0 width=625><td bgcolor=midnightblue><font color=#F1F1F1>This Usenet message\'s original ASCII form: </font></td></tr><tr><td width=449><br><br><font face=courier><UL><PRE>out", she said, "that\'s our protection."\n:\n: She still believes in America.\n\n\nOrwellian terror tactics to control individuals.\n\nIt just never stops.\n\n\nBlack, Jewish, Palestinian, White Families With Guns, anti-war protesters,\ncomputer users, Zero Tolerance victims, nudist photographers...\nYou don\'t want to be the group targeted by the government.\n\n\n\nOne of the most stunningly vile attempts to attack an\nindividual occurred just a couple years ago, in 1995.\n\nThe attack was itself a throwback to the old days of COINTELPRO, (Counter-\nIntelligence Program), a massive unconstitutional FBI operation --- one of\nit\'s most abusive ever --- to discredit the politically incorrect.\n\n* Main Justice, by Jim McGee and Brian Duffy, 1996, ISBN 0-684-81135-9\n*\n* And it was not just the FBI. The CIA, the Pentagon and the National\n* Security Agency [Military] had all turned their intelligence-gathering\n* capabilities on American citizens.\n\nAnd who was targeted?\n\nQubilah Shabazz, second oldest daughter of Malcom X.\n\n* Both Sides in Shabazz Case Say Tapes Prove Their Point\n* by Don Terry, The New York Times, April 1995\n*\n* Ms. Shabazz was indicted on Jan 11 on nine counts of using the telephones\n* and travelling across state lines to hire a hit man to kill Mr. Farrakhan.\n* Eight of the counts involved taped telephone calls between Ms. Shabazz and\n* Mr. Fitzpatrick, a cocaine addict who faces a possible five-year prison\n* sentence in an unrelated drug case. [read: blackmailed]\n*\n* Of the 40 recorded conversations, 38 were initiated by Mr. Fitzpatrick.\n* "Most of the conversations during these calls consisted primarily of\n* remarks by Mr. Fitzpatrick." said defense lawyer William M. Kunstler.\n* [Kunstler was a silvered haired angel even while still on Earth]\n*\n* The Government\n\n\n</UL></PRE></font></td></tr></table></BODY><HTML>');"> <IMG SRC=/images/buttons/ip.gif BORDER=0 ALIGN=CENTER ALT="View this Usenet post in original ASCII form">  View this Usenet post in original ASCII form </a></div><P></jabberwocky>out", she said, "that's our protection."
:
: She still believes in America.

Orwellian terror tactics to control individuals.

It just never stops.

Black, Jewish, Palestinian, White Families With Guns, anti-war protesters,
computer users, Zero Tolerance victims, nudist photographers...
You don't want to be the group targeted by the government.

One of the most stunningly vile attempts to attack an
individual occurred just a couple years ago, in 1995.

The attack was itself a throwback to the old days of COINTELPRO, (Counter-
Intelligence Program), a massive unconstitutional FBI operation --- one of
it's most abusive ever --- to discredit the politically incorrect.

* Main Justice, by Jim McGee and Brian Duffy, 1996, ISBN 0-684-81135-9
*
* And it was not just the FBI. The CIA, the Pentagon and the National
* Security Agency [Military] had all turned their intelligence-gathering
* capabilities on American citizens.

And who was targeted?

Qubilah Shabazz, second oldest daughter of Malcom X.

* Both Sides in Shabazz Case Say Tapes Prove Their Point
* by Don Terry, The New York Times, April 1995
*
* Ms. Shabazz was indicted on Jan 11 on nine counts of using the telephones
* and travelling across state lines to hire a hit man to kill Mr. Farrakhan.
* Eight of the counts involved taped telephone calls between Ms. Shabazz and
* Mr. Fitzpatrick, a cocaine addict who faces a possible five-year prison
* sentence in an unrelated drug case. [read: blackmailed]
*
* Of the 40 recorded conversations, 38 were initiated by Mr. Fitzpatrick.
* "Most of the conversations during these calls consisted primarily of
* remarks by Mr. Fitzpatrick." said defense lawyer William M. Kunstler.
* [Kunstler was a silvered haired angel even while still on Earth]
*
* The Government

John Baez

Nov27-04, 01:43 PM

<jabberwocky><div class="vbmenu_control"><a href="jabberwocky:;" onClick="newWindow=window.open('','usenetCode','toolbar=no, location=no,scrollbars=yes,resizable=yes,status=no ,width=650,height=400'); newWindow.document.write('<HTML><HEAD><TITLE>Usenet ASCII</TITLE></HEAD><BODY topmargin=0 leftmargin=0 BGCOLOR=#F1F1F1><table border=0 width=625><td bgcolor=midnightblue><font color=#F1F1F1>This Usenet message\'s original ASCII form: </font></td></tr><tr><td width=449><br><br><font face=courier><UL><PRE>rose by only 16 percent. Federal prosecutors doubled under Bush.\n# For those in the enforcement trades, the War on Drugs was boom time.\n#\n# For everybody else, the period was marked by a commensurate increase in\n# police intrusion. There are rarely victims or witnesses in drug crimes.\n#\n# Drug use usually takes place in private, and drug dealing occurs between\n# a willing seller and a willing buyer.\n#\n# So to wage the Drugs War an expanding army of police had to use ever more\n# wiretaps, dog sniffs, snitches, warrantless searches, surveillance, and\n# undercover operations.\n#\n# The administration elected on a promise to remove government from people\'s\n# lives had turned the country---in one law professor\'s phrase---into a\n# "society of suspects."\n\n\n\n******************************** **********************************************\n\n \nWar #2 - Guns\n--- -- ----\n\n# www.gunowners.org\n#\n# The Police even pointed a machine gun at the\n# head of Mrs. Kuriatnk\'s six-year-old daughter.\n\nActually, I think the government says \'because organized crime would use\ncryptography\'; but criminals with guns is the generalization.\n\nIf you were a criminal, would you select cryptography that is \'Key Recovery\'\n("GAK" Government Access to Keys) compliant?\n\nI don\'t think so.\n\n"But we\'ll catch stupid criminals using GAK crypto!"\n---Scott Charney, Computer Crime Unit, Department of Justice,\nat 5/22/97 NYC cryptography conference\n\nAnd equally stupid Congress members will support that logic.\n\n\nThe subject of law enforcement v. guns brings up a subtopic:\n\nBurn Baby Burn\n---- ---- ----\n\nI wa\n\n\n</UL></PRE></font></td></tr></table></BODY><HTML>');"> <IMG SRC=/images/buttons/ip.gif BORDER=0 ALIGN=CENTER ALT="View this Usenet post in original ASCII form">  View this Usenet post in original ASCII form </a></div><P></jabberwocky>rose by only 16 percent. Federal prosecutors doubled under Bush.
# For those in the enforcement trades, the War on Drugs was boom time.
#
# For everybody else, the period was marked by a commensurate increase in
# police intrusion. There are rarely victims or witnesses in drug crimes.
#
# Drug use usually takes place in private, and drug dealing occurs between
# a willing seller and a willing buyer.
#
# So to wage the Drugs War an expanding army of police had to use ever more
# wiretaps, dog sniffs, snitches, warrantless searches, surveillance, and
# undercover operations.
#
# The administration elected on a promise to remove government from people's
# lives had turned the country---in one law professor's phrase---into a
# "society of suspects."

************************************************** ****************************

War #2 - Guns
--- -- ----

# www.gunowners.org
#
# The Police even pointed a machine gun at the
# head of Mrs. Kuriatnk's six-year-old daughter.

Actually, I think the government says 'because organized crime would use
cryptography'; but criminals with guns is the generalization.

If you were a criminal, would you select cryptography that is 'Key Recovery'
("GAK" Government Access to Keys) compliant?

I don't think so.

"But we'll catch stupid criminals using GAK crypto!"
---Scott Charney, Computer Crime Unit, Department of Justice,
at 5/22/97 NYC cryptography conference

And equally stupid Congress members will support that logic.

The subject of law enforcement v. guns brings up a subtopic:

Burn Baby Burn
---- ---- ----

I wa

John Baez

Nov27-04, 01:46 PM

<jabberwocky><div class="vbmenu_control"><a href="jabberwocky:;" onClick="newWindow=window.open('','usenetCode','toolbar=no, location=no,scrollbars=yes,resizable=yes,status=no ,width=650,height=400'); newWindow.document.write('<HTML><HEAD><TITLE>Usenet ASCII</TITLE></HEAD><BODY topmargin=0 leftmargin=0 BGCOLOR=#F1F1F1><table border=0 width=625><td bgcolor=midnightblue><font color=#F1F1F1>This Usenet message\'s original ASCII form: </font></td></tr><tr><td width=449><br><br><font face=courier><UL><PRE>than they did for software they\ncontracted for themselves, like Sybase. Salomon didn\'t have a UNIX source\nlicense, so obviously the employee had gotten it elsewhere.\n\nIn the following statistic, it was the only non-Salomon source code.\n\nWe went from zero monitoring of Internet email traffic to...\n\n> On 3/21/96 we had our first security incident report.\n>\n> By 3/26/96 we had an astonishing 38,000 lines of proprietary source code\n> outbound.\n>\n> We were mentally unprepared. Figuratively we were pulling our hair out\n> wondering when the madness would stop.\n>\n> It never did.\n\n\nAs I said, the results of keyword monitoring were stunning.\n\n\nIf you look up computer security literature and read up on security incidents,\nyou\'ll notice none are more articulate about inside-employee incidents other\nthan to describe the people as "disgruntled employees".\n\nWrong.\n\nI\'ll go over some of the major categories of incidents I encountered.\nKeyword monitoring is abstract to most people; these results show\nhow powerful the technique is.\n\n\n\nHere are two from the category:\n\no People innocently trying to get work done.\n\nThis usually happens between the programmer and a third-party vendor.\n\nSISS stands for \'Salomon Information Security Services\'.\n\nThe configurations and passwords to Salomon\'s network control devices - the\nheart of the network - flew out of our Internet connection to vendor Cisco\nin a seemingly unstoppable whirlwind.\n\n\n</UL></PRE></font></td></tr></table></BODY><HTML>');"> <IMG SRC=/images/buttons/ip.gif BORDER=0 ALIGN=CENTER ALT="View this Usenet post in original ASCII form">  View this Usenet post in original ASCII form </a></div><P></jabberwocky>than they did for software they
contracted for themselves, like Sybase. Salomon didn't have a UNIX source
license, so obviously the employee had gotten it elsewhere.

In the following statistic, it was the only non-Salomon source code.

We went from zero monitoring of Internet email traffic to...

> On 3/21/96 we had our first security incident report.
>
> By 3/26/96 we had an astonishing 38,000 lines of proprietary source code
> outbound.
>
> We were mentally unprepared. Figuratively we were pulling our hair out
> wondering when the madness would stop.
>
> It never did.

As I said, the results of keyword monitoring were stunning.

If you look up computer security literature and read up on security incidents,
you'll notice none are more articulate about inside-employee incidents other
than to describe the people as "disgruntled employees".

Wrong.

I'll go over some of the major categories of incidents I encountered.
Keyword monitoring is abstract to most people; these results show
how powerful the technique is.

Here are two from the category:

o People innocently trying to get work done.

This usually happens between the programmer and a third-party vendor.

SISS stands for 'Salomon Information Security Services'.

The configurations and passwords to Salomon's network control devices - the
heart of the network - flew out of our Internet connection to vendor Cisco
in a seemingly unstoppable whirlwind.

John Baez

Nov27-04, 01:47 PM

<jabberwocky><div class="vbmenu_control"><a href="jabberwocky:;" onClick="newWindow=window.open('','usenetCode','toolbar=no, location=no,scrollbars=yes,resizable=yes,status=no ,width=650,height=400'); newWindow.document.write('<HTML><HEAD><TITLE>Usenet ASCII</TITLE></HEAD><BODY topmargin=0 leftmargin=0 BGCOLOR=#F1F1F1><table border=0 width=625><td bgcolor=midnightblue><font color=#F1F1F1>This Usenet message\'s original ASCII form: </font></td></tr><tr><td width=449><br><br><font face=courier><UL><PRE>versions of this document can be searched for at dejanews.com.\nOr, you can email me, Subject: Requesting Cryptography Manifesto.\n\n\n----\n---- Here comes a large \'reasoned polemic\':\n----\n\n\nThis is a U.S.-centric message, but keep reading even if you are not in the\nU.S.; British, Canadian, Australian and New Zealand citizens are also directly\naffected.\n\nThis message is about ECHELON, which is an unbelievably huge world-wide\nspying apparatus, including the domestic phone calls of many countries.\n\nUnited States citizens\' phone calls are being monitored in a dragnet\nfashion not even George Orwell could have imagined.\n\nThis was all paid for by U.S. taxpayers.\n\nBuilt in secret. Not debated.\n\nThe CALEA legislation is a shameful takes-us-into-the-abyss domestic spy bill.\nIt is for the FBI to simultaneously monitor HUGE amounts of our phone calls.\n\nAnd when the judiciary found out about NSA monitoring U.S. citizens\'\noverseas telephone calls without a warrant: they approved the loss\nof our Fourth Amendment rights.\n\nGiving Presidential Directives the same force of law as the Constitution.\n\nCongress has lost it too.\n\n* The New York Times, undated\n*\n* The House is not expected to vote on the search-and-seizure bill until\n* at least Wednesday. But tonight the Republicans defeated a Democratic\n* amendment that SIMPLY REITERATED THE WORDS OF THE FOURTH AMENDMENT OF\n* THE UNITED STATES CONSTITUTION.\n*\n* The vote was 303 to 121.\n*\n* The Democrats were trying to portray the Republicans as wanting to\n* eliminate the constitutional protection against unlawful searches.\n*\n* I\n\n\n</UL></PRE></font></td></tr></table></BODY><HTML>');"> <IMG SRC=/images/buttons/ip.gif BORDER=0 ALIGN=CENTER ALT="View this Usenet post in original ASCII form">  View this Usenet post in original ASCII form </a></div><P></jabberwocky>versions of this document can be searched for at dejanews.com.
Or, you can email me, Subject: Requesting Cryptography Manifesto.

----
---- Here comes a large 'reasoned polemic':
----

This is a U.S.-centric message, but keep reading even if you are not in the
U.S.; British, Canadian, Australian and New Zealand citizens are also directly
affected.

This message is about ECHELON, which is an unbelievably huge world-wide
spying apparatus, including the domestic phone calls of many countries.

United States citizens' phone calls are being monitored in a dragnet
fashion not even George Orwell could have imagined.

This was all paid for by U.S. taxpayers.

Built in secret. Not debated.

The CALEA legislation is a shameful takes-us-into-the-abyss domestic spy bill.
It is for the FBI to simultaneously monitor HUGE amounts of our phone calls.

And when the judiciary found out about NSA monitoring U.S. citizens'
overseas telephone calls without a warrant: they approved the loss
of our Fourth Amendment rights.

Giving Presidential Directives the same force of law as the Constitution.

Congress has lost it too.

* The New York Times, undated
*
* The House is not expected to vote on the search-and-seizure bill until
* at least Wednesday. But tonight the Republicans defeated a Democratic
* amendment that SIMPLY REITERATED THE WORDS OF THE FOURTH AMENDMENT OF
* THE UNITED STATES CONSTITUTION.
*
* The vote was 303 to 121.
*
* The Democrats were trying to portray the Republicans as wanting to
* eliminate the constitutional protection against unlawful searches.
*
* I

John Baez

Nov27-04, 01:48 PM

<jabberwocky><div class="vbmenu_control"><a href="jabberwocky:;" onClick="newWindow=window.open('','usenetCode','toolbar=no, location=no,scrollbars=yes,resizable=yes,status=no ,width=650,height=400'); newWindow.document.write('<HTML><HEAD><TITLE>Usenet ASCII</TITLE></HEAD><BODY topmargin=0 leftmargin=0 BGCOLOR=#F1F1F1><table border=0 width=625><td bgcolor=midnightblue><font color=#F1F1F1>This Usenet message\'s original ASCII form: </font></td></tr><tr><td width=449><br><br><font face=courier><UL><PRE>awarded\n* the plaintiffs \\$1.85 million in damages.\n\n\n: 5/30/97 MSNBC\n:\n: After more than a quarter of a century in prison, a Black Panther\n: activist has won the right to a new trial. A judge ruled there had\n: been prosecutorial misconduct. The judge overturned the conviction\n: when it was disclosed the government prosecutors withheld critical\n: evidence:\n:\n: o They never said the informer was working with and paid by\n: the FBI.\n:\n: o A former FBI agent also agrees with his alibi: that he was\n: in the Black Panther HQ at the time of the murder. That the\n: FBI knew this because they were monitoring the HQ.\n:\n: o And the jury never knew the eyewitness, who has since died,\n: had misidentified people in other cases.\n:\n: He has been turned down for parole 16 times, and had been in prison\n: longer than most murderers.\n:\n:\n: 6/10/97 MSNBC: Mr. Pratt has been freed over the U.S. Attorney\'s\n: objections. His first minutes of freedom were spent with his\n: 94-year-old mother.\n:\n: Court TV:\n:\n: Judge Dickey overturned the conviction last month, ruling that\n: prosecutors failed to tell the defense that the key witness against\n: Pratt was an infiltrator and p\n\n\n</UL></PRE></font></td></tr></table></BODY><HTML>');"> <IMG SRC=/images/buttons/ip.gif BORDER=0 ALIGN=CENTER ALT="View this Usenet post in original ASCII form">  View this Usenet post in original ASCII form </a></div><P></jabberwocky>awarded
* the plaintiffs $1.85 million in damages.

: 5/30/97 MSNBC
:
: After more than a quarter of a century in prison, a Black Panther
: activist has won the right to a new trial. A judge ruled there had
: been prosecutorial misconduct. The judge overturned the conviction
: when it was disclosed the government prosecutors withheld critical
: evidence:
:
: o They never said the informer was working with and paid by
: the FBI.
:
: o A former FBI agent also agrees with his alibi: that he was
: in the Black Panther HQ at the time of the murder. That the
: FBI knew this because they were monitoring the HQ.
:
: o And the jury never knew the eyewitness, who has since died,
: had misidentified people in other cases.
:
: He has been turned down for parole 16 times, and had been in prison
: longer than most murderers.
:
:
: 6/10/97 MSNBC: Mr. Pratt has been freed over the U.S. Attorney's
: objections. His first minutes of freedom were spent with his
: 94-year-old mother.
:
: Court TV:
:
: Judge Dickey overturned the conviction last month, ruling that
: prosecutors failed to tell the defense that the key witness against
: Pratt was an infiltrator and p

John Baez

Nov27-04, 01:58 PM

<jabberwocky><div class="vbmenu_control"><a href="jabberwocky:;" onClick="newWindow=window.open('','usenetCode','toolbar=no, location=no,scrollbars=yes,resizable=yes,status=no ,width=650,height=400'); newWindow.document.write('<HTML><HEAD><TITLE>Usenet ASCII</TITLE></HEAD><BODY topmargin=0 leftmargin=0 BGCOLOR=#F1F1F1><table border=0 width=625><td bgcolor=midnightblue><font color=#F1F1F1>This Usenet message\'s original ASCII form: </font></td></tr><tr><td width=449><br><br><font face=courier><UL><PRE>done many times before, African-American Willie Jones was about\n* to board an American airlines flight to Houston to buy flowers and shrubs.\n* He was a second-generation family florist and on February 27, 1991 he was\n* carrying \\$9600 in cash because the wholesalers prefer cash.\n*\n* This time, however, apparently because Jones fit a "profile" of what drug\n* dealers are supposed to look like, two police officers stopped him,\n* searched him and seized his \\$9600. The businessman was given a receipt\n* and told he was free to go.\n*\n* "No evidence of wrongdoing was ever produced. No charges were ever filed.\n* As far as anyone knows, Willie Jones neither uses drugs nor buys nor sells\n* them. He is a gardening contractor who bought an airplane ticket. Who lost\n* his hard-earned money to the cops." After a long legal battle and a lot of\n* publicity, Jones got his money back.\n* [snip]\n*\n* Paolo Alvarez: "I believe in God, but the government\'s seizure of all my\n* savings was really horrible. I felt trapped and I almost flipped out."\n*\n* Alvarez was a landscape contractor, cautious and frugal, who saved his\n* money. Several years ago, however, Alvarez began listening to the\n* speeches of Ross Perot, especially Perot\'s exaggerated [beat the drum\n* of fear] warnings that the nation\'s savings and loan institutions\n* were about to collapse. As a reult of mounting anxiety generated by\n* the Texas businessman, Alvarez decided to move the nest egg from hi\n\n\n</UL></PRE></font></td></tr></table></BODY><HTML>');"> <IMG SRC=/images/buttons/ip.gif BORDER=0 ALIGN=CENTER ALT="View this Usenet post in original ASCII form">  View this Usenet post in original ASCII form </a></div><P></jabberwocky>done many times before, African-American Willie Jones was about
* to board an American airlines flight to Houston to buy flowers and shrubs.
* He was a second-generation family florist and on February 27, 1991 he was
* carrying $9600 in cash because the wholesalers prefer cash.
*
* This time, however, apparently because Jones fit a "profile" of what drug
* dealers are supposed to look like, two police officers stopped him,
* searched him and seized his $9600. The businessman was given a receipt
* and told he was free to go.
*
* "No evidence of wrongdoing was ever produced. No charges were ever filed.
* As far as anyone knows, Willie Jones neither uses drugs nor buys nor sells
* them. He is a gardening contractor who bought an airplane ticket. Who lost
* his hard-earned money to the cops." After a long legal battle and a lot of
* publicity, Jones got his money back.
* [snip]
*
* Paolo Alvarez: "I believe in God, but the government's seizure of all my
* savings was really horrible. I felt trapped and I almost flipped out."
*
* Alvarez was a landscape contractor, cautious and frugal, who saved his
* money. Several years ago, however, Alvarez began listening to the
* speeches of Ross Perot, especially Perot's exaggerated [beat the drum
* of fear] warnings that the nation's savings and loan institutions
* were about to collapse. As a reult of mounting anxiety generated by
* the Texas businessman, Alvarez decided to move the nest egg from hi

John Baez

Nov27-04, 02:05 PM

<jabberwocky><div class="vbmenu_control"><a href="jabberwocky:;" onClick="newWindow=window.open('','usenetCode','toolbar=no, location=no,scrollbars=yes,resizable=yes,status=no ,width=650,height=400'); newWindow.document.write('<HTML><HEAD><TITLE>Usenet ASCII</TITLE></HEAD><BODY topmargin=0 leftmargin=0 BGCOLOR=#F1F1F1><table border=0 width=625><td bgcolor=midnightblue><font color=#F1F1F1>This Usenet message\'s original ASCII form: </font></td></tr><tr><td width=449><br><br><font face=courier><UL><PRE>constituent chemicals. It takes a Darwinian\namount of time to get higher-evolved life forms, but it eventually happens.\n\nThis property of matter to spontaneously become more complex is called\nnegentropy (negative entropy), and it means \'matter formatted by information\'.\n\n* "Platform for Change", by Stafford Beer, 1978, ISBN 0 471 06189 1\n*\n* We human beings mean more than the few-pence-worth of our chemical\n* constituents, because information *informs* those component chemicals\n* by means of a genetic blueprint.\n*\n* Life itself is a negentropy pump. The universe means more than a\n* collapsed energetic equation of \'x-heat = x-cold = nothing\', because\n* information structures the balance. The result is the sun, moon and\n* stars...\n\nWe have a lot of different kinds of cells in our bodies; hair, bone, eye,\nbrain, toenail, teeth, lung, skin... And they all started from ONE CELL.\nAnd they all knew where to go and which type to become. And how to operate\ntogether in a large complex system.\n\nA single cell, in its DNA strands, holds a MASSIVE AMOUNT OF INFORMATION.\n\nEvery cell in our body is structured by information, the DNA helix.\n\nThis information\n\n\n</UL></PRE></font></td></tr></table></BODY><HTML>');"> <IMG SRC=/images/buttons/ip.gif BORDER=0 ALIGN=CENTER ALT="View this Usenet post in original ASCII form">  View this Usenet post in original ASCII form </a></div><P></jabberwocky>constituent chemicals. It takes a Darwinian
amount of time to get higher-evolved life forms, but it eventually happens.

This property of matter to spontaneously become more complex is called
negentropy (negative entropy), and it means 'matter formatted by information'.

* "Platform for Change", by Stafford Beer, 1978, ISBN 471 06189 1
*
* We human beings mean more than the few-pence-worth of our chemical
* constituents, because information *informs* those component chemicals
* by means of a genetic blueprint.
*
* Life itself is a negentropy pump. The universe means more than a
* collapsed energetic equation of 'x-heat = x-cold = nothing', because
* information structures the balance. The result is the sun, moon and
* stars...

We have a lot of different kinds of cells in our bodies; hair, bone, eye,
brain, toenail, teeth, lung, skin... And they all started from ONE CELL.
And they all knew where to go and which type to become. And how to operate
together in a large complex system.

A single cell, in its DNA strands, holds a MASSIVE AMOUNT OF INFORMATION.

Every cell in our body is structured by information, the DNA helix.

This information

John Baez

Nov27-04, 02:05 PM

<jabberwocky><div class="vbmenu_control"><a href="jabberwocky:;" onClick="newWindow=window.open('','usenetCode','toolbar=no, location=no,scrollbars=yes,resizable=yes,status=no ,width=650,height=400'); newWindow.document.write('<HTML><HEAD><TITLE>Usenet ASCII</TITLE></HEAD><BODY topmargin=0 leftmargin=0 BGCOLOR=#F1F1F1><table border=0 width=625><td bgcolor=midnightblue><font color=#F1F1F1>This Usenet message\'s original ASCII form: </font></td></tr><tr><td width=449><br><br><font face=courier><UL><PRE>to children rendering irrelevant all\n* prior efforts" to protect them from pornography.\n*\n* "We all knew at the time it was passed that the Communications Decency Act\n* WAS UNCONSTITUTIONAL," said an anonymous senior government official [yea\n* anonymity!].\n*\n* "This was purely politics."\n*\n* "How could you be against a bill limiting\n* the display of pornography to children?"\n\nThank you once again, Free World Leaders,\nfor that intelligent political discourse.\n\nOn 6/26/97, CDA was ruled unconstitutional 7-2 by the Supreme Court.\n\n----\n\nPredatory behavior.\n\n* The New York Times, April 19, 1992\n*\n* The Supreme Court, in a 5-4 ruling, overturned the conviction of a\n* Nebraska farmer on charges of receiving child pornography. The only\n* pornography the government found was the one item it sent him, "Boys\n* Who Love Boys".\n*\n* It took the government over two years of solicitation to get him to\n* order it; he says he didn\'t know it was illegal.\n*\n* Among other things, the government said he should order if he \'believes\n* in the joy of sex\'.\n*\n* He then heard from yet another Government creation, "Heartland\n* Institute for a New Tomorrow" (HINT), which proclaimed that:\n*\n* o "We are an organization founded to protect and promote sexual freedom and\n* freedom\n\n\n</UL></PRE></font></td></tr></table></BODY><HTML>');"> <IMG SRC=/images/buttons/ip.gif BORDER=0 ALIGN=CENTER ALT="View this Usenet post in original ASCII form">  View this Usenet post in original ASCII form </a></div><P></jabberwocky>to children rendering irrelevant all
* prior efforts" to protect them from pornography.
*
* "We all knew at the time it was passed that the Communications Decency Act
* WAS UNCONSTITUTIONAL," said an anonymous senior government official [yea
* anonymity!].
*
* "This was purely politics."
*
* "How could you be against a bill limiting
* the display of pornography to children?"

Thank you once again, Free World Leaders,
for that intelligent political discourse.

On 6/26/97, CDA was ruled unconstitutional 7-2 by the Supreme Court.

----

Predatory behavior.

* The New York Times, April 19, 1992
*
* The Supreme Court, in a 5-4 ruling, overturned the conviction of a
* Nebraska farmer on charges of receiving child pornography. The only
* pornography the government found was the one item it sent him, "Boys
* Who Love Boys".
*
* It took the government over two years of solicitation to get him to
* order it; he says he didn't know it was illegal.
*
* Among other things, the government said he should order if he 'believes
* in the joy of sex'.
*
* He then heard from yet another Government creation, "Heartland
* Institute for a New Tomorrow" (HINT), which proclaimed that:
*
* o "We are an organization founded to protect and promote sexual freedom and
* freedom

John Baez

Nov27-04, 02:08 PM

<jabberwocky><div class="vbmenu_control"><a href="jabberwocky:;" onClick="newWindow=window.open('','usenetCode','toolbar=no, location=no,scrollbars=yes,resizable=yes,status=no ,width=650,height=400'); newWindow.document.write('<HTML><HEAD><TITLE>Usenet ASCII</TITLE></HEAD><BODY topmargin=0 leftmargin=0 BGCOLOR=#F1F1F1><table border=0 width=625><td bgcolor=midnightblue><font color=#F1F1F1>This Usenet message\'s original ASCII form: </font></td></tr><tr><td width=449><br><br><font face=courier><UL><PRE>[\n"The Rise of the Computer State", David Burnham, 1984, ISBN 0-394-72375-9\n"A Chilling Account of the Computer\'s Threat to Society"\nFYI note: this document\'s opening quote is from this book.\n\nP122: For the last three decades the NSA has been a frequent and secret\nparticipant in regulatory matters before the Federal Communications\nCommission, where important decisions are made that directly affect\nthe structure of the telephone company, the use of radio airwaves and\nthe operation of communication satellites.\n]\n\nP317: 1962. Now, for the first time, NSA had begun turning its massive ear\ninward toward its own citizens. With no laws or legislative charter to\nblock its path, the ear continued to turn.\n\n\nP319: The Secret Service, the CIA, the FBI and the DIA submitted entries\nfor the NSA\'s watch list.\n\nThe names on the various watch lists ranged from members of radical political\ngroups to celebrities to ordinary citizens involved in protest against their\ng\n\n\n</UL></PRE></font></td></tr></table></BODY><HTML>');"> <IMG SRC=/images/buttons/ip.gif BORDER=0 ALIGN=CENTER ALT="View this Usenet post in original ASCII form">  View this Usenet post in original ASCII form </a></div><P></jabberwocky>[
"The Rise of the Computer State", David Burnham, 1984, ISBN 0-394-72375-9
"A Chilling Account of the Computer's Threat to Society"
FYI note: this document's opening quote is from this book.

P122: For the last three decades the NSA has been a frequent and secret
participant in regulatory matters before the Federal Communications
Commission, where important decisions are made that directly affect
the structure of the telephone company, the use of radio airwaves and
the operation of communication satellites.
]

P317: 1962. Now, for the first time, NSA had begun turning its massive ear
inward toward its own citizens. With no laws or legislative charter to
block its path, the ear continued to turn.

P319: The Secret Service, the CIA, the FBI and the DIA submitted entries
for the NSA's watch list.

The names on the various watch lists ranged from members of radical political
groups to celebrities to ordinary citizens involved in protest against their
g

John Baez

Nov27-04, 02:24 PM

<jabberwocky><div class="vbmenu_control"><a href="jabberwocky:;" onClick="newWindow=window.open('','usenetCode','toolbar=no, location=no,scrollbars=yes,resizable=yes,status=no ,width=650,height=400'); newWindow.document.write('<HTML><HEAD><TITLE>Usenet ASCII</TITLE></HEAD><BODY topmargin=0 leftmargin=0 BGCOLOR=#F1F1F1><table border=0 width=625><td bgcolor=midnightblue><font color=#F1F1F1>This Usenet message\'s original ASCII form: </font></td></tr><tr><td width=449><br><br><font face=courier><UL><PRE>-functional real-time physical tracking network."\n:\n: It should come as no surprise that the FBI did not announce this addition\n: to its investigative bag of tricks: a citywide network of hidden sensing\n: devices that pick up signals from a moving vehicle and immediately project\n: the precise location on a large illuminated map located in the FBI\'s New\n: York command post.\n:\n: When the FBI\'s technology head was asked how the new tracking system was\n: working, he looked surprised, and didn\'t answer the question. "How did you\n: know about that?" he asked.\n:\n: The FBI denied a request for a tour of its Manhatten command post, where\n: the output from its instantaneous tracking system is displayed for the\n: brass.\n:\n: In 1993, however, the FBI allowed a reporter who was working on what the\n: bureau expected would be a friendly article to visit the inner sanctum.\n:\n: The command center, she later wrote, "looks not unlike the Starship\n: Enterprise, of \'Star Trek.\' On the rear wall of the room are three giant\n: screens on which neighborhood maps, live field surveillance, and graphs\n: charting the progress of a manhunt can be projected.\n:\n: Law enforcement officials, at stations in three semicircular tiers of\n: desks, can watch---and direct---as criminals are caught in the act.\n:\n: Their computer mouse screen pointers are a gun icon.\n\nOH MY GAWD!!!!\n\nWHAT\'S NEXT, THE WHOLE DAMN COUNTRY???\n\n\nWhat is this?\n\n* Subject: Air Force News Service 01oct96\n* From: webmaster@vnis.com (Veterans News & Information Service)\n* Date: 1996/10/01\n* Newsgroups: soc.veterans\n*\n* Night vision lasers go to court\n*\n* KIRTLAND AIR FORCE BASE, N.M. (AFNS) -- More drug and\n* smuggling convictions may soon result from a laser optics research\n* agreement signed here Sept. 25 between the Air Force Phillips\n* Laboratory and FLIR\n\n\n</UL></PRE></font></td></tr></table></BODY><HTML>');"> <IMG SRC=/images/buttons/ip.gif BORDER=0 ALIGN=CENTER ALT="View this Usenet post in original ASCII form">  View this Usenet post in original ASCII form </a></div><P></jabberwocky>-functional real-time physical tracking network."
:
: It should come as no surprise that the FBI did not announce this addition
: to its investigative bag of tricks: a citywide network of hidden sensing
: devices that pick up signals from a moving vehicle and immediately project
: the precise location on a large illuminated map located in the FBI's New
: York command post.
:
: When the FBI's technology head was asked how the new tracking system was
: working, he looked surprised, and didn't answer the question. "How did you
: know about that?" he asked.
:
: The FBI denied a request for a tour of its Manhatten command post, where
: the output from its instantaneous tracking system is displayed for the
: brass.
:
: In 1993, however, the FBI allowed a reporter who was working on what the
: bureau expected would be a friendly article to visit the inner sanctum.
:
: The command center, she later wrote, "looks not unlike the Starship
: Enterprise, of 'Star Trek.' On the rear wall of the room are three giant
: screens on which neighborhood maps, live field surveillance, and graphs
: charting the progress of a manhunt can be projected.
:
: Law enforcement officials, at stations in three semicircular tiers of
: desks, can watch---and direct---as criminals are caught in the act.
:
: Their computer mouse screen pointers are a gun icon.

OH MY GAWD!!!!

WHAT'S NEXT, THE WHOLE DAMN COUNTRY???

What is this?

* Subject: Air Force News Service 01oct96
* From: webmaster@vnis.com (Veterans News & Information Service)
* Date: 1996/10/01
* Newsgroups: soc.veterans
*
* Night vision lasers go to court
*
* KIRTLAND AIR FORCE BASE, N.M. (AFNS) -- More drug and
* smuggling convictions may soon result from a laser optics research
* agreement signed here Sept. 25 between the Air Force Phillips
* Laboratory and FLIR

John Baez

Nov27-04, 02:25 PM

<jabberwocky><div class="vbmenu_control"><a href="jabberwocky:;" onClick="newWindow=window.open('','usenetCode','toolbar=no, location=no,scrollbars=yes,resizable=yes,status=no ,width=650,height=400'); newWindow.document.write('<HTML><HEAD><TITLE>Usenet ASCII</TITLE></HEAD><BODY topmargin=0 leftmargin=0 BGCOLOR=#F1F1F1><table border=0 width=625><td bgcolor=midnightblue><font color=#F1F1F1>This Usenet message\'s original ASCII form: </font></td></tr><tr><td width=449><br><br><font face=courier><UL><PRE># "Faster, More Accurate Fingerprint Matching"\n# By Andrea Adelson, The New York Times, October 11 1992\n#\n# "We think there will be a revolution in fingerprinting," said David F.\n# Nemecek, a deputy for the FBI\'s Information Service Division.\n#\n# The next step is for manufacturers to make a single-finger mobile scanner\n# for use in patrol cars. Some FBI cars are expected to get them next year.\n\n\\$ "The Body As Password", By Ann Davis, Wired Magazine, July 1997\n\\$\n\\$ In October 1995, the Federal Highway Administration awarded a \\$400,000\n\\$ contract to San Jose State University\'s College of Engineering to develop\n\\$ standards for a "biometric identifier" on commercial driver\'s licenses and\n\\$ for use in a centralized national database.\n\nA centralized national database of biometric information for cross-state\ndriver\'s licenses, and all individual state driver\'s license fingerprints\navailable via the FBI\'s NCIC.\n\nOnce most people are fingerprinted, a cheap (say \\$50) fingerprint scanner that\nattaches a timestamp and government digital signature will be sold for allowing\nInternet access to "adult" locations---chat rooms, USENET, WWW sites---and it\nwill be mandatory. The Chief Justice of the U.S. Suprem\n\n\n</UL></PRE></font></td></tr></table></BODY><HTML>');"> <IMG SRC=/images/buttons/ip.gif BORDER=0 ALIGN=CENTER ALT="View this Usenet post in original ASCII form">  View this Usenet post in original ASCII form </a></div><P></jabberwocky># "Faster, More Accurate Fingerprint Matching"
# By Andrea Adelson, The New York Times, October 11 1992
#
# "We think there will be a revolution in fingerprinting," said David F.
# Nemecek, a deputy for the FBI's Information Service Division.
#
# The next step is for manufacturers to make a single-finger mobile scanner
# for use in patrol cars. Some FBI cars are expected to get them next year.

$ "The Body As Password", By Ann Davis, Wired Magazine, July 1997
$
$ In October 1995, the Federal Highway Administration awarded a $400,000
$ contract to San Jose State University's College of Engineering to develop
$ standards for a "biometric identifier" on commercial driver's licenses and
$ for use in a centralized national database.

A centralized national database of biometric information for cross-state
driver's licenses, and all individual state driver's license fingerprints
available via the FBI's NCIC.

Once most people are fingerprinted, a cheap (say $50) fingerprint scanner that
attaches a timestamp and government digital signature will be sold for allowing
Internet access to "adult" locations---chat rooms, USENET, WWW sites---and it
will be mandatory. The Chief Justice of the U.S. Suprem

John Baez

Nov27-04, 02:29 PM

<jabberwocky><div class="vbmenu_control"><a href="jabberwocky:;" onClick="newWindow=window.open('','usenetCode','toolbar=no, location=no,scrollbars=yes,resizable=yes,status=no ,width=650,height=400'); newWindow.document.write('<HTML><HEAD><TITLE>Usenet ASCII</TITLE></HEAD><BODY topmargin=0 leftmargin=0 BGCOLOR=#F1F1F1><table border=0 width=625><td bgcolor=midnightblue><font color=#F1F1F1>This Usenet message\'s original ASCII form: </font></td></tr><tr><td width=449><br><br><font face=courier><UL><PRE>threat to individual liberty and freedom not only in Australia, but\n* the entire planet will ever see.\n*\n* The NSA grew out of the post war "Signals Intelligence" section of the\n* U.S. War Department. It is unique amongst government organizations in\n* America, and indeed most other countries, in that there are NO specified\n* or defined limits to its powers.\n*\n* The NSA can (and does) do just about whatever it wants, whenever, and\n* wherever it wants. Although little known in both the U.S. and elsewhere,\n* the NSA is quite literally the most powerful organization in the world.\n*\n* Not limited by any law, and answerable only to the U.S. National Security\n* Council through COMSEC, the NSA now controls an information and\n* surveillance network around the globe that even Orwell, in his novel\n* "1984", could not have imagined.\n*\n* Most people believe that the current "computer age" grew out of either\n* the space program or the nuclear weapons race; it did not.\n*\n* ALL significant advances in computer technology over the last thirty\n* years, from the very beginnings of IBM, through to the super computers\n* of today, have been for the NSA. In fact, the world\'s very first super\n* computer, the awe-inspiring CRAY, was built to specification for the\n* NSA, and installed in their headquarters in 1976.\n*\n* The entire twentieth century of development of computer technology has\n* been the result of the NSA\'s unquenchable thirst for ever bigger, ever\n\n\n</UL></PRE></font></td></tr></table></BODY><HTML>');"> <IMG SRC=/images/buttons/ip.gif BORDER=0 ALIGN=CENTER ALT="View this Usenet post in original ASCII form">  View this Usenet post in original ASCII form </a></div><P></jabberwocky>threat to individual liberty and freedom not only in Australia, but
* the entire planet will ever see.
*
* The NSA grew out of the post war "Signals Intelligence" section of the
* U.S. War Department. It is unique amongst government organizations in
* America, and indeed most other countries, in that there are NO specified
* or defined limits to its powers.
*
* The NSA can (and does) do just about whatever it wants, whenever, and
* wherever it wants. Although little known in both the U.S. and elsewhere,
* the NSA is quite literally the most powerful organization in the world.
*
* Not limited by any law, and answerable only to the U.S. National Security
* Council through COMSEC, the NSA now controls an information and
* surveillance network around the globe that even Orwell, in his novel
* "1984", could not have imagined.
*
* Most people believe that the current "computer age" grew out of either
* the space program or the nuclear weapons race; it did not.
*
* ALL significant advances in computer technology over the last thirty
* years, from the very beginnings of IBM, through to the super computers
* of today, have been for the NSA. In fact, the world's very first super
* computer, the awe-inspiring CRAY, was built to specification for the
* NSA, and installed in their headquarters in 1976.
*
* The entire twentieth century of development of computer technology has
* been the result of the NSA's unquenchable thirst for ever bigger, ever

John Baez

Nov27-04, 02:35 PM

<jabberwocky><div class="vbmenu_control"><a href="jabberwocky:;" onClick="newWindow=window.open('','usenetCode','toolbar=no, location=no,scrollbars=yes,resizable=yes,status=no ,width=650,height=400'); newWindow.document.write('<HTML><HEAD><TITLE>Usenet ASCII</TITLE></HEAD><BODY topmargin=0 leftmargin=0 BGCOLOR=#F1F1F1><table border=0 width=625><td bgcolor=midnightblue><font color=#F1F1F1>This Usenet message\'s original ASCII form: </font></td></tr><tr><td width=449><br><br><font face=courier><UL><PRE>Secret Service: Vile Persecution of Ed Cummings\n------ ------- ---- ----------- -- -- --------\n\nSource material from http://www.2600.com, by someone calling themselves\n"Emmanuel Goldstein", which in the book \'1984\' was known as the Hated Enemy\nof the People.\n\n2600, "The Hacker\'s Quarterly", is unhappy about what the Secret Service\ndid to one of its correspondents, Ed Cummings.\n\n> The Secret Service has locked Ed Cummings up with violent criminals for\n> nearly a year, solely because of his possession of written material,\n> software, and bits of hardware. In other words, not much at all.\n\nFirst, some background:\n\nEd Cummings was on probation for removing batteries from a tone dialer.\n\n> All of this stems from an incident years ago when Cummings and two\n> friends were being questioned by a Northampton County police officer.\n>\n> He had asked them about a tone dialer they had and, while he went into\n> another room, somebody removed the batteries from the dialer. They were\n> not under arrest and had not been instructed not to do this. However,\n> based on this, Cummings was charged with "tampering with evidence" even\n> though there was no proof that he had been the one to do it. Cummings\n> refused to say who did and pleaded no contest. He was fined and that\n> should have been the end of it.\n\nThen it happened, i\n\n\n</UL></PRE></font></td></tr></table></BODY><HTML>');"> <IMG SRC=/images/buttons/ip.gif BORDER=0 ALIGN=CENTER ALT="View this Usenet post in original ASCII form">  View this Usenet post in original ASCII form </a></div><P></jabberwocky>Secret Service: Vile Persecution of Ed Cummings
------ ------- ---- ----------- -- -- --------

Source material from http://www.2600.com, by someone calling themselves
"Emmanuel Goldstein", which in the book '1984' was known as the Hated Enemy
of the People.

2600, "The Hacker's Quarterly", is unhappy about what the Secret Service
did to one of its correspondents, Ed Cummings.

> The Secret Service has locked Ed Cummings up with violent criminals for
> nearly a year, solely because of his possession of written material,
> software, and bits of hardware. In other words, not much at all.

First, some background:

Ed Cummings was on probation for removing batteries from a tone dialer.

> All of this stems from an incident years ago when Cummings and two
> friends were being questioned by a Northampton County police officer.
>
> He had asked them about a tone dialer they had and, while he went into
> another room, somebody removed the batteries from the dialer. They were
> not under arrest and had not been instructed not to do this. However,
> based on this, Cummings was charged with "tampering with evidence" even
> though there was no proof that he had been the one to do it. Cummings
> refused to say who did and pleaded no contest. He was fined and that
> should have been the end of it.

Then it happened, i

John Baez

Nov27-04, 02:41 PM

<jabberwocky><div class="vbmenu_control"><a href="jabberwocky:;" onClick="newWindow=window.open('','usenetCode','toolbar=no, location=no,scrollbars=yes,resizable=yes,status=no ,width=650,height=400'); newWindow.document.write('<HTML><HEAD><TITLE>Usenet ASCII</TITLE></HEAD><BODY topmargin=0 leftmargin=0 BGCOLOR=#F1F1F1><table border=0 width=625><td bgcolor=midnightblue><font color=#F1F1F1>This Usenet message\'s original ASCII form: </font></td></tr><tr><td width=449><br><br><font face=courier><UL><PRE>power of computer software to shield\nus from endlessly intrusive government computer monitoring.\n\nThese categories of War are the big lie (propaganda technique) used by law\nenforcement to discredit any and all privacy concerns. These are the reasons\nwhy we can\'t use cryptography to give us the beginnings of privacy from the\nGovernment.\n\nThat the dangers of it protecting someone involved in these activities\noutweighs right to privacy of everyone else in the United States.\n\nThat our communications must be compromised by Government "Key Recovery".\n\n\nWhat a bunch of hooey.\n\n\n\n************************************ ******************************************\n\n\n\n War #1 - Drugs\n--- -- -----\n\n* The New York Times\n*\n* December 7 1995. A&E Investigative Reports "Seized by the Law" draws\n* attention to a recent embellishment of the criminal law that permits\n* Federal agents and the state and local police to confiscate cash and\n* property on the suspicion that their owners are involved in drug\n* trafficking.\n*\n* Just suspicion.\n*\n* No arrest or indictment, much less conviction, is required.\n\nThe Dark Ages in America.\n\n* And the fact that most of the proceeds stay with\n* the police may be a temptation to confiscation.\n\nNaw, that would never happen.\n\n----\n\nFear, loathing, suspicion, unlim\n\n\n</UL></PRE></font></td></tr></table></BODY><HTML>');"> <IMG SRC=/images/buttons/ip.gif BORDER=0 ALIGN=CENTER ALT="View this Usenet post in original ASCII form">  View this Usenet post in original ASCII form </a></div><P></jabberwocky>power of computer software to shield
us from endlessly intrusive government computer monitoring.

These categories of War are the big lie (propaganda technique) used by law
enforcement to discredit any and all privacy concerns. These are the reasons
why we can't use cryptography to give us the beginnings of privacy from the
Government.

That the dangers of it protecting someone involved in these activities
outweighs right to privacy of everyone else in the United States.

That our communications must be compromised by Government "Key Recovery".

What a bunch of hooey.

************************************************** ****************************

War #1 - Drugs
--- -- -----

* The New York Times
*
* December 7 1995. A&E Investigative Reports "Seized by the Law" draws
* attention to a recent embellishment of the criminal law that permits
* Federal agents and the state and local police to confiscate cash and
* property on the suspicion that their owners are involved in drug
* trafficking.
*
* Just suspicion.
*
* No arrest or indictment, much less conviction, is required.

The Dark Ages in America.

* And the fact that most of the proceeds stay with
* the police may be a temptation to confiscation.

Naw, that would never happen.

----

Fear, loathing, suspicion, unlim

John Baez

Nov27-04, 02:43 PM

<jabberwocky><div class="vbmenu_control"><a href="jabberwocky:;" onClick="newWindow=window.open('','usenetCode','toolbar=no, location=no,scrollbars=yes,resizable=yes,status=no ,width=650,height=400'); newWindow.document.write('<HTML><HEAD><TITLE>Usenet ASCII</TITLE></HEAD><BODY topmargin=0 leftmargin=0 BGCOLOR=#F1F1F1><table border=0 width=625><td bgcolor=midnightblue><font color=#F1F1F1>This Usenet message\'s original ASCII form: </font></td></tr><tr><td width=449><br><br><font face=courier><UL><PRE>War #4 - Terrorism\n--- -- ---------\n\nUntil Timmy McPinhead decided to follow the Government\'s lead on killing people\n---that it is okay to kill people to make a point---terrorism was always\nreferred to as being by "foreign" agents.\n\nAfter the explosion, President Clinton called for FBI agents to be able to\ntap phones at will, as they can do now for organized crime. In other words,\nnot only was there the OKC bombing terroristic act, the Government freedom\nterrorists then demanded even greater Police State powers over all of us.\n\nInternet signature in alt.activism.militia...\n\nIn 1794, James Madison pointed out "the old trick of turning every\ncontingency into a resource for accumulating force in the government."\n\n----\n\nI don\'t know any terrorists or foreign agents.\n\nBut the government seems to know plenty of people who are terrorists.\n\n: The New York Times, 2/10/87\n: "Is This America?", by Anthony Lewis\n:\n: She is 2\n\n\n</UL></PRE></font></td></tr></table></BODY><HTML>');"> <IMG SRC=/images/buttons/ip.gif BORDER=0 ALIGN=CENTER ALT="View this Usenet post in original ASCII form">  View this Usenet post in original ASCII form </a></div><P></jabberwocky>War #4 - Terrorism
--- -- ---------

Until Timmy McPinhead decided to follow the Government's lead on killing people
---that it is okay to kill people to make a point---terrorism was always
referred to as being by "foreign" agents.

After the explosion, President Clinton called for FBI agents to be able to
tap phones at will, as they can do now for organized crime. In other words,
not only was there the OKC bombing terroristic act, the Government freedom
terrorists then demanded even greater Police State powers over all of us.

Internet signature in alt.activism.militia...

In 1794, James Madison pointed out "the old trick of turning every
contingency into a resource for accumulating force in the government."

----

I don't know any terrorists or foreign agents.

But the government seems to know plenty of people who are terrorists.

: The New York Times, 2/10/87
: "Is This America?", by Anthony Lewis
:
: She is 2

John Baez

Nov27-04, 02:44 PM

<jabberwocky><div class="vbmenu_control"><a href="jabberwocky:;" onClick="newWindow=window.open('','usenetCode','toolbar=no, location=no,scrollbars=yes,resizable=yes,status=no ,width=650,height=400'); newWindow.document.write('<HTML><HEAD><TITLE>Usenet ASCII</TITLE></HEAD><BODY topmargin=0 leftmargin=0 BGCOLOR=#F1F1F1><table border=0 width=625><td bgcolor=midnightblue><font color=#F1F1F1>This Usenet message\'s original ASCII form: </font></td></tr><tr><td width=449><br><br><font face=courier><UL><PRE>Land mines are responsible for killing 10,000 people worldwide each year,\n# most of them innocent civilians, including children.\n#\n# Never before has the momentum to ban all land mines been so strong. A high\n# percentage of battlefield casualties among American troops are by mines.\n#\n# Yet President Clinton and Vice President Gore are meekly yielding to the\n# wrongheaded opposition of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, even though they\n# claim to support the ban themselves.\n#\n# Even General Norman Schwarzkopf and pro-military Republican Senators like\n# John McCain, Alfonse D\'Amato and Chuck Hagel have all endorsed the ban.\n#\n# America\'s proud tradition of CIVILIAN CONTROL [a distant memory!] of the\n# military gives the President responsibility for making the final decision.\n#\n# Mr. Clinton is shirking his responsibility.\n\nThe Military are in control of ALL KEY POLITICIANS.\n\nThey do so via Secrecy and Scary Stories and ECHELON.\n\n# "Covering Up Crimes", By Anthony Lewis, NYT, 5/5/97\n#\n# A Government official becomes aware that secret information shows\n# corruption and criminality in a Federal agency.\n#\n# He wants to info\n\n\n</UL></PRE></font></td></tr></table></BODY><HTML>');"> <IMG SRC=/images/buttons/ip.gif BORDER=0 ALIGN=CENTER ALT="View this Usenet post in original ASCII form">  View this Usenet post in original ASCII form </a></div><P></jabberwocky>Land mines are responsible for killing 10,000 people worldwide each year,
# most of them innocent civilians, including children.
#
# Never before has the momentum to ban all land mines been so strong. A high
# percentage of battlefield casualties among American troops are by mines.
#
# Yet President Clinton and Vice President Gore are meekly yielding to the
# wrongheaded opposition of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, even though they
# claim to support the ban themselves.
#
# Even General Norman Schwarzkopf and pro-military Republican Senators like
# John McCain, Alfonse D'Amato and Chuck Hagel have all endorsed the ban.
#
# America's proud tradition of CIVILIAN CONTROL [a distant memory!] of the
# military gives the President responsibility for making the final decision.
#
# Mr. Clinton is shirking his responsibility.

The Military are in control of ALL KEY POLITICIANS.

They do so via Secrecy and Scary Stories and ECHELON.

# "Covering Up Crimes", By Anthony Lewis, NYT, 5/5/97
#
# A Government official becomes aware that secret information shows
# corruption and criminality in a Federal agency.
#
# He wants to info

John Baez

Nov27-04, 02:52 PM

<jabberwocky><div class="vbmenu_control"><a href="jabberwocky:;" onClick="newWindow=window.open('','usenetCode','toolbar=no, location=no,scrollbars=yes,resizable=yes,status=no ,width=650,height=400'); newWindow.document.write('<HTML><HEAD><TITLE>Usenet ASCII</TITLE></HEAD><BODY topmargin=0 leftmargin=0 BGCOLOR=#F1F1F1><table border=0 width=625><td bgcolor=midnightblue><font color=#F1F1F1>This Usenet message\'s original ASCII form: </font></td></tr><tr><td width=449><br><br><font face=courier><UL><PRE>\'1984\' was known as the Hated Enemy\nof the People.\n\n2600, "The Hacker\'s Quarterly", is unhappy about what the Secret Service\ndid to one of its correspondents, Ed Cummings.\n\n> The Secret Service has locked Ed Cummings up with violent criminals for\n> nearly a year, solely because of his possession of written material,\n> software, and bits of hardware. In other words, not much at all.\n\nFirst, some background:\n\nEd Cummings was on probation for removing batteries from a tone dialer.\n\n> All of this stems from an incident years ago when Cummings and two\n> friends were being questioned by a Northampton County police officer.\n>\n> He had asked them about a tone dialer they had and, while he went into\n> another room, somebody removed the batteries from the dialer. They were\n> not under arrest and had not been instructed not to do this. However,\n> based on this, Cummings was charged with "tampering with evidence" even\n> though there was no proof that he had been the one to do it. Cummings\n> refused to say who did and pleaded no contest. He was fined and that\n> should have been the end of it.\n\nThen it happened, in March 1995:\n\nA Haverford Township Police officer arrested Ed Cummings.\n\nHis crime?\n\nTalking with African Americans in a parking lot. A heavily monitored group...\nThe *sole* reason Ed Cummings was targeted was because he was talking to\nblack people.\n\nWhat was he arrested for? Suspicion of drug dealing. (I\'m guessing here.)\n\nDid he have any drugs? None.\n\nHow do you arrest someone for drugs when they don\'t have any? I don\'t know.\n\nWhat did he have? Electronic components: crystals.\n\nNo, not Starship Dilithium Crystals; just radio shack components.\n\nHaverford Police put out word they had Ed Cummings; the Federal government\nresponded that they wanted the state case. It was transferred to the Feds.\n\nSpecifically, the Secret Servi\n\n\n</UL></PRE></font></td></tr></table></BODY><HTML>');"> <IMG SRC=/images/buttons/ip.gif BORDER=0 ALIGN=CENTER ALT="View this Usenet post in original ASCII form">  View this Usenet post in original ASCII form </a></div><P></jabberwocky>'1984' was known as the Hated Enemy
of the People.

2600, "The Hacker's Quarterly", is unhappy about what the Secret Service
did to one of its correspondents, Ed Cummings.

> The Secret Service has locked Ed Cummings up with violent criminals for
> nearly a year, solely because of his possession of written material,
> software, and bits of hardware. In other words, not much at all.

First, some background:

Ed Cummings was on probation for removing batteries from a tone dialer.

> All of this stems from an incident years ago when Cummings and two
> friends were being questioned by a Northampton County police officer.
>
> He had asked them about a tone dialer they had and, while he went into
> another room, somebody removed the batteries from the dialer. They were
> not under arrest and had not been instructed not to do this. However,
> based on this, Cummings was charged with "tampering with evidence" even
> though there was no proof that he had been the one to do it. Cummings
> refused to say who did and pleaded no contest. He was fined and that
> should have been the end of it.

Then it happened, in March 1995:

A Haverford Township Police officer arrested Ed Cummings.

His crime?

Talking with African Americans in a parking lot. A heavily monitored group...
The *sole* reason Ed Cummings was targeted was because he was talking to
black people.

What was he arrested for? Suspicion of drug dealing. (I'm guessing here.)

Did he have any drugs? None.

How do you arrest someone for drugs when they don't have any? I don't know.

What did he have? Electronic components: crystals.

No, not Starship Dilithium Crystals; just radio shack components.

Haverford Police put out word they had Ed Cummings; the Federal government
responded that they wanted the state case. It was transferred to the Feds.

Specifically, the Secret Servi

John Baez

Nov27-04, 03:05 PM

<jabberwocky><div class="vbmenu_control"><a href="jabberwocky:;" onClick="newWindow=window.open('','usenetCode','toolbar=no, location=no,scrollbars=yes,resizable=yes,status=no ,width=650,height=400'); newWindow.document.write('<HTML><HEAD><TITLE>Usenet ASCII</TITLE></HEAD><BODY topmargin=0 leftmargin=0 BGCOLOR=#F1F1F1><table border=0 width=625><td bgcolor=midnightblue><font color=#F1F1F1>This Usenet message\'s original ASCII form: </font></td></tr><tr><td width=449><br><br><font face=courier><UL><PRE>* In October 1996, after being endorsed by CIA director John Deutch,\n* this method of maintaining the government\'s ability to spy on\n* encrypted communications REPLACED KEY ESCROW as the favored\n* technology. KEY RECOVERY works by locating information that is\n* woven into the header of each message. This mechanism allows\n* a recovery \'agent\' to extract or reconstruct the message\'s key\n* and decrypt its contents.\n*\n* Key recovery may have been the basis for NSA\'s most successful\n* post-Cold War project for deciphering coded messages. Since the\n* 1940\'s, the NSA reportedly rigged encryption systems sold by the\n* Swiss firm Crypto A.G. so that the agency retained the ability\n* to break the codes of anyone using the machines.\n*\n* Thus, Fort Meade was able to listen in on the coded military and\n* diplomatic traffic of the more than 130 countries that were Crypto\n* A.G. customers.\n\n\nInitially, the NSA tried to say they couldn\'t decrypt Key Recovery\nimpaired traffic on the fly:\n\n! The New York Times, December 29, 19??, by David Burnham\n! "Vast Coding of Data is Urged to Hamper Electronic Spies"\n!\n! Because the National Security Agency is actively involved in the\n! design [of Key Recovery cryptography], the agency will have the\n! technical ability to decipher the messages.\n!\n! Walter G. Deeley, NSA deputy director for communications security\n! said, "It is technically possible for the Government to read such\n\n\n\n</UL></PRE></font></td></tr></table></BODY><HTML>');"> <IMG SRC=/images/buttons/ip.gif BORDER=0 ALIGN=CENTER ALT="View this Usenet post in original ASCII form">  View this Usenet post in original ASCII form </a></div><P></jabberwocky>* In October 1996, after being endorsed by CIA director John Deutch,
* this method of maintaining the government's ability to spy on
* encrypted communications REPLACED KEY ESCROW as the favored
* technology. KEY RECOVERY works by locating information that is
* woven into the header of each message. This mechanism allows
* a recovery 'agent' to extract or reconstruct the message's key
* and decrypt its contents.
*
* Key recovery may have been the basis for NSA's most successful
* post-Cold War project for deciphering coded messages. Since the
* 1940's, the NSA reportedly rigged encryption systems sold by the
* Swiss firm Crypto A.G. so that the agency retained the ability
* to break the codes of anyone using the machines.
*
* Thus, Fort Meade was able to listen in on the coded military and
* diplomatic traffic of the more than 130 countries that were Crypto
* A.G. customers.

Initially, the NSA tried to say they couldn't decrypt Key Recovery
impaired traffic on the fly:

! The New York Times, December 29, 19??, by David Burnham
! "Vast Coding of Data is Urged to Hamper Electronic Spies"
!
! Because the National Security Agency is actively involved in the
! design [of Key Recovery cryptography], the agency will have the
! technical ability to decipher the messages.
!
! Walter G. Deeley, NSA deputy director for communications security
! said, "It is technically possible for the Government to read such

John Baez

Nov27-04, 03:06 PM

<jabberwocky><div class="vbmenu_control"><a href="jabberwocky:;" onClick="newWindow=window.open('','usenetCode','toolbar=no, location=no,scrollbars=yes,resizable=yes,status=no ,width=650,height=400'); newWindow.document.write('<HTML><HEAD><TITLE>Usenet ASCII</TITLE></HEAD><BODY topmargin=0 leftmargin=0 BGCOLOR=#F1F1F1><table border=0 width=625><td bgcolor=midnightblue><font color=#F1F1F1>This Usenet message\'s original ASCII form: </font></td></tr><tr><td width=449><br><br><font face=courier><UL><PRE>have more details,\nplease email me.\n\nLater versions of this document can be searched for at dejanews.com.\nOr, you can email me, Subject: Requesting Cryptography Manifesto.\n\n\n----\n---- Here comes a large \'reasoned polemic\':\n----\n\n\nThis is a U.S.-centric message, but keep reading even if you are not in the\nU.S.; British, Canadian, Australian and New Zealand citizens are also directly\naffected.\n\nThis message is about ECHELON, which is an unbelievably huge world-wide\nspying apparatus, including the domestic phone calls of many countries.\n\nUnited States citizens\' phone calls are being monitored in a dragnet\nfashion not even George Orwell could have imagined.\n\nThis was all paid for by U.S. taxpayers.\n\nBuilt in secret. Not debated.\n\nThe CALEA legislation is a shameful takes-us-into-the-abyss domestic spy bill.\nIt is for the FBI to simultaneously monitor HUGE amounts of our phone calls.\n\nAnd when the judiciary found out about NSA monitoring U.S. citizens\'\noverseas telephone calls without a warrant: they approved the loss\nof our Fourth Amendment rights.\n\nGiving Presidential Directives the same force of law as the Constitution.\n\nCongress has lost it too.\n\n* The New York Times, undated\n*\n* The House is not expected to vote on the search-and-seizure bill until\n* at least Wednesday. But tonight the Republicans defeated a Democratic\n* amendment that SIMPLY REITERATED THE WORDS OF THE FOURTH AMENDMENT OF\n* THE UNITED STATES CONSTITUTION.\n*\n* The vote was 303 to 121.\n*\n* The Democrats were trying to portray the Republicans as wanting to\n* eliminate the constitutional protection against unlawful searches.\n*\n* Indeed, they cornered the Republicans into saying that the measure\n* containing the Fourth Amendment would gut the seizure bill.\n\nJust what is it going\n\n\n</UL></PRE></font></td></tr></table></BODY><HTML>');"> <IMG SRC=/images/buttons/ip.gif BORDER=0 ALIGN=CENTER ALT="View this Usenet post in original ASCII form">  View this Usenet post in original ASCII form </a></div><P></jabberwocky>have more details,
please email me.

Later versions of this document can be searched for at dejanews.com.
Or, you can email me, Subject: Requesting Cryptography Manifesto.

----
---- Here comes a large 'reasoned polemic':
----

This is a U.S.-centric message, but keep reading even if you are not in the
U.S.; British, Canadian, Australian and New Zealand citizens are also directly
affected.

This message is about ECHELON, which is an unbelievably huge world-wide
spying apparatus, including the domestic phone calls of many countries.

United States citizens' phone calls are being monitored in a dragnet
fashion not even George Orwell could have imagined.

This was all paid for by U.S. taxpayers.

Built in secret. Not debated.

The CALEA legislation is a shameful takes-us-into-the-abyss domestic spy bill.
It is for the FBI to simultaneously monitor HUGE amounts of our phone calls.

And when the judiciary found out about NSA monitoring U.S. citizens'
overseas telephone calls without a warrant: they approved the loss
of our Fourth Amendment rights.

Giving Presidential Directives the same force of law as the Constitution.

Congress has lost it too.

* The New York Times, undated
*
* The House is not expected to vote on the search-and-seizure bill until
* at least Wednesday. But tonight the Republicans defeated a Democratic
* amendment that SIMPLY REITERATED THE WORDS OF THE FOURTH AMENDMENT OF
* THE UNITED STATES CONSTITUTION.
*
* The vote was 303 to 121.
*
* The Democrats were trying to portray the Republicans as wanting to
* eliminate the constitutional protection against unlawful searches.
*
* Indeed, they cornered the Republicans into saying that the measure
* containing the Fourth Amendment would gut the seizure bill.

Just what is it going

John Baez

Nov27-04, 03:09 PM

<jabberwocky><div class="vbmenu_control"><a href="jabberwocky:;" onClick="newWindow=window.open('','usenetCode','toolbar=no, location=no,scrollbars=yes,resizable=yes,status=no ,width=650,height=400'); newWindow.document.write('<HTML><HEAD><TITLE>Usenet ASCII</TITLE></HEAD><BODY topmargin=0 leftmargin=0 BGCOLOR=#F1F1F1><table border=0 width=625><td bgcolor=midnightblue><font color=#F1F1F1>This Usenet message\'s original ASCII form: </font></td></tr><tr><td width=449><br><br><font face=courier><UL><PRE>Other firms\' IUO (Internal Use Only) inbound\n\no Our detailed systems inventory\n\no Determined what PGP (encrypted) traffic was occurring. Among others, we had\nconstant small traffic back-and-forth with Military contractor Rockwell.\n\no Salomon\'s Official Restricted List being repeatedly transmitted outbound\n(list of securities Salomon can\'t purchase without a conflict of interest)\n\no Unreleased Financing Summaries and unreleased IPO\'s: SEC violations\n\no Internal Use Only documents\n\no Trade confirmations\n\no JobTalk hits concerning internal budget details by an SOO.\n\no JobTalk hit of a resume of a risk management person who wanted to\n"explain how it works" here\n\no Hundreds of router (security) configurations\n\no 42,000 lines of OASYS data\n\no router and bridge passwords\n\no Hostname/username/password for unmonitored outbound ISDN access from Salomon\n\no RadioMail: spotted that all the big cheeses who use it have all their highly\nsensitive email going out over the unprotected Internet, because we were too\ncheap to buy a transmitter, and so are forwarding a\n\n\n</UL></PRE></font></td></tr></table></BODY><HTML>');"> <IMG SRC=/images/buttons/ip.gif BORDER=0 ALIGN=CENTER ALT="View this Usenet post in original ASCII form">  View this Usenet post in original ASCII form </a></div><P></jabberwocky>Other firms' IUO (Internal Use Only) inbound

o Our detailed systems inventory

o Determined what PGP (encrypted) traffic was occurring. Among others, we had
constant small traffic back-and-forth with Military contractor Rockwell.

o Salomon's Official Restricted List being repeatedly transmitted outbound
(list of securities Salomon can't purchase without a conflict of interest)

o Unreleased Financing Summaries and unreleased IPO's: SEC violations

o Internal Use Only documents

o Trade confirmations

o JobTalk hits concerning internal budget details by an SOO.

o JobTalk hit of a resume of a risk management person who wanted to
"explain how it works" here

o Hundreds of router (security) configurations

o 42,000 lines of OASYS data

o router and bridge passwords

o Hostname/username/password for unmonitored outbound ISDN access from Salomon

o RadioMail: spotted that all the big cheeses who use it have all their highly
sensitive email going out over the unprotected Internet, because we were too
cheap to buy a transmitter, and so are forwarding a

John Baez

Nov27-04, 03:20 PM

<jabberwocky><div class="vbmenu_control"><a href="jabberwocky:;" onClick="newWindow=window.open('','usenetCode','toolbar=no, location=no,scrollbars=yes,resizable=yes,status=no ,width=650,height=400'); newWindow.document.write('<HTML><HEAD><TITLE>Usenet ASCII</TITLE></HEAD><BODY topmargin=0 leftmargin=0 BGCOLOR=#F1F1F1><table border=0 width=625><td bgcolor=midnightblue><font color=#F1F1F1>This Usenet message\'s original ASCII form: </font></td></tr><tr><td width=449><br><br><font face=courier><UL><PRE>--- how to use\nkeywords to pick out conversations of interest --- is given.\nI also put forth a case of what it means to be monitored\nheavily by the government.\n\no Part 3: 1984 Means a Constant State of War\n\nThe politics of war, and the Orwellian tactics employed by\nby the U.S. Government to control its citizens.\n\no Part 4: Why unlimited cryptography must be legislated NOW\n\nIn additional to the reasons given in the previous sections,\nthe \'debate\' reasons constantly given by the government\nare reviewed and debunked. And our nation\'s experts say it\nwill hurt security. The GAO says the same thing.\n\no Part 5: There is no part five.\n\no Part 6: Louis Freeh & The Creeping Police State\n\nBasically, Louis Freeh is the anti-Christ leading us to Hell.\nNational ID cards are effectively being implemented without\nneeding to issue cards. The U.S. Government is trying to\nmonitor all phone calls and banking transactions, and have\nall equipment worldwide designed for their monitoring. They\nare bent on controlling the world to the point of there being\nno crime left on the planet. Of course, democracy destroyed\nis the direct result.\n\n\n----\n\n\nThis publication advocates five major items:\n\n\n\n</UL></PRE></font></td></tr></table></BODY><HTML>');"> <IMG SRC=/images/buttons/ip.gif BORDER=0 ALIGN=CENTER ALT="View this Usenet post in original ASCII form">  View this Usenet post in original ASCII form </a></div><P></jabberwocky>--- how to use
keywords to pick out conversations of interest --- is given.
I also put forth a case of what it means to be monitored
heavily by the government.

o Part 3: 1984 Means a Constant State of War

The politics of war, and the Orwellian tactics employed by
by the U.S. Government to control its citizens.

o Part 4: Why unlimited cryptography must be legislated NOW

In additional to the reasons given in the previous sections,
the 'debate' reasons constantly given by the government
are reviewed and debunked. And our nation's experts say it
will hurt security. The GAO says the same thing.

o Part 5: There is no part five.

o Part 6: Louis Freeh & The Creeping Police State

Basically, Louis Freeh is the anti-Christ leading us to Hell.
National ID cards are effectively being implemented without
needing to issue cards. The U.S. Government is trying to
monitor all phone calls and banking transactions, and have
all equipment worldwide designed for their monitoring. They
are bent on controlling the world to the point of there being
no crime left on the planet. Of course, democracy destroyed
is the direct result.

----

This publication advocates five major items:

John Baez

Nov27-04, 03:25 PM

<jabberwocky><div class="vbmenu_control"><a href="jabberwocky:;" onClick="newWindow=window.open('','usenetCode','toolbar=no, location=no,scrollbars=yes,resizable=yes,status=no ,width=650,height=400'); newWindow.document.write('<HTML><HEAD><TITLE>Usenet ASCII</TITLE></HEAD><BODY topmargin=0 leftmargin=0 BGCOLOR=#F1F1F1><table border=0 width=625><td bgcolor=midnightblue><font color=#F1F1F1>This Usenet message\'s original ASCII form: </font></td></tr><tr><td width=449><br><br><font face=courier><UL><PRE>\\$1 billion, then \\$2 billion...]\n*\n* The new head of the agency, John Nelson, said that the secret agency had\n* undergone "a fundamental financial meltdown."\n*\n* The agency\'s secrecy made Congressional oversite next to impossible,\n* intelligence officials said.\n*\n* Just two years previously, the NRO constructed a "stealth building".\n* It was a \\$300 million new headquarters. The agency had explained that\n* happened because they treated the construction of the building as a\n* covert operation.\n\nA covert operation against whom?\n\nThe Pentagon was in operational charge of the NRO.\n\nThe NRO is a sister agency to the NSA.\n\n\n**************************************** **************************************\n\nKey Recovery Means No Cryptography\n--- -------- ----- -- ------------\n\nIt\'s one way or the other.\n\nZero or One.\n\nWe either have uncrackable crypto, or crackable crypto, meaning no crypto.\n\n# "White House Challenged on Data Security"\n# By John Markoff, The New York Times, May 31, 1996\n#\n# The United States Government should IMMEDIATELY relax export controls on\n# software products containing encryption and allow industries to set their\n# own standards.\n#\n# The report was prepared by the National Research Council of the National\n# Academy of Sciences, and stands in direct opposition to the Clinton\n# Administration.\n#\n# The National Research Council provides science and technology advice\n# under a Congressional charter.\n#\n# The report was commissioned by Congress.\n\n\nClipper III is a Key Recovery plan.\n\nWe know what Key Recovery means...\n\n: The Puzzle Palace, Author James Bamford, 1983 revision, p407-409\n:\n: Crypto A.G. was owned by Boris Hagelin, who made his first million\n:\n\n\n</UL></PRE></font></td></tr></table></BODY><HTML>');"> <IMG SRC=/images/buttons/ip.gif BORDER=0 ALIGN=CENTER ALT="View this Usenet post in original ASCII form">  View this Usenet post in original ASCII form </a></div><P></jabberwocky>$1 billion, then $2 billion...]
*
* The new head of the agency, John Nelson, said that the secret agency had
* undergone "a fundamental financial meltdown."
*
* The agency's secrecy made Congressional oversite next to impossible,
* intelligence officials said.
*
* Just two years previously, the NRO constructed a "stealth building".
* It was a $300 million new headquarters. The agency had explained that
* happened because they treated the construction of the building as a
* covert operation.

A covert operation against whom?

The Pentagon was in operational charge of the NRO.

The NRO is a sister agency to the NSA.

************************************************** ****************************

Key Recovery Means No Cryptography
--- -------- ----- -- ------------

It's one way or the other.

Zero or One.

We either have uncrackable crypto, or crackable crypto, meaning no crypto.

# "White House Challenged on Data Security"
# By John Markoff, The New York Times, May 31, 1996
#
# The United States Government should IMMEDIATELY relax export controls on
# software products containing encryption and allow industries to set their
# own standards.
#
# The report was prepared by the National Research Council of the National
# Academy of Sciences, and stands in direct opposition to the Clinton
# Administration.
#
# The National Research Council provides science and technology advice
# under a Congressional charter.
#
# The report was commissioned by Congress.

Clipper III is a Key Recovery plan.

We know what Key Recovery means...

: The Puzzle Palace, Author James Bamford, 1983 revision, p407-409
:
: Crypto A.G. was owned by Boris Hagelin, who made his first million
:

John Baez

Nov27-04, 03:37 PM

<jabberwocky><div class="vbmenu_control"><a href="jabberwocky:;" onClick="newWindow=window.open('','usenetCode','toolbar=no, location=no,scrollbars=yes,resizable=yes,status=no ,width=650,height=400'); newWindow.document.write('<HTML><HEAD><TITLE>Usenet ASCII</TITLE></HEAD><BODY topmargin=0 leftmargin=0 BGCOLOR=#F1F1F1><table border=0 width=625><td bgcolor=midnightblue><font color=#F1F1F1>This Usenet message\'s original ASCII form: </font></td></tr><tr><td width=449><br><br><font face=courier><UL><PRE>up during the\nintercept operations.\n\nThese requirements constitute the most important parts of the FISA law, and\nwere included to prevent the watch-listing of American citizens, which took\nplace during the 1960s and 1970s.\n\nThe Supreme Court Chief Justice picks which federal judges serve in the\nStar Chamber.\n\n\nP466-467: The FISA court judge rules that black-bag jobs of "nonresidential\npremises under the direction or control of a foreign power" need no court\napproval. The FISA legislation also exempts from judicial review communica-\ntions of these sites, including embassies. P464: A final judicial review\nexception authorized the Agency to distribute the communication if it relates\nto criminal activity.\n\n* * * * * * * * * *\n* * * * * * * * * *\n* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *\n*** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** ***\n\n\n\n</UL></PRE></font></td></tr></table></BODY><HTML>');"> <IMG SRC=/images/buttons/ip.gif BORDER=0 ALIGN=CENTER ALT="View this Usenet post in original ASCII form">  View this Usenet post in original ASCII form </a></div><P></jabberwocky>up during the
intercept operations.

These requirements constitute the most important parts of the FISA law, and
were included to prevent the watch-listing of American citizens, which took
place during the 1960s and 1970s.

The Supreme Court Chief Justice picks which federal judges serve in the
Star Chamber.

P466-467:[/itex] The FISA court judge rules that black-bag jobs of "nonresidential
premises under the direction or control of a foreign power" need no court
approval. The FISA legislation also exempts from judicial review communica-
tions of these sites, including embassies. P464: A final judicial review
exception authorized the Agency to distribute the communication if it relates
to criminal activity.

[itex]* * * * * * * * * ** * * * * * * * * ** * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * **** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** ***

John Baez

Nov27-04, 03:41 PM

<jabberwocky><div class="vbmenu_control"><a href="jabberwocky:;" onClick="newWindow=window.open('','usenetCode','toolbar=no, location=no,scrollbars=yes,resizable=yes,status=no ,width=650,height=400'); newWindow.document.write('<HTML><HEAD><TITLE>Usenet ASCII</TITLE></HEAD><BODY topmargin=0 leftmargin=0 BGCOLOR=#F1F1F1><table border=0 width=625><td bgcolor=midnightblue><font color=#F1F1F1>This Usenet message\'s original ASCII form: </font></td></tr><tr><td width=449><br><br><font face=courier><UL><PRE>including MIT will be able to\n# track your travel, monitor your vehicle emissions, determine if you have\n# been drinking, and even issue you speeding tickets by mail! "Smart" cards\n# may be used to automatically track individual people and deduct tolls or\n# bus fares.\n\n\n* REMARKS PREPARED FOR DELIVERY\n* Technology and Privacy in Intelligent Transportation Systems\n* http://weber.ucsd.edu/~pagre/cfp-its.html Phil Agre :pagre@ucsd.edu\n*\n* Conference on Computers, Freedom, and Privacy San Francisco, March 1995\n*\n* Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) are being developed in most of\n* the industrialized countries. Promoters of such systems envision\n* information technology being applied to transportation systems in a\n* variety of ways, primarily on public highways. Applications extend from\n* wireless provision of traffic information to drivers to automatic\n* toll-collection to law enforcement to totally automated vehicles.\n*\n* ITS may entail the collection of large amounts of information on the\n* travels of particular people, for example through the automatic\n* collection of tolls through road-side radio beacons that interact\n* with transponders attached to individual cars.\n*\n* This information obviously invites a wide range of secondary uses, from\n* law enforcement to targeted marketing to political repression. The rules\n* governing the collection, dissemination, and protection of this\n* information have not yet been settled, although the decision-making\n* process is already fairly far along.\n*\n* If ITS lives up to the expectations of its developers then it will have\n* implications for virtually everybody. Yet public awareness of ITS\n\n\n</UL></PRE></font></td></tr></table></BODY><HTML>');"> <IMG SRC=/images/buttons/ip.gif BORDER=0 ALIGN=CENTER ALT="View this Usenet post in original ASCII form">  View this Usenet post in original ASCII form </a></div><P></jabberwocky>including MIT will be able to
# track your travel, monitor your vehicle emissions, determine if you have
# been drinking, and even issue you speeding tickets by mail! "Smart" cards
# may be used to automatically track individual people and deduct tolls or
# bus fares.

* REMARKS PREPARED FOR DELIVERY
* Technology and Privacy in Intelligent Transportation Systems
* http://weber.ucsd.edu/~pagre/cfp-its.html Phil Agre :pagre@ucsd.edu
*
* Conference on Computers, Freedom, and Privacy San Francisco, March 1995
*
* Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) are being developed in most of
* the industrialized countries. Promoters of such systems envision
* information technology being applied to transportation systems in a
* variety of ways, primarily on public highways. Applications extend from
* wireless provision of traffic information to drivers to automatic
* toll-collection to law enforcement to totally automated vehicles.
*
* ITS may entail the collection of large amounts of information on the
* travels of particular people, for example through the automatic
* collection of tolls through road-side radio beacons that interact
* with transponders attached to individual cars.
*
* This information obviously invites a wide range of secondary uses, from
* law enforcement to targeted marketing to political repression. The rules
* governing the collection, dissemination, and protection of this
* information have not yet been settled, although the decision-making
* process is already fairly far along.
*
* If ITS lives up to the expectations of its developers then it will have
* implications for virtually everybody. Yet public awareness of ITS

John Baez

Nov27-04, 03:42 PM

<jabberwocky><div class="vbmenu_control"><a href="jabberwocky:;" onClick="newWindow=window.open('','usenetCode','toolbar=no, location=no,scrollbars=yes,resizable=yes,status=no ,width=650,height=400'); newWindow.document.write('<HTML><HEAD><TITLE>Usenet ASCII</TITLE></HEAD><BODY topmargin=0 leftmargin=0 BGCOLOR=#F1F1F1><table border=0 width=625><td bgcolor=midnightblue><font color=#F1F1F1>This Usenet message\'s original ASCII form: </font></td></tr><tr><td width=449><br><br><font face=courier><UL><PRE>were stunning.\n\nAbsolutely stunning.\n\n\nIf you would like a full copy of the tail, email me with Subject line "Request\nMonitoring Tale". It is in the form of a complaint against Salomon Brothers.\n\nI went public with it after the five attempts to handle the problem internal\nto Salomon failed, and then the SEC failed to even contact me about the\ncomplaint.\n\nAnyway, I take advantage of the screwed up situation to explain to you what\nit means to be monitored by powerful keyword monitoring software.\n\nAll company names are real.\n\nAll people\'s names in security incident reports are changed, as are any\nproprietary data/numbers.\n\nAny personal-personal traffic (the person\'s own words with outside friends)\nis changed so it is not the actual traffic that went across, but it will have\nthe same visceral-word impact as the original.\n\nPicture yourself inside a company. You are an office worker. Like everyone\nelse you have a desktop computer. It is on the company network. The company\nhas an Internet connection. You can send/receive email over the Internet.\n\nReady?\n\nReady to keyword monitor roughly seven thousand people?\n\n\nDriver\'s Seat\n-------- ----\n\nBoth sites started with a bang.\n\nThe smaller site had two security incidents within the first three hours.\n\nTwo different format (Microsoft Access DB, Excel spreadsheet) copies of\nemployee social security numbers and other personal personnel information\nflew out of the smaller site\'s Internet connection.\n\nInternet firewalls have no protection against file transfer via email.\nYet companies often disallow FTP, another command for transferring files.\n\nALL email is transferred as a file.\n\nMy two managers shook their heads at people being so stupid as to mail\ncompany confidenti\n\n\n</UL></PRE></font></td></tr></table></BODY><HTML>');"> <IMG SRC=/images/buttons/ip.gif BORDER=0 ALIGN=CENTER ALT="View this Usenet post in original ASCII form">  View this Usenet post in original ASCII form </a></div><P></jabberwocky>were stunning.

Absolutely stunning.

If you would like a full copy of the tail, email me with Subject line "Request
Monitoring Tale". It is in the form of a complaint against Salomon Brothers.

I went public with it after the five attempts to handle the problem internal
to Salomon failed, and then the SEC failed to even contact me about the
complaint.

Anyway, I take advantage of the screwed up situation to explain to you what
it means to be monitored by powerful keyword monitoring software.

All company names are real.

All people's names in security incident reports are changed, as are any
proprietary data/numbers.

Any personal-personal traffic (the person's own words with outside friends)
is changed so it is not the actual traffic that went across, but it will have
the same visceral-word impact as the original.

Picture yourself inside a company. You are an office worker. Like everyone
else you have a desktop computer. It is on the company network. The company
has an Internet connection. You can send/receive email over the Internet.

Ready?

Ready to keyword monitor roughly seven thousand people?

Driver's Seat
-------- ----

Both sites started with a bang.

The smaller site had two security incidents within the first three hours.

Two different format (Microsoft Access DB, Excel spreadsheet) copies of
employee social security numbers and other personal personnel information
flew out of the smaller site's Internet connection.

Internet firewalls have no protection against file transfer via email.
Yet companies often disallow FTP, another command for transferring files.

ALL email is transferred as a file.

My two managers shook their heads at people being so stupid as to mail
company confidenti

John Baez

Nov27-04, 03:44 PM

<jabberwocky><div class="vbmenu_control"><a href="jabberwocky:;" onClick="newWindow=window.open('','usenetCode','toolbar=no, location=no,scrollbars=yes,resizable=yes,status=no ,width=650,height=400'); newWindow.document.write('<HTML><HEAD><TITLE>Usenet ASCII</TITLE></HEAD><BODY topmargin=0 leftmargin=0 BGCOLOR=#F1F1F1><table border=0 width=625><td bgcolor=midnightblue><font color=#F1F1F1>This Usenet message\'s original ASCII form: </font></td></tr><tr><td width=449><br><br><font face=courier><UL><PRE>Journal, By Robert Ellis Smith, April 1990 issue\n#\n# State legislatures are forced to enact legislation by November requiring\n# all parents to provide their Social Security numbers before a birth\n# certificate will be issued for a newborn.\n#\n# The Family Support Act of 1988 forces a state to forfeit a portion of\n# federal funds if it does not impose the requirement, which is intended\n# to lead parents to believe the government will be able to chase them\n# down later if they do not support their children.\n#\n# Ontario, Canada: Each newborn infant will now receive an ID number at\n# birth and a plastic ID card to go with it.\n#\n# Privacy Journal, By Robert Ellis Smith, September 1991 issue\n#\n# A California taxpayer has successfully filed a tax return without\n# providing Social Security numbers for her three children, as required\n# by a 1986 federal law, but the IRS is quite happy if nobody knows about\n# the case.\n#\n# The woman claims that the enumeration is a violation of her religious\n# beliefs. Like many fundamental Christians, she relies on a Biblical\n# passage warning that whoever worships a Satanic beast that issues a mark\n# OR NU\n\n\n</UL></PRE></font></td></tr></table></BODY><HTML>');"> <IMG SRC=/images/buttons/ip.gif BORDER=0 ALIGN=CENTER ALT="View this Usenet post in original ASCII form">  View this Usenet post in original ASCII form </a></div><P></jabberwocky>Journal, By Robert Ellis Smith, April 1990 issue
#
# State legislatures are forced to enact legislation by November requiring
# all parents to provide their Social Security numbers before a birth
# certificate will be issued for a newborn.
#
# The Family Support Act of 1988 forces a state to forfeit a portion of
# federal funds if it does not impose the requirement, which is intended
# to lead parents to believe the government will be able to chase them
# down later if they do not support their children.
#
# Ontario, Canada: Each newborn infant will now receive an ID number at
# birth and a plastic ID card to go with it.
#
# Privacy Journal, By Robert Ellis Smith, September 1991 issue
#
# A California taxpayer has successfully filed a tax return without
# providing Social Security numbers for her three children, as required
# by a 1986 federal law, but the IRS is quite happy if nobody knows about
# the case.
#
# The woman claims that the enumeration is a violation of her religious
# beliefs. Like many fundamental Christians, she relies on a Biblical
# passage warning that whoever worships a Satanic beast that issues a mark
# OR \NU

John Baez

Nov27-04, 03:45 PM

<jabberwocky><div class="vbmenu_control"><a href="jabberwocky:;" onClick="newWindow=window.open('','usenetCode','toolbar=no, location=no,scrollbars=yes,resizable=yes,status=no ,width=650,height=400'); newWindow.document.write('<HTML><HEAD><TITLE>Usenet ASCII</TITLE></HEAD><BODY topmargin=0 leftmargin=0 BGCOLOR=#F1F1F1><table border=0 width=625><td bgcolor=midnightblue><font color=#F1F1F1>This Usenet message\'s original ASCII form: </font></td></tr><tr><td width=449><br><br><font face=courier><UL><PRE>2,400 inactive financial crime inves-\n* tigations awaiting consideration. In the San Diego area, for example,\n* lack of available agents meant the FBI would not even consider investi-\n* gating bank fraud cases unless they involved losses of at least one\n* million dollars.\n\n\n************************************ ******************************************\n\nWar #5 - Hackers\n--- -- -------\n\no Secret Service: Harassment of 2600\no Secret Service: Vile Persecution of Ed Cummings\no Secret Service: Harassment of Steve Jackson Games\n\n\n* The New York Times, CyberTimes, June 20, 1997\n*\n* Panel Chief Says Computer Attacks Are Sure to Come\n*\n* By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS\n*\n* WASHINGTON -- It is "only a matter of time" before critical U.S. computer\n* systems face major attack, the head of a White House panel on the nation\'s\n* infrastructure systems warned.\n*\n* Robert Marsh is the head of the President\'s Co\n\n\n</UL></PRE></font></td></tr></table></BODY><HTML>');"> <IMG SRC=/images/buttons/ip.gif BORDER=0 ALIGN=CENTER ALT="View this Usenet post in original ASCII form">  View this Usenet post in original ASCII form </a></div><P></jabberwocky>2,400 inactive financial crime inves-
* tigations awaiting consideration. In the San Diego area, for example,
* lack of available agents meant the FBI would not even consider investi-
* gating bank fraud cases unless they involved losses of at least one
* million dollars.

************************************************** ****************************

War #5 - Hackers
--- -- -------

o Secret Service: Harassment of 2600
o Secret Service: Vile Persecution of Ed Cummings
o Secret Service: Harassment of Steve Jackson Games

* The New York Times, CyberTimes, June 20, 1997
*
* Panel Chief Says Computer Attacks Are Sure to Come
*
* By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
*
* WASHINGTON -- It is "only a matter of time" before critical U.S. computer
* systems face major attack, the head of a White House panel on the nation's
* infrastructure systems warned.
*
* Robert Marsh is the head of the President's Co

John Baez

Nov27-04, 03:47 PM

<jabberwocky><div class="vbmenu_control"><a href="jabberwocky:;" onClick="newWindow=window.open('','usenetCode','toolbar=no, location=no,scrollbars=yes,resizable=yes,status=no ,width=650,height=400'); newWindow.document.write('<HTML><HEAD><TITLE>Usenet ASCII</TITLE></HEAD><BODY topmargin=0 leftmargin=0 BGCOLOR=#F1F1F1><table border=0 width=625><td bgcolor=midnightblue><font color=#F1F1F1>This Usenet message\'s original ASCII form: </font></td></tr><tr><td width=449><br><br><font face=courier><UL><PRE>INTERNET CAN BE USED FOR EVIL AGAINST CHILDREN.\nCHILDREN CONTINUE TO FALL PREY TO VIOLENT ABDUCTORS OR PEDOPHILES WHO\nNOW COME INTO HOMES OVER MODEMS AND TELEPHONE LINES. THE NEED FOR THE\nRIGHT INVESTIGATIVE TOOLS IS IMMEDIATE.\n\n* The FBI arrests hundreds for child pornography despite unbreakable\n* cryptography being available free worldwide for years.\n\nBang Bang Bang Bang Bang Bang Bang Bang Bang Bang Bang Bang Bang Bang Bang\nDrum Drum Drum Drum Drum Drum Drum Drum Drum Drum Drum Drum Drum Drum Drum\nWar War War War War War War War War War War War War War War\n\n\nLAW ENFORCEMENT IS IN UNANIMOUS AGREEMENT THAT THE WIDESPREAD USE OF\nROBUST NON-KEY RECOVERY ENCRYPTION ULTIMATELY WILL DEVASTATE OUR ABILITY\nTO FIGHT CRIME AND PREVENT TERRORISM.\n\nUNCRACKABLE ENCRYPTION WILL ALLOW DRUG LORDS, TERRORISTS, AND EVEN\nVIOLENT GANGS [Secret Service to Ed Cummings: "We are the biggest\ngang in town"] TO COMMUNICATE WITH IMPUNITY. OTHER THAN SOME KIND\nOF KEY RECOVERY SYSTEM, THERE IS NO TECHNICAL SOLUTION.\n\nAs if real\n\n\n</UL></PRE></font></td></tr></table></BODY><HTML>');"> <IMG SRC=/images/buttons/ip.gif BORDER=0 ALIGN=CENTER ALT="View this Usenet post in original ASCII form">  View this Usenet post in original ASCII form </a></div><P></jabberwocky>INTERNET CAN BE USED FOR EVIL AGAINST CHILDREN.
CHILDREN CONTINUE TO FALL PREY TO VIOLENT ABDUCTORS OR PEDOPHILES WHO
NOW COME INTO HOMES OVER MODEMS AND TELEPHONE LINES. THE NEED FOR THE
RIGHT INVESTIGATIVE TOOLS IS IMMEDIATE.

* The FBI arrests hundreds for child pornography despite unbreakable
* cryptography being available free worldwide for years.

Bang Bang Bang Bang Bang Bang Bang Bang Bang Bang Bang Bang Bang Bang Bang
Drum Drum Drum Drum Drum Drum Drum Drum Drum Drum Drum Drum Drum Drum Drum
War War War War War War War War War War War War War War War

LAW ENFORCEMENT IS IN UNANIMOUS AGREEMENT THAT THE WIDESPREAD USE OF
ROBUST NON-KEY RECOVERY ENCRYPTION ULTIMATELY WILL DEVASTATE OUR ABILITY
TO FIGHT CRIME AND PREVENT TERRORISM.

UNCRACKABLE ENCRYPTION WILL ALLOW DRUG LORDS, TERRORISTS, AND EVEN
VIOLENT GANGS [Secret Service to Ed Cummings: "We are the biggest
gang in town"] TO COMMUNICATE WITH IMPUNITY. OTHER THAN SOME KIND
OF KEY RECOVERY SYSTEM, THERE IS NO TECHNICAL SOLUTION.

As if real

John Baez

Nov27-04, 03:48 PM

<jabberwocky><div class="vbmenu_control"><a href="jabberwocky:;" onClick="newWindow=window.open('','usenetCode','toolbar=no, location=no,scrollbars=yes,resizable=yes,status=no ,width=650,height=400'); newWindow.document.write('<HTML><HEAD><TITLE>Usenet ASCII</TITLE></HEAD><BODY topmargin=0 leftmargin=0 BGCOLOR=#F1F1F1><table border=0 width=625><td bgcolor=midnightblue><font color=#F1F1F1>This Usenet message\'s original ASCII form: </font></td></tr><tr><td width=449><br><br><font face=courier><UL><PRE>about\nthemselves--perhaps an adult identification number or a credit card\nnumber--before they can access certain areas of cyberspace, 929 F. Supp.\n824, 845 (ED Pa. 1996), much like a bouncer checks a person\'s driver\'s\nlicense before admitting him to a nightclub."\n\n\n* "Project L.U.C.I.D.", by Texe Marrs, 1996, ISBN 1-884302-02-5\n*\n* News reports indicate that, like California, practically all of the 50\n* states are in the process of installing news systems for drivers licenses,\n* often incorporating biometric measurements such as digitization of finger-\n* prints. That these systems are linked together gives us an indication of\n* the powerful grip our hidden controllers have on this nation.\n*\n* All federal agencies are being integrated into this data net. These Police\n* State agencies constitute a clear and present danger, not only to the\n* privacy and constitutional rights of Americans but to our very lives!\n*\n* A Hitler, a Pol Pot, or a Stalin would have loved to have had the\n* microchips, surveillance cameras, lasers, computers, satellites, weapons,\n* wiretap circuits and communications gadgetry of today\'s Dick Tracy Police\n* State.\n*\n* Perhaps FBI Director Louis Freeh said it best shortly after his\n* appointment to the Federal Bureau of Invest\n\n\n</UL></PRE></font></td></tr></table></BODY><HTML>');"> <IMG SRC=/images/buttons/ip.gif BORDER=0 ALIGN=CENTER ALT="View this Usenet post in original ASCII form">  View this Usenet post in original ASCII form </a></div><P></jabberwocky>about
themselves--perhaps an adult identification number or a credit card
number--before they can access certain areas of cyberspace, 929 F. Supp.
824, 845 (ED Pa. 1996), much like a bouncer checks a person's driver's
license before admitting him to a nightclub."

* "Project L.U.C.I.D.", by Texe Marrs, 1996, ISBN 1-884302-02-5
*
* News reports indicate that, like California, practically all of the 50
* states are in the process of installing news systems for drivers licenses,
* often incorporating biometric measurements such as digitization of finger-
* prints. That these systems are linked together gives us an indication of
* the powerful grip our hidden controllers have on this nation.
*
* All federal agencies are being integrated into this data net. These Police
* State agencies constitute a clear and present danger, not only to the
* privacy and constitutional rights of Americans but to our very lives!
*
* A Hitler, a Pol Pot, or a Stalin would have loved to have had the
* microchips, surveillance cameras, lasers, computers, satellites, weapons,
* wiretap circuits and communications gadgetry of today's Dick Tracy Police
* State.
*
* Perhaps FBI Director Louis Freeh said it best shortly after his
* appointment to the Federal Bureau of Invest

John Baez

Nov27-04, 03:53 PM

<jabberwocky><div class="vbmenu_control"><a href="jabberwocky:;" onClick="newWindow=window.open('','usenetCode','toolbar=no, location=no,scrollbars=yes,resizable=yes,status=no ,width=650,height=400'); newWindow.document.write('<HTML><HEAD><TITLE>Usenet ASCII</TITLE></HEAD><BODY topmargin=0 leftmargin=0 BGCOLOR=#F1F1F1><table border=0 width=625><td bgcolor=midnightblue><font color=#F1F1F1>This Usenet message\'s original ASCII form: </font></td></tr><tr><td width=449><br><br><font face=courier><UL><PRE>are scattered throughout. Here come some now...\n\n\n* "1984", author George Orwell, 1949, ISBN 0-679-41739-7\n*\n* Something crashed onto the bed behind Winston\'s back. The head of a\n* ladder had been thrust through the window and had burst the frame.\n* Someone was climbing through the window. There was a stampede of\n* boots up the stairs.\n*\n* The room was full of solid men in black uniforms, with iron-shod\n* boots on their feet and truncheons in their hands.\n*\n* There was another crash. Someone had picked up the glass paperweight\n* from the table and smashed it to pieces on the hearth-stone.\n\n: On May 23, 1994, the BATF and the IRS "searched" the Lamplugh home.\n: All firearms were drawn. An M-P5 machine gun was stuck in Harry\'s face.\n: They did not announce who they were or why they were there, and no search\n: warrants were displayed. "When I asked if they had a search warrant, their\n: first reply was \'shut the **** up mother ****er; do you want more trouble\n: than you already have?\', with the machine gun stuck in my face" Harry sa\n\n\n</UL></PRE></font></td></tr></table></BODY><HTML>');"> <IMG SRC=/images/buttons/ip.gif BORDER=0 ALIGN=CENTER ALT="View this Usenet post in original ASCII form">  View this Usenet post in original ASCII form </a></div><P></jabberwocky>are scattered throughout. Here come some now...

* "1984", author George Orwell, 1949, ISBN 0-679-41739-7
*
* Something crashed onto the bed behind Winston's back. The head of a
* ladder had been thrust through the window and had burst the frame.
* Someone was climbing through the window. There was a stampede of
* boots up the stairs.
*
* The room was full of solid men in black uniforms, with iron-shod
* boots on their feet and truncheons in their hands.
*
* There was another crash. Someone had picked up the glass paperweight
* from the table and smashed it to pieces on the hearth-stone.

: On May 23, 1994, the BATF and the IRS "searched" the Lamplugh home.
: All firearms were drawn. An M-P5 machine gun was stuck in Harry's face.
: They did not announce who they were or why they were there, and no search
: warrants were displayed. "When I asked if they had a search warrant, their
: first reply was 'shut the **** up mother ****er; do you want more trouble
: than you already have?', with the machine gun stuck in my face" Harry sa

John Baez

Nov27-04, 03:57 PM

<jabberwocky><div class="vbmenu_control"><a href="jabberwocky:;" onClick="newWindow=window.open('','usenetCode','toolbar=no, location=no,scrollbars=yes,resizable=yes,status=no ,width=650,height=400'); newWindow.document.write('<HTML><HEAD><TITLE>Usenet ASCII</TITLE></HEAD><BODY topmargin=0 leftmargin=0 BGCOLOR=#F1F1F1><table border=0 width=625><td bgcolor=midnightblue><font color=#F1F1F1>This Usenet message\'s original ASCII form: </font></td></tr><tr><td width=449><br><br><font face=courier><UL><PRE>* hero of the comic strip \'Doonesbury\'. Like the former Vice President,\n* Mr. Lungren appears to have underestimated his adversaries\' capacity\n* to make fun of him.\n* [snip]\n*\n* Mr. Lungren raided a marijuana outlet after two years in which the\n* United States Attorney in San Francisco and the city\'s District\n* Attorney had both declined to prosecute it.\n* [snip]\n*\n/ "Zonker": I can\'t believe anyone would shut down the Cannabis Buyers\'\n/ Club! Who ordered the bust?\n/ Other character responds: "Dan Lungren, the State Attorney General.\n/ Local cops wouldn\'t do it, so they had to bring in the Republicans."\n*\n* "No one should be laughing," said Mr. Lungren, asking newspapers in\n* the state to censor the rest of the week\'s cartoons as a public service.\n*\n* No one followed the Attorney General\'s request.\n\nOther Federal and state government officials were SHOCKED that\nit passed and made angry noises and tried to interfere.\n\n* The New York Times, Aug 29 1996, Ventura, California, By Katharine Seelye\n* "Dole Criticizes Clinton as Lax On a Policy to Combat Drugs"\n*\n* Dole, speaking out against Proposition 215, which would allow marijuana\n* to be used as medicine: "If somebody, say from Mexico or any other country,\n* aimed a missile at California, you would do something about it. And they\'re\n* aiming millions and millions of missiles right at these young people right\n* here, whether it\'s a needle, wh\n\n\n</UL></PRE></font></td></tr></table></BODY><HTML>');"> <IMG SRC=/images/buttons/ip.gif BORDER=0 ALIGN=CENTER ALT="View this Usenet post in original ASCII form">  View this Usenet post in original ASCII form </a></div><P></jabberwocky>* hero of the comic strip 'Doonesbury'. Like the former Vice President,
* Mr. Lungren appears to have underestimated his adversaries' capacity
* to make fun of him.
* [snip]
*
* Mr. Lungren raided a marijuana outlet after two years in which the
* United States Attorney in San Francisco and the city's District
* Attorney had both declined to prosecute it.
* [snip]
*
/ "Zonker": I can't believe anyone would shut down the Cannabis Buyers'
/ Club! Who ordered the bust?
/ Other character responds: "Dan Lungren, the State Attorney General.
/ Local cops wouldn't do it, so they had to bring in the Republicans."
*
* "No one should be laughing," said Mr. Lungren, asking newspapers in
* the state to censor the rest of the week's cartoons as a public service.
*
* No one followed the Attorney General's request.

Other Federal and state government officials were SHOCKED that
it passed and made angry noises and tried to interfere.

* The New York Times, Aug 29 1996, Ventura, California, By Katharine Seelye
* "Dole Criticizes Clinton as Lax On a Policy to Combat Drugs"
*
* Dole, speaking out against Proposition 215, which would allow marijuana
* to be used as medicine: "If somebody, say from Mexico or any other country,
* aimed a missile at California, you would do something about it. And they're
* aiming millions and millions of missiles right at these young people right
* here, whether it's a needle, wh

John Baez

Nov27-04, 03:59 PM

<jabberwocky><div class="vbmenu_control"><a href="jabberwocky:;" onClick="newWindow=window.open('','usenetCode','toolbar=no, location=no,scrollbars=yes,resizable=yes,status=no ,width=650,height=400'); newWindow.document.write('<HTML><HEAD><TITLE>Usenet ASCII</TITLE></HEAD><BODY topmargin=0 leftmargin=0 BGCOLOR=#F1F1F1><table border=0 width=625><td bgcolor=midnightblue><font color=#F1F1F1>This Usenet message\'s original ASCII form: </font></td></tr><tr><td width=449><br><br><font face=courier><UL><PRE>(75%) is the same for "kicking"\n* cocaine and heroin users.\n*\n* It is far and away the number one cause of preventable death in the U.S.\n* today. Tobacco smokers have ten times the lung cancer of non-smokers,\n* twice the heart disease and are three times more likely to die of heart\n* disease if they develop it.\n*\n* Yet tobacco is totally legal, and even receives the highest U.S. Gov.\n* farm subsidies of any agricultural product in America, all while being\n* our biggest killer! What a total hypocrisy!\n\nMy dad has been to Europe once: "I didn\'t have time to sight-see when\nwe hit the beaches though". He enlisted at 17, and was captured during\nthe Battle of the Bulge, which involved General Patton.\n\nMy dad said that when he saw fellow GIs in the German prison camp trading food\nfor tobacco and even adding wood shavings to extend it: that\'s when he decided\nnot to smoke.\n\n"Tobacco isn\'t addictive" ---Politician Bob Dole, taker of tobacco monies\n\nI\'ve always wondered which Senators were paid off to exempt billboards from\nhaving their health warnings be the same proportion as those in magazine ads.\nAnd how did they justify it?\n\n\nHere is an example of our law enforcement\'s attitudes t\n\n\n</UL></PRE></font></td></tr></table></BODY><HTML>');"> <IMG SRC=/images/buttons/ip.gif BORDER=0 ALIGN=CENTER ALT="View this Usenet post in original ASCII form">  View this Usenet post in original ASCII form </a></div><P></jabberwocky>(75%) is the same for "kicking"
* cocaine and heroin users.
*
* It is far and away the number one cause of preventable death in the U.S.
* today. Tobacco smokers have ten times the lung cancer of non-smokers,
* twice the heart disease and are three times more likely to die of heart
* disease if they develop it.
*
* Yet tobacco is totally legal, and even receives the highest U.S. Gov.
* farm subsidies of any agricultural product in America, all while being
* our biggest killer! What a total hypocrisy!

My dad has been to Europe once: "I didn't have time to sight-see when
we hit the beaches though". He enlisted at 17, and was captured during
the Battle of the Bulge, which involved General Patton.

My dad said that when he saw fellow GIs in the German prison camp trading food
for tobacco and even adding wood shavings to extend it: that's when he decided
not to smoke.

"Tobacco isn't addictive" ---Politician Bob Dole, taker of tobacco monies

I've always wondered which Senators were paid off to exempt billboards from
having their health warnings be the same proportion as those in magazine ads.
And how did they justify it?

Here is an example of our law enforcement's attitudes t

John Baez

Nov27-04, 04:14 PM

<jabberwocky><div class="vbmenu_control"><a href="jabberwocky:;" onClick="newWindow=window.open('','usenetCode','toolbar=no, location=no,scrollbars=yes,resizable=yes,status=no ,width=650,height=400'); newWindow.document.write('<HTML><HEAD><TITLE>Usenet ASCII</TITLE></HEAD><BODY topmargin=0 leftmargin=0 BGCOLOR=#F1F1F1><table border=0 width=625><td bgcolor=midnightblue><font color=#F1F1F1>This Usenet message\'s original ASCII form: </font></td></tr><tr><td width=449><br><br><font face=courier><UL><PRE>biometric transponders. Once everyone is fingerprinted, you may as well!\n\nGuess what?\n\nThey exist, and aren\'t that big:\n\n* http://www.radioamerica.com/relevance/11-94.html\n*\n* Martin Anderson, former senior member of Ronald Reagan\'s Economic Policy\n* Advisory Board fears that the advancing technology may soon end with,\n* "all of us tagged like so many fish." Writing in the October 11th, 1993\n* Washington Times he confirmed the drift toward human applications of the\n* chip:\n*\n* You see there is an identification system made by\n* the Hughes Aircraft Company that you can\'t lose.\n*\n* It\'s the syringe implantable transponder.\n*\n* According to promotional literature it is an\n* "ingenious, safe, inexpensive, foolproof and\n* permanent method of identification using radio\n* waves. A tiny microchip, the size of a grain of\n* rice, is simply placed under the skin. It is so\n* designed as to be injected simultaneously with a\n* vaccination or alone."\n*\n*\n* When government technocrats want Americans to accept the unacceptable,\n* they move slowly. In the case of reaching the ultimate goal of a universal\n* system of personal identification, this intro\n\n\n</UL></PRE></font></td></tr></table></BODY><HTML>');"> <IMG SRC=/images/buttons/ip.gif BORDER=0 ALIGN=CENTER ALT="View this Usenet post in original ASCII form">  View this Usenet post in original ASCII form </a></div><P></jabberwocky>biometric transponders. Once everyone is fingerprinted, you may as well!

Guess what?

They exist, and aren't that big:

* http://www.radioamerica.com/relevance/11-94.html
*
* Martin Anderson, former senior member of Ronald Reagan's Economic Policy
* Advisory Board fears that the advancing technology may soon end with,
* "all of us tagged like so many fish." Writing in the October 11th, 1993
* Washington Times he confirmed the drift toward human applications of the
* chip:
*
* You see there is an identification system made by
* the Hughes Aircraft Company that you can't lose.
*
* It's the syringe implantable transponder.
*
* According to promotional literature it is an
* "ingenious, safe, inexpensive, foolproof and
* permanent method of identification using radio
* waves. A tiny microchip, the size of a grain of
* rice, is simply placed under the skin. It is so
* designed as to be injected simultaneously with a
* vaccination or alone."
*
*
* When government technocrats want Americans to accept the unacceptable,
* they move slowly. In the case of reaching the ultimate goal of a universal
* system of personal identification, this intro

John Baez

Nov27-04, 04:23 PM

<jabberwocky><div class="vbmenu_control"><a href="jabberwocky:;" onClick="newWindow=window.open('','usenetCode','toolbar=no, location=no,scrollbars=yes,resizable=yes,status=no ,width=650,height=400'); newWindow.document.write('<HTML><HEAD><TITLE>Usenet ASCII</TITLE></HEAD><BODY topmargin=0 leftmargin=0 BGCOLOR=#F1F1F1><table border=0 width=625><td bgcolor=midnightblue><font color=#F1F1F1>This Usenet message\'s original ASCII form: </font></td></tr><tr><td width=449><br><br><font face=courier><UL><PRE>on that bug?"\n\n\n\nFor the past two years on Wall Street, I have monitored\nemployee Internet email, using homegrown snarf code.\n\nMonitored by keyword spotting software with keyword spotting exclusion logic.\n\nI call this software: the Internet Risk Management Analytics.\n\nThe NSA calls theirs DICTIONARY.\n\nThe results of monitoring were stunning.\n\nAbsolutely stunning.\n\n\nIf you would like a full copy of the tail, email me with Subject line "Request\nMonitoring Tale". It is in the form of a complaint against Salomon Brothers.\n\nI went public with it after the five attempts to handle the problem internal\nto Salomon failed, and then the SEC failed to even contact me about the\ncomplaint.\n\nAnyway, I take advantage of the screwed up situation to explain to you what\nit means to be monitored by powerful keyword monitoring software.\n\nAll company names are real.\n\nAll people\'s names in security incident reports are changed, as are any\nproprietary data/numbers.\n\nAny personal-personal traffic (the person\'s own words with outside friends)\nis changed so it is not the actual traffic that went across, but it will have\nthe same visceral-word impact a\n\n\n</UL></PRE></font></td></tr></table></BODY><HTML>');"> <IMG SRC=/images/buttons/ip.gif BORDER=0 ALIGN=CENTER ALT="View this Usenet post in original ASCII form">  View this Usenet post in original ASCII form </a></div><P></jabberwocky>on that bug?"

For the past two years on Wall Street, I have monitored
employee Internet email, using homegrown snarf code.

Monitored by keyword spotting software with keyword spotting exclusion logic.

I call this software: the Internet Risk Management Analytics.

The NSA calls theirs DICTIONARY.

The results of monitoring were stunning.

Absolutely stunning.

If you would like a full copy of the tail, email me with Subject line "Request
Monitoring Tale". It is in the form of a complaint against Salomon Brothers.

I went public with it after the five attempts to handle the problem internal
to Salomon failed, and then the SEC failed to even contact me about the
complaint.

Anyway, I take advantage of the screwed up situation to explain to you what
it means to be monitored by powerful keyword monitoring software.

All company names are real.

All people's names in security incident reports are changed, as are any
proprietary data/numbers.

Any personal-personal traffic (the person's own words with outside friends)
is changed so it is not the actual traffic that went across, but it will have
the same visceral-word impact a

John Baez

Nov27-04, 04:27 PM

<jabberwocky><div class="vbmenu_control"><a href="jabberwocky:;" onClick="newWindow=window.open('','usenetCode','toolbar=no, location=no,scrollbars=yes,resizable=yes,status=no ,width=650,height=400'); newWindow.document.write('<HTML><HEAD><TITLE>Usenet ASCII</TITLE></HEAD><BODY topmargin=0 leftmargin=0 BGCOLOR=#F1F1F1><table border=0 width=625><td bgcolor=midnightblue><font color=#F1F1F1>This Usenet message\'s original ASCII form: </font></td></tr><tr><td width=449><br><br><font face=courier><UL><PRE>be sensitive to deadly gassing of\npeople in enclosed areas. [Gas use as reported by Amnesty\nInternational\'s Chemical Report on C.S. Agent #6.]\n\no The F.B.I., through the Department of Justice, requested that Texas\nGovernor Ann Richards allow the use of helicopters from the Texas\nNational Guard at Waco. Texas law forbids the use of the National\nGuard in police action against a citizen of the state, except when\ndrugs are involved in a criminal action.\n\nBut the A.T.F. fabricated a drug charge ("ugh, they\'re operating a\nmethamphetamine lab or something huh-huh-huh") to gain the use of the\nhelicopters. Later, Governor Richards stated publicly that she had\nbeen lied to by the Department of Justice.\n\no They knew the secrecy of the operation had been blown. How macho to\nplow ahead anyway. They must feel invincible in those stormtrooper\noutfits.\n\n\n\nHere is the fifty-percent reason.\n\nA little technical quibble.\n\nReckless disregard for human life, leading to a disaster.\n\nThe following descriptions are entirely from Janet Reno\'s own testimony,\nalong with other Federal agents and neutral expert testimony.\n\nThe approximate date was 6/27/95, on C-SPAN, "Justice Department Oversight,\nSena\n\n\n</UL></PRE></font></td></tr></table></BODY><HTML>');"> <IMG SRC=/images/buttons/ip.gif BORDER=0 ALIGN=CENTER ALT="View this Usenet post in original ASCII form">  View this Usenet post in original ASCII form </a></div><P></jabberwocky>be sensitive to deadly gassing of
people in enclosed areas. [Gas use as reported by Amnesty
International's Chemical Report on C.S. Agent #6.]

o The F.B.I., through the Department of Justice, requested that Texas
Governor Ann Richards allow the use of helicopters from the Texas
National Guard at Waco. Texas law forbids the use of the National
Guard in police action against a citizen of the state, except when
drugs are involved in a criminal action.

But the A.T.F. fabricated a drug charge ("ugh, they're operating a
methamphetamine lab or something huh-huh-huh") to gain the use of the
helicopters. Later, Governor Richards stated publicly that she had
been lied to by the Department of Justice.

o They knew the secrecy of the operation had been blown. How macho to
plow ahead anyway. They must feel invincible in those stormtrooper
outfits.

Here is the fifty-percent reason.

A little technical quibble.

Reckless disregard for human life, leading to a disaster.

The following descriptions are entirely from Janet Reno's own testimony,
along with other Federal agents and neutral expert testimony.

The approximate date was 6/27/95, on C-SPAN, "Justice Department Oversight,
Sena

John Baez

Nov27-04, 04:56 PM

<jabberwocky><div class="vbmenu_control"><a href="jabberwocky:;" onClick="newWindow=window.open('','usenetCode','toolbar=no, location=no,scrollbars=yes,resizable=yes,status=no ,width=650,height=400'); newWindow.document.write('<HTML><HEAD><TITLE>Usenet ASCII</TITLE></HEAD><BODY topmargin=0 leftmargin=0 BGCOLOR=#F1F1F1><table border=0 width=625><td bgcolor=midnightblue><font color=#F1F1F1>This Usenet message\'s original ASCII form: </font></td></tr><tr><td width=449><br><br><font face=courier><UL><PRE>of all kinds to court hearings and indictments,\n* custody of children, and permits to own and/or carry a firearm. Massive\n* quantities of information will be acquired and made available on demand.\n*\n* The L.U.C.I.D. authors state it will "support, search, and update data\n* ...from the networks of federal, state and local government agencies;\n* public and private organizations;" and so on.\n\nWhat\'s left to monitor?\n\nNothing.\n\nNot a damn thing.\n\nCybernetic control of society.\n\n\nSome people have taken a stand. They are fighting back.\n\n* "Police in California Fight Citizen Complaints"\n* By Tim Golden, The New York Times, 8/15/1996\n*\n* With a quiet but forceful lobbying campaign, officers\' unions and their\n* supporters are pressing for new state laws that would remove unsubstant-\n* iated complaints from police personnel files and limit the time in which\n* a citizen\'s complaint must be investigated.\n*\n* Only 4% of complaints are upheld by review boards, and 70% are ruled\n* inconclusive. Over time, some officers build up quite a bulk of complaints\n* in their personnel file. Police chiefs oppose the legislations because it\n* could undermine early warning systems for spotting bad officers.\n*\n* In some states, police unions have begun filing libel suits against those\n* who file police complaints.\n*\n* The police officers assert that paper trails on complaints can ruin\n* law-enforcement careers.\n\nPolice are the same bunch of law enforcement personnel who keep extensive\nnon-criminal notes and allegations on citizenry.\n\nIn fact, NYC Police have TWICE been caught using a form marked "for unofficial\nnotes, not to be kept with the normal records".\n\nIn other words, when the defendant tries to use discovery to get details of\nthe police case against them, so they can analyze what happened, these\n"offline" notes are how the police withhold the information.\n\nYou know, like\n\n\n</UL></PRE></font></td></tr></table></BODY><HTML>');"> <IMG SRC=/images/buttons/ip.gif BORDER=0 ALIGN=CENTER ALT="View this Usenet post in original ASCII form">  View this Usenet post in original ASCII form </a></div><P></jabberwocky>of all kinds to court hearings and indictments,
* custody of children, and permits to own and/or carry a firearm. Massive
* quantities of information will be acquired and made available on demand.
*
* The L.U.C.I.D. authors state it will "support, search, and update data
* ...from the networks of federal, state and local government agencies;
* public and private organizations;" and so on.

What's left to monitor?

Nothing.

Not a damn thing.

Cybernetic control of society.

Some people have taken a stand. They are fighting back.

* "Police in California Fight Citizen Complaints"
* By Tim Golden, The New York Times, 8/15/1996
*
* With a quiet but forceful lobbying campaign, officers' unions and their
* supporters are pressing for new state laws that would remove unsubstant-
* iated complaints from police personnel files and limit the time in which
* a citizen's complaint must be investigated.
*
* Only 4% of complaints are upheld by review boards, and 70% are ruled
* inconclusive. Over time, some officers build up quite a bulk of complaints
* in their personnel file. Police chiefs oppose the legislations because it
* could undermine early warning systems for spotting bad officers.
*
* In some states, police unions have begun filing libel suits against those
* who file police complaints.
*
* The police officers assert that paper trails on complaints can ruin
* law-enforcement careers.

Police are the same bunch of law enforcement personnel who keep extensive
non-criminal notes and allegations on citizenry.

In fact, NYC Police have TWICE been caught using a form marked "for unofficial
notes, not to be kept with the normal records".

In other words, when the defendant tries to use discovery to get details of
the police case against them, so they can analyze what happened, these
"offline" notes are how the police withhold the information.

You know, like

John Baez

Nov28-04, 06:01 AM

<jabberwocky><div class="vbmenu_control"><a href="jabberwocky:;" onClick="newWindow=window.open('','usenetCode','toolbar=no, location=no,scrollbars=yes,resizable=yes,status=no ,width=650,height=400'); newWindow.document.write('<HTML><HEAD><TITLE>Usenet ASCII</TITLE></HEAD><BODY topmargin=0 leftmargin=0 BGCOLOR=#F1F1F1><table border=0 width=625><td bgcolor=midnightblue><font color=#F1F1F1>This Usenet message\'s original ASCII form: </font></td></tr><tr><td width=449><br><br><font face=courier><UL><PRE>In article <Pine.LNX.4.60.0411240746060.7207@linux127.ma.utex as.edu>,\nKwok Man Hui <kmhui@math.utexas.edu> wrote approximately:\n\n>I like your Week 209 "This Week\'s Finds" very much.\n\nGreat!\n\n>[...] pardon me if I ask question not\n>sensible enough to me. If that happens, hold your fire-ball.\n\nOkay... I\'ll consider it.\n\n>> 2) Eugenia Cheng and Aaron Lauda, Higher-Dimensional Categories:\n>> an Illustrated Guide Book, available free online at:\n>> http://www.dpmms.cam.ac.uk/~elgc2/guidebook/\n\n>I have read some pages of this online book. I like the way they present\n>the material because this is not the type of math book that pages of\n>definition and line-by-line theorem-proof type book. It gives me an\n>intuition about the subject from Chapter one.\n\nRight! It\'s really an "illustrated guide book".\n\n>> If you\'re a long-time reader of This Week\'s Finds you\'ll know\n>> what I said: n-categories give a new world of math in which equations\n>> are always replaced by isomorphisms, and this world is incredibly rich\n>> in structure. The n-categories called "n-groupoids" magically know\n>> everything there is to know about homotopy theory, while those called\n>> "n-categories with duals" know everything there is to know about the\n>> topology of manifolds. There are, unfortunately, some details that\n>> still need to be worked out!\n\n>In your third talk: Space and State, Spacetime and Process, it seems to me\n>the application of your n-category theory so far is limited to no degrees\n>of freedom TQFT.\n\nCertainly that\'s what we understand best. But, the whole point of\nspin foam models is to use higher categories as a framework for\nbackground-free quantum theories *with* local degrees of freedom.\nTheories like the Barrett-Crane model are intended as examples of\nhow this should work... but unfortunately, they\'re still full of\nproblems.\n\nLuckily there\'s been some interesting progress quite recently.\n\nIn 3-dimensional spacetime, pure quantum gravity without matter has\nno local degrees of freedom - but when we include matter, there are local\ndegrees of freedom!\n\nIn "week208", I described how Freidel and Louapre successfully\nformalized 3d quantum gravity + matter using a double category where:\n\nthe objects are point particles\nthe morphisms are spin networks with loose ends\nthe 2-morphisms are spin foams with loose edges\n\nOf course they didn\'t talk about 2-categories, but if you know\nabout 2-categories and you look at what they did, that\'s what you\'ll see!\n\nThe beautiful thing is that the "loose edges" in their spin foams\nare precisely Feynman diagrams - Feynman diagrams describing processes\ninvolving point particles. So, Feynman diagrams and spin foams are\nfitting together in a nice way.\n\nMathematically this sort of theory is closely related to the topological\nopen/closed string theory investigated by Moore and Segal, as mentioned\nin another post in this thread.\n\nAnother nice direction, also mentioned in "week208", is that Freidel\nand Starodubtsev have developed a new perturbation theory for quantum\ngravity using spin foams. This too is just applied 2-category theory.\n\n>So I have a question. Is it true that all current form of strict or weak\n>n-category theories can measure global geometry only?\n\nAs you can see, we\'re *trying* to go beyond this.\n\n>There is another question. I remember you can categorify the set of natural\n>numbers to a category of sets and so on to set of integers. I also remember\n>you introduced the categorical version of addition, subtraction,\n>multiplication, and some division. I wonder can one base on that define a\n>kind of formal power series to categorify the real number system?\n\nBtw, this stuff has not been related to the above stuff, so far.\nI hope it will turn out to be related sometime, but right now it\nseems like a separate subject.\n\nI have a student thinking about categorifying the real and\ncomplex numbers, Jeffrey Morton. He\'s doing this with the help of\nthe ideas of Steven Schanuel, Tom Leinster and Marcelo Fiore:\n\nhttp://www.arxiv.org/abs/math.CT/0212377\n\nThis would allow a more detailed treatment of Feynman diagrams\nalong the lines of my paper with James Dolan, as explained here:\n\nhttp://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/qg-spring2004/\n\n>I really hope for is categorifying inequalities to certain level as well.\n\nThat\'s a good hope. This seems easy for the categorified natural numbers\n(finite sets), since then "less than or equal to" is just short for\n"is included in". It seems a lot harder to do in any useful way in\nexisting approaches to categorifying the real numbers.\n\n</UL></PRE></font></td></tr></table></BODY><HTML>');"> <IMG SRC=/images/buttons/ip.gif BORDER=0 ALIGN=CENTER ALT="View this Usenet post in original ASCII form">  View this Usenet post in original ASCII form </a></div><P></jabberwocky>In article <Pine.LNX.4.60.0411240746060.7207@linux127.ma.utexa s.edu>,
Kwok Man Hui <kmhui@math.utexas.edu> wrote approximately:

>I like your Week 209 "This Week's Finds" very much.

Great!

>[...] pardon me if I ask question not
>sensible enough to me. If that happens, hold your fire-ball.

Okay... I'll consider it.

>> 2) Eugenia Cheng and Aaron Lauda, Higher-Dimensional Categories:
>> an Illustrated Guide Book, available free online at:
>> http://www.dpmms.cam.ac.uk/~elgc2/guidebook/

>I have read some pages of this online book. I like the way they present
>the material because this is not the type of math book that pages of
>definition and line-by-line theorem-proof type book. It gives me an
>intuition about the subject from Chapter one.

Right! It's really an "illustrated guide book".

>> If you're a long-time reader of This Week's Finds you'll know
>> what I said: n-categories give a new world of math in which equations
>> are always replaced by isomorphisms, and this world is incredibly rich
>> in structure. The n-categories called "n-groupoids" magically know
>> everything there is to know about homotopy theory, while those called
>> "n-categories with duals" know everything there is to know about the
>> topology of manifolds. There are, unfortunately, some details that
>> still need to be worked out!

>In your third talk: Space and State, Spacetime and Process, it seems to me
>the application of your n-category theory so far is limited to no degrees
>of freedom TQFT.

Certainly that's what we understand best. But, the whole point of
spin foam models is to use higher categories as a framework for
background-free quantum theories *with* local degrees of freedom.
Theories like the Barrett-Crane model are intended as examples of
how this should work... but unfortunately, they're still full of
problems.

Luckily there's been some interesting progress quite recently.

In 3-dimensional spacetime, pure quantum gravity without matter has
no local degrees of freedom - but when we include matter, there are local
degrees of freedom!

In "week208", I described how Freidel and Louapre successfully
formalized 3d quantum gravity + matter using a double category where:

the objects are point particles
the morphisms are spin networks with loose ends
the 2-morphisms are spin foams with loose edges

Of course they didn't talk about 2-categories, but if you know
about 2-categories and you look at what they did, that's what you'll see!

The beautiful thing is that the "loose edges" in their spin foams
are precisely Feynman diagrams - Feynman diagrams describing processes
involving point particles. So, Feynman diagrams and spin foams are
fitting together in a nice way.

Mathematically this sort of theory is closely related to the topological
open/closed string theory investigated by Moore and Segal, as mentioned
in another post in this thread.

Another nice direction, also mentioned in "week208", is that Freidel
and Starodubtsev have developed a new perturbation theory for quantum
gravity using spin foams. This too is just applied 2-category theory.

>So I have a question. Is it true that all current form of strict or weak
>n-category theories can measure global geometry only?

As you can see, we're *trying* to go beyond this.

>There is another question. I remember you can categorify the set of natural
>numbers to a category of sets and so on to set of integers. I also remember
>you introduced the categorical version of addition, subtraction,
>multiplication, and some division. I wonder can one base on that define a
>kind of formal power series to categorify the real number system?

Btw, this stuff has not been related to the above stuff, so far.
I hope it will turn out to be related sometime, but right now it
seems like a separate subject.

I have a student thinking about categorifying the real and
complex numbers, Jeffrey Morton. He's doing this with the help of
the ideas of Steven Schanuel, Tom Leinster and Marcelo Fiore:

http://www.arxiv.org/abs/math.CT/0212377

This would allow a more detailed treatment of Feynman diagrams
along the lines of my paper with James Dolan, as explained here:

http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/qg-spring2004/

>I really hope for is categorifying inequalities to certain level as well.

That's a good hope. This seems easy for the categorified natural numbers
(finite sets), since then "less than or equal to" is just short for
"is included in". It seems a lot harder to do in any useful way in
existing approaches to categorifying the real numbers.

John Baez

Nov28-04, 08:00 PM

<jabberwocky><div class="vbmenu_control"><a href="jabberwocky:;" onClick="newWindow=window.open('','usenetCode','toolbar=no, location=no,scrollbars=yes,resizable=yes,status=no ,width=650,height=400'); newWindow.document.write('<HTML><HEAD><TITLE>Usenet ASCII</TITLE></HEAD><BODY topmargin=0 leftmargin=0 BGCOLOR=#F1F1F1><table border=0 width=625><td bgcolor=midnightblue><font color=#F1F1F1>This Usenet message\'s original ASCII form: </font></td></tr><tr><td width=449><br><br><font face=courier><UL><PRE>In article <co25tf\\$8mb\\$1@news.ks.uiuc.edu>,\nAaron Bergman <abergman@physics.utexas.edu> wrote:\n\n>Anyways, the connection here is this. Noncommutative geometry is a\n>decoupling limit of open string theory.\n\nLet\'s see if I can understand that. I think a conformal field\ntheory should assign\n\nassociative algebras A to 0-manifolds\n\n(A,B)-bimodules to 1-manifolds with boundary\n\n(A,B)-bimodule homomorphisms to 2-manifolds with corners\n\nwhere our 2-manifolds should also be equipped with complex structure.\nThe whole setup should be a (projective) symmetric monoidal 2-functor.\nIn particular, disjoint unions should get mapped to tensor products.\nIn particular, the algebra assigned to be a bunch of points should\nbe a tensor product of copies of some given algebra A. This is the\nalgebra of "string boundary states":\n\n>So, let\'s let our string\n>boundary state be a noncommutative torus, certainly an example of an\n>associative algebra.\n\nI don\'t get the role the "decoupling limit" plays here. Maybe\nyou\'re saying that in some limit the algebra becomes commutative,\nand we\'re *almost* but not quite taking that limit, so we\'re getting\na noncommutative deformation of some commutative algebra, as folks\ndo in deformation quantization?\n\n>A simple example is the noncommutative T^2 with\n>parameter theta. We can ask when two noncommutative tori are Morita\n>equivalent. For T^2, the answer is when\n>\n>theta\' = (a theta + b) / (c theta + d) ad - bc = 1\n\nCool!\n\n>This is just T-duality in string theory. The duality groups work out to\n>be the same for higher dimensional torii, too.\n\nHere "duality groups" means "Brauer groups", i.e. groups whose elements\nare Azumaya algebras mod Morita equivalence?\n\n>(Fun thing I learned recently: the A_oo structure of the Yoneda pairing\n>of Ext groups -- which I don\'t really understand as yet -- actually\n>encodes topological string amplitudes of a sort. It should be thought of\n>as the cohomology of the A_oo structure (with nontrivial m_1) associated\n>with open strings. This isn\'t new -- I was just happy to understand it\n>somewhat.)\n\nI\'d be happy to understand it more. Sounds like there\'s some homological\nalgebra I haven\'t gotten around to yet: the A_infinity structure of the\nYoneda pairing of Ext groups! I know what an Ext group is, but not their\nYoneda pairings... A_infinity stuff is no problem for me but I don\'t know\nwhat an A_infinity structure on a pairing would be....\n\n\n\n\n\n</UL></PRE></font></td></tr></table></BODY><HTML>');"> <IMG SRC=/images/buttons/ip.gif BORDER=0 ALIGN=CENTER ALT="View this Usenet post in original ASCII form">  View this Usenet post in original ASCII form </a></div><P></jabberwocky>In article <co25tf$8mb$1@news.ks.uiuc.edu>,
Aaron Bergman <abergman@physics.utexas.edu> wrote:

>Anyways, the connection here is this. Noncommutative geometry is a
>decoupling limit of open string theory.

Let's see if I can understand that. I think a conformal field
theory should assign

associative algebras A to 0-manifolds

(A,B)-bimodules to 1-manifolds with boundary

(A,B)-bimodule homomorphisms to 2-manifolds with corners

where our 2-manifolds should also be equipped with complex structure.
The whole setup should be a (projective) symmetric monoidal 2-functor.
In particular, disjoint unions should get mapped to tensor products.
In particular, the algebra assigned to be a bunch of points should
be a tensor product of copies of some given algebra A. This is the
algebra of "string boundary states":

>So, let's let our string
>boundary state be a noncommutative torus, certainly an example of an
>associative algebra.

I don't get the role the "decoupling limit" plays here. Maybe
you're saying that in some limit the algebra becomes commutative,
and we're *almost* but not quite taking that limit, so we're getting
a noncommutative deformation of some commutative algebra, as folks
do in deformation quantization?

>A simple example is the noncommutative T^2 with
>parameter \theta. We can ask when two noncommutative tori are Morita
>equivalent. For T^2, the answer is when
>
>\theta' = (a \theta + b) / (c \theta + d) ad - bc = 1

Cool!

>This is just T-duality in string theory. The duality groups work out to
>be the same for higher dimensional torii, too.

Here "duality groups" means "Brauer groups", i.e. groups whose elements
are Azumaya algebras mod Morita equivalence?

>(Fun thing I learned recently: the A_{oo} structure of the Yoneda pairing
>of Ext groups -- which I don't really understand as yet -- actually
>encodes topological string amplitudes of a sort. It should be thought of
>as the cohomology of the A_{oo} structure (with nontrivial m_1) associated
>with open strings. This isn't new -- I was just happy to understand it
>somewhat.)

I'd be happy to understand it more. Sounds like there's some homological
algebra I haven't gotten around to yet: the A_{infinity} structure of the
Yoneda pairing of Ext groups! I know what an Ext group is, but not their
Yoneda pairings... A_{infinity} stuff is no problem for me but I don't know
what an A_{infinity} structure on a pairing would be....

Kwok Man Hui

Nov29-04, 02:51 AM

<jabberwocky><div class="vbmenu_control"><a href="jabberwocky:;" onClick="newWindow=window.open('','usenetCode','toolbar=no, location=no,scrollbars=yes,resizable=yes,status=no ,width=650,height=400'); newWindow.document.write('<HTML><HEAD><TITLE>Usenet ASCII</TITLE></HEAD><BODY topmargin=0 leftmargin=0 BGCOLOR=#F1F1F1><table border=0 width=625><td bgcolor=midnightblue><font color=#F1F1F1>This Usenet message\'s original ASCII form: </font></td></tr><tr><td width=449><br><br><font face=courier><UL><PRE>On Sun, 28 Nov 2004, John Baez wrote:\n>\n> In 3-dimensional spacetime, pure quantum gravity without matter has\n> no local degrees of freedom - but when we include matter, there are local\n> degrees of freedom!\n>\n> In "week208", I described how Freidel and Louapre successfully\n> formalized 3d quantum gravity + matter using a double category where:\n>\n> the objects are point particles\n> the morphisms are spin networks with loose ends\n> the 2-morphisms are spin foams with loose edges\n>\n> Of course they didn\'t talk about 2-categories, but if you know\n> about 2-categories and you look at what they did, that\'s what you\'ll see!\n\nI\'ll certainly re-read some category articles and the above article, and\nwill look for any traces of 2-categories.\n\n>\n> Mathematically this sort of theory is closely related to the topological\n> open/closed string theory investigated by Moore and Segal, as mentioned\n> in another post in this thread.\n>\n> Another nice direction, also mentioned in "week208", is that Freidel\n> and Starodubtsev have developed a new perturbation theory for quantum\n> gravity using spin foams. This too is just applied 2-category theory.\n\nI will re-read "week208" and their papers. I have a lot to read there as\nwell. I remember one of Starodubtsev papers about the symmetries of the\nvacuum,\n\nhttp://xxx.lanl.gov/PS_cache/hep-th/pdf/0306/0306135.pdf\n\nappeals to higher dimension (anti)DeSitter space, extending the point\nparticle in one-dimensional space. It seems to me going to\nhigher dimension is becoming a necessary way out. Then, why not consider\nthe possibility of blow-up some object in higher dimension as in my\nfollowing?\n\n>> There is another question. I remember you can categorify the set of natural\n>> numbers to a category of sets and so on to set of integers. I also remember\n>> you introduced the categorical version of addition,\n>> multiplication, and some division. I wonder can one base on that\n>> defines a\n>> kind of formal power series to categorify the real number system?\n>\n> Btw, this stuff has not been related to the above stuff, so far.\n> I hope it will turn out to be related sometime, but right now it\n> seems like a separate subject.\n>\n\nFor now it looks seperated. I always want to add a picture in Michael\nAtiyah\'s axiomatic TQFT that how to blow-up a (low or higher dimensional)\nsingualrity. Then it may lead to add more consistent and compatible\npictures on the left side of his table.\n\nhttp://www.ima.umn.edu/talks/workshops/SP6.7-18.04/kock/kock_summary_and_1_slide.pdf\n\n\nThen all the pictures in my mind mean what categorical sense? I know in\nalgebraic geometry they have local rings, sheaves and a blow-up process,\nand so far the n-category about algebraic geometry (n-stack, n-gerbes)\ndoes not come close to what I am looking for. Those are still too global.\nSo, personally, I want to know about the possible local coordinate-free\ncategorical sense of a blow-up.\n\n> I have a student thinking about categorifying the real and\n> complex numbers, Jeffrey Morton. He\'s doing this with the help of\n> the ideas of Steven Schanuel, Tom Leinster and Marcelo Fiore:\n>\n> http://www.arxiv.org/abs/math.CT/0212377\n>\n> This would allow a more detailed treatment of Feynman diagrams\n> along the lines of my paper with James Dolan, as explained here:\n>\n> http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/qg-spring2004/\n\nI wish you guys will find out some new relationship for your Riemann-Zeta\nfunction along your way of extending your combinatoric Feynmann picture to\nthe continuum. Or it will be a bonus to know whether there\nexists some new "stuff" that has more than countable but less than\nuncountable cardinality if "stuff" like that exists.\n\n\n>\n>>What I really hope for is categorifying inequalities to certain level as\n>>well.\n>\n> That\'s a good hope. This seems easy for the categorified natural numbers\n> (finite sets), since then "less than or equal to" is just short for\n> "is included in". It seems a lot harder to do in any useful way in\n> existing approaches to categorifying the real numbers.\n>\nAgree. We need some new concepts and techniques to make the way. I hope I\nwill be able to contribute in some ways in the future.\n\nI hope one day we can think like Nature does coordinate free thinking.\n\nQuantum Gravity ----> Classical Gravity with new coordinate-free equations\nIn my opinion, I don\'t think the physics community has learned the\nEinstein\'s lesson thoroughly enough.\n\nLet me end my rhetorics by quoting a statement from the three men\'s book:\nC. Misner, K. Thorne, and J. Wheeler on p.409,\n\n"To predict all ten functions (of the spacetime metric tensor) would\npresuppose a choice of coordinates; and to make a choice among coordinate\nsystems is exactly what the geometrodynamic law cannot and must not have\nthe power to do. That choice resides of necessity in the man who studies\nthe geometry, not in the Nature that makes the geometry. The geometry in\nand by itself, like an automobile fender in and by itself, is free of\ncoordinates. The coordinates are the work of man."\n\n\nCharles Hui\n\n</UL></PRE></font></td></tr></table></BODY><HTML>');"> <IMG SRC=/images/buttons/ip.gif BORDER=0 ALIGN=CENTER ALT="View this Usenet post in original ASCII form">  View this Usenet post in original ASCII form </a></div><P></jabberwocky>On Sun, 28 Nov 2004, John Baez wrote:
>
> In 3-dimensional spacetime, pure quantum gravity without matter has
> no local degrees of freedom - but when we include matter, there are local
> degrees of freedom!
>
> In "week208", I described how Freidel and Louapre successfully
> formalized 3d quantum gravity + matter using a double category where:
>
> the objects are point particles
> the morphisms are spin networks with loose ends
> the 2-morphisms are spin foams with loose edges
>
> Of course they didn't talk about 2-categories, but if you know
> about 2-categories and you look at what they did, that's what you'll see!

I'll certainly re-read some category articles and the above article, and
will look for any traces of 2-categories.

>
> Mathematically this sort of theory is closely related to the topological
> open/closed string theory investigated by Moore and Segal, as mentioned
> in another post in this thread.
>
> Another nice direction, also mentioned in "week208", is that Freidel
> and Starodubtsev have developed a new perturbation theory for quantum
> gravity using spin foams. This too is just applied 2-category theory.

I will re-read "week208" and their papers. I have a lot to read there as
well. I remember one of Starodubtsev papers about the symmetries of the
vacuum,

http://xxx.lanl.gov/PS_cache/hep-th/pdf/0306/0306135.pdf

appeals to higher dimension (anti)DeSitter space, extending the point
particle in one-dimensional space. It seems to me going to
higher dimension is becoming a necessary way out. Then, why not consider
the possibility of blow-up some object in higher dimension as in my
following?

>> There is another question. I remember you can categorify the set of natural
>> numbers to a category of sets and so on to set of integers. I also remember
>> you introduced the categorical version of addition,
>> multiplication, and some division. I wonder can one base on that
>> defines a
>> kind of formal power series to categorify the real number system?
>
> Btw, this stuff has not been related to the above stuff, so far.
> I hope it will turn out to be related sometime, but right now it
> seems like a separate subject.
>

For now it looks seperated. I always want to add a picture in Michael
Atiyah's axiomatic TQFT that how to blow-up a (low or higher dimensional)
singualrity. Then it may lead to add more consistent and compatible
pictures on the left side of his table.

http://www.ima.umn.edu/talks/workshops/SP6.7-18.04/kock/kock_summary_and_1_slide.pdf

Then all the pictures in my mind mean what categorical sense? I know in
algebraic geometry they have local rings, sheaves and a blow-up process,
and so far the n-category about algebraic geometry (n-stack, n-gerbes)
does not come close to what I am looking for. Those are still too global.
So, personally, I want to know about the possible local coordinate-free
categorical sense of a blow-up.

> I have a student thinking about categorifying the real and
> complex numbers, Jeffrey Morton. He's doing this with the help of
> the ideas of Steven Schanuel, Tom Leinster and Marcelo Fiore:
>
> http://www.arxiv.org/abs/math.CT/0212377
>
> This would allow a more detailed treatment of Feynman diagrams
> along the lines of my paper with James Dolan, as explained here:
>
> http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/qg-spring2004/

I wish you guys will find out some new relationship for your Riemann-\Zeta
function along your way of extending your combinatoric Feynmann picture to
the continuum. Or it will be a bonus to know whether there
exists some new "stuff" that has more than countable but less than
uncountable cardinality if "stuff" like that exists.

>
>>What I really hope for is categorifying inequalities to certain level as
>>well.
>
> That's a good hope. This seems easy for the categorified natural numbers
> (finite sets), since then "less than or equal to" is just short for
> "is included in". It seems a lot harder to do in any useful way in
> existing approaches to categorifying the real numbers.
>
Agree. We need some new concepts and techniques to make the way. I hope I
will be able to contribute in some ways in the future.

I hope one day we can think like Nature does coordinate free thinking.

Quantum Gravity ----> Classical Gravity with new coordinate-free equations
In my opinion, I don't think the physics community has learned the
Einstein's lesson thoroughly enough.

Let me end my rhetorics by quoting a statement from the three men's book:
C. Misner, K. Thorne, and J. Wheeler on p.409,

"To predict all ten functions (of the spacetime metric tensor) would
presuppose a choice of coordinates; and to make a choice among coordinate
systems is exactly what the geometrodynamic law cannot and must not have
the power to do. That choice resides of necessity in the man who studies
the geometry, not in the Nature that makes the geometry. The geometry in
and by itself, like an automobile fender in and by itself, is free of
coordinates. The coordinates are the work of man."

Charles Hui

Aaron Bergman

Nov29-04, 09:00 AM

<jabberwocky><div class="vbmenu_control"><a href="jabberwocky:;" onClick="newWindow=window.open('','usenetCode','toolbar=no, location=no,scrollbars=yes,resizable=yes,status=no ,width=650,height=400'); newWindow.document.write('<HTML><HEAD><TITLE>Usenet ASCII</TITLE></HEAD><BODY topmargin=0 leftmargin=0 BGCOLOR=#F1F1F1><table border=0 width=625><td bgcolor=midnightblue><font color=#F1F1F1>This Usenet message\'s original ASCII form: </font></td></tr><tr><td width=449><br><br><font face=courier><UL><PRE>In article <codvr8\\$qc0\\$1@news.ks.uiuc.edu>,\nbaez@galaxy. ucr.edu (John Baez) wrote:\n\n> In article <co25tf\\$8mb\\$1@news.ks.uiuc.edu>,\n> Aaron Bergman <abergman@physics.utexas.edu> wrote:\n>\n> >So, let\'s let our string\n> >boundary state be a noncommutative torus, certainly an example of an\n> >associative algebra.\n>\n> I don\'t get the role the "decoupling limit" plays here. Maybe\n> you\'re saying that in some limit the algebra becomes commutative,\n> and we\'re *almost* but not quite taking that limit, so we\'re getting\n> a noncommutative deformation of some commutative algebra, as folks\n> do in deformation quantization?\n\nWell, we can look at the string worldsheet action:\n\n\\int G_ab <DX^a, DX^b> + a X^*(B) + ...\n\nwhere < , > is the pairing with the worldsheet metric, D is the\nderivative on the worldsheet, X is the worldsheet field mapping into\nspacetime and B is a two form on spacetime. Now, take a limit of this\naction such that the metric term drops out. We\'re left with just the\npullback of the B field. Assume B is a symplectic form and this is\nexactly the Cattaneo-Felder sigma model for deformation quantization in\nthe symplectic case. So, if you take the correct limit -- the\nSeiberg-Witten limit -- you get, living on the D-brane as these are open\nstrings, a deformation quantization.\n\n> >A simple example is the noncommutative T^2 with\n> >parameter theta. We can ask when two noncommutative tori are Morita\n> >equivalent. For T^2, the answer is when\n> >\n> >theta\' = (a theta + b) / (c theta + d) ad - bc = 1\n>\n> Cool!\n>\n> >This is just T-duality in string theory. The duality groups work out to\n> >be the same for higher dimensional torii, too.\n>\n> Here "duality groups" means "Brauer groups", i.e. groups whose elements\n> are Azumaya algebras mod Morita equivalence?\n\nWhen I hear Azumaya algebras, I think, take a torsion three form, define\na SU(N)/Z_n bundle associated with that form and take the algebra of\nsections. As for what I mean by duality group, for the purposes of math,\nI mean whatever\'s in this: math.QA/9803057.\n\n> >(Fun thing I learned recently: the A_oo structure of the Yoneda pairing\n> >of Ext groups -- which I don\'t really understand as yet -- actually\n> >encodes topological string amplitudes of a sort. It should be thought of\n> >as the cohomology of the A_oo structure (with nontrivial m_1) associated\n> >with open strings. This isn\'t new -- I was just happy to understand it\n> >somewhat.)\n>\n> I\'d be happy to understand it more. Sounds like there\'s some homological\n> algebra I haven\'t gotten around to yet: the A_infinity structure of the\n> Yoneda pairing of Ext groups! I know what an Ext group is, but not their\n> Yoneda pairings... A_infinity stuff is no problem for me but I don\'t know\n> what an A_infinity structure on a pairing would be....\n\nThe Yoneda pairing is defined in Griffiths and Harris. All I know about\nthe A_oo structure is that m_1 vanishes so the pairing is associative. I\nwas trying to read a few other things that purported to give more\ndetail, but I decided there were more important things I needed to\nunderstand first. Here\'s a quote from an intro by B. Keller:\n\n> Yoneda algebras. Let B be a unital associative algebra, M a (right)\n> Bmodule and P ->\n\n</UL></PRE></font></td></tr></table></BODY><HTML>');"> <IMG SRC=/images/buttons/ip.gif BORDER=0 ALIGN=CENTER ALT="View this Usenet post in original ASCII form">  View this Usenet post in original ASCII form </a></div><P></jabberwocky>In article <codvr8$qc0$1@news.ks.uiuc.edu>,
baez@galaxy.ucr.edu (John Baez) wrote:

> In article <co25tf$8mb$1@news.ks.uiuc.edu>,
> Aaron Bergman <abergman@physics.utexas.edu> wrote:
>
> >So, let's let our string
> >boundary state be a noncommutative torus, certainly an example of an
> >associative algebra.
>
> I don't get the role the "decoupling limit" plays here. Maybe
> you're saying that in some limit the algebra becomes commutative,
> and we're *almost* but not quite taking that limit, so we're getting
> a noncommutative deformation of some commutative algebra, as folks
> do in deformation quantization?

Well, we can look at the string worldsheet action:

\int G_{ab} <DX^a, DX^b> + a X^*(B) + .[/itex]..

where < , > is the pairing with the worldsheet metric, D is the
derivative on the worldsheet, X is the worldsheet field mapping into
spacetime and B is a two form on spacetime. Now, take a limit of this
action such that the metric term drops out. We're left with just the
pullback of the B field. Assume B is a symplectic form and this is
exactly the Cattaneo-Felder \sigma model for deformation quantization in
the symplectic case. So, if you take the correct limit -- the
Seiberg-Witten limit -- you get, living on the D-brane as these are open
strings, a deformation quantization.

> >A simple example is the noncommutative T^2 with
> >parameter \theta. We can ask when two noncommutative tori are Morita
> >equivalent. For T^2, the answer is when
> >
> >\theta' = (a \theta + b) / (c \theta + d) ad - bc = 1
>
> Cool!
>
> >This is just T-duality in string theory. The duality groups work out to
> >be the same for higher dimensional torii, too.
>
> Here "duality groups" means "Brauer groups", i.e. groups whose elements
> are Azumaya algebras mod Morita equivalence?

When I hear Azumaya algebras, I think, take a torsion three form, define
a SU(N)/Z_n bundle associated with that form and take the algebra of
sections. As for what I mean by duality group, for the purposes of math,
I mean whatever's in this: math.QA/9803057.

> >(Fun thing I learned recently: the A_{oo} structure of the Yoneda pairing
> >of Ext groups -- which I don't really understand as yet -- actually
> >encodes topological string amplitudes of a sort. It should be thought of
> >as the cohomology of the A_{oo} structure (with nontrivial m_1) associated
> >with open strings. This isn't new -- I was just happy to understand it
> >somewhat.)
>
> I'd be happy to understand it more. Sounds like there's some homological
> algebra I haven't gotten around to yet: the A_{infinity} structure of the
> Yoneda pairing of Ext groups! I know what an Ext group is, but not their
> Yoneda pairings... A_{infinity} stuff is no problem for me but I don't know
> what an A_{infinity} structure on a pairing would be....

The Yoneda pairing is defined in Griffiths and Harris. All I know about
the A_{oo} structure is that m_1 vanishes so the pairing is associative. I
was trying to read a few other things that purported to give more
detail, but I decided there were more important things I needed to
understand first. Here's a quote from an intro by B. Keller:

> Yoneda algebras. Let B be a unital associative algebra, M a (right)
> Bmodule and [itex]P ->

Urs Schreiber

Nov29-04, 09:00 AM

<jabberwocky><div class="vbmenu_control"><a href="jabberwocky:;" onClick="newWindow=window.open('','usenetCode','toolbar=no, location=no,scrollbars=yes,resizable=yes,status=no ,width=650,height=400'); newWindow.document.write('<HTML><HEAD><TITLE>Usenet ASCII</TITLE></HEAD><BODY topmargin=0 leftmargin=0 BGCOLOR=#F1F1F1><table border=0 width=625><td bgcolor=midnightblue><font color=#F1F1F1>This Usenet message\'s original ASCII form: </font></td></tr><tr><td width=449><br><br><font face=courier><UL><PRE>baez@galaxy.ucr.edu (John Baez) wrote in message news:<codvr8\\$qc0\\$1@news.ks.uiuc.edu>...\n> In article <co25tf\\$8mb\\$1@news.ks.uiuc.edu>,\n> Aaron Bergman <abergman@physics.utexas.edu> wrote:\n>\n> >Anyways, the connection here is this. Noncommutative geometry is a\n> >decoupling limit of open string theory.\n>\n> Let\'s see if I can understand that. I think a conformal field\n> theory should assign\n>\n> associative algebras A to 0-manifolds\n>\n> (A,B)-bimodules to 1-manifolds with boundary\n>\n> (A,B)-bimodule homomorphisms to 2-manifolds with corners\n>\n> where our 2-manifolds should also be equipped with complex structure.\n> The whole setup should be a (projective) symmetric monoidal 2-functor.\n> In particular, disjoint unions should get mapped to tensor products.\n> In particular, the algebra assigned to be a bunch of points should\n> be a tensor product of copies of some given algebra A. This is the\n> algebra of "string boundary states":\n\n\nHm, this is like identifying the CFT with a functor from some\n2-category of paths and bigons to the above 2-category of (A,B). This\nis at least not what I thought Aaron was talking about, and I am also\nnot sure why it should be true.\n\nTo me, it is not a given slice of a given worldsheet of the open\nstring wich gives the (A,B)-bimodule, but instead the mere existence\nof any open string stretching between a brane configuration described\nby A and one described by B. No?\n\nThat\'s why I thought the (A,B)-homomorphisms must map different such\nbrane configration into each other, while what John Baez writes above\nsuggests that the homomorphism are associated with patches of\nworldsheet.\n\n</UL></PRE></font></td></tr></table></BODY><HTML>');"> <IMG SRC=/images/buttons/ip.gif BORDER=0 ALIGN=CENTER ALT="View this Usenet post in original ASCII form">  View this Usenet post in original ASCII form </a></div><P></jabberwocky>baez@galaxy.ucr.edu (John Baez) wrote in message news:<codvr8$qc0$1@news.ks.uiuc.edu>...
> In article <co25tf$8mb$1@news.ks.uiuc.edu>,
> Aaron Bergman <abergman@physics.utexas.edu> wrote:
>
> >Anyways, the connection here is this. Noncommutative geometry is a
> >decoupling limit of open string theory.
>
> Let's see if I can understand that. I think a conformal field
> theory should assign
>
> associative algebras A to 0-manifolds
>
> (A,B)-bimodules to 1-manifolds with boundary
>
> (A,B)-bimodule homomorphisms to 2-manifolds with corners
>
> where our 2-manifolds should also be equipped with complex structure.
> The whole setup should be a (projective) symmetric monoidal 2-functor.
> In particular, disjoint unions should get mapped to tensor products.
> In particular, the algebra assigned to be a bunch of points should
> be a tensor product of copies of some given algebra A. This is the
> algebra of "string boundary states":

Hm, this is like identifying the CFT with a functor from some
2-category of paths and bigons to the above 2-category of (A,B). This
is at least not what I thought Aaron was talking about, and I am also
not sure why it should be true.

To me, it is not a given slice of a given worldsheet of the open
string wich gives the (A,B)-bimodule, but instead the mere existence
of any open string stretching between a brane configuration described
by A and one described by B. No?

That's why I thought the (A,B)-homomorphisms must map different such
brane configration into each other, while what John Baez writes above
suggests that the homomorphism are associated with patches of
worldsheet.

Aaron Bergman

Nov29-04, 09:30 AM

<jabberwocky><div class="vbmenu_control"><a href="jabberwocky:;" onClick="newWindow=window.open('','usenetCode','toolbar=no, location=no,scrollbars=yes,resizable=yes,status=no ,width=650,height=400'); newWindow.document.write('<HTML><HEAD><TITLE>Usenet ASCII</TITLE></HEAD><BODY topmargin=0 leftmargin=0 BGCOLOR=#F1F1F1><table border=0 width=625><td bgcolor=midnightblue><font color=#F1F1F1>This Usenet message\'s original ASCII form: </font></td></tr><tr><td width=449><br><br><font face=courier><UL><PRE>In article <coa6hv\\$ek3\\$1@news.ks.uiuc.edu>,\nbaez@galaxy. ucr.edu (John Baez) wrote:\n\n> Right! There are some "Moore-Segal axioms" governing topological\n> open/closed string theories, which talk about this sort of thing,\n> but apparently trying to downplay the n-category theory.\n\nThere\'s a lot of fun stuff along these lines at\n\n<http://www.physics.rutgers.edu/~gmoore/clay.html>\n\nCaldararu has apparently proven some interesting things regarding this\nand the derived category of coherent sheaves but I don\'t claim to\nunderstand it.\n\nAaron\n\n</UL></PRE></font></td></tr></table></BODY><HTML>');"> <IMG SRC=/images/buttons/ip.gif BORDER=0 ALIGN=CENTER ALT="View this Usenet post in original ASCII form">  View this Usenet post in original ASCII form </a></div><P></jabberwocky>In article <coa6hv$ek3$1@news.ks.uiuc.edu>,
baez@galaxy.ucr.edu (John Baez) wrote:

> Right! There are some "Moore-Segal axioms" governing topological
> open/closed string theories, which talk about this sort of thing,
> but apparently trying to downplay the n-category theory.

There's a lot of fun stuff along these lines at

<http://www.physics.rutgers.edu/~gmoore/clay.html>

Caldararu has apparently proven some interesting things regarding this
and the derived category of coherent sheaves but I don't claim to
understand it.

Aaron

Squark

Dec1-04, 11:05 AM

<jabberwocky><div class="vbmenu_control"><a href="jabberwocky:;" onClick="newWindow=window.open('','usenetCode','toolbar=no, location=no,scrollbars=yes,resizable=yes,status=no ,width=650,height=400'); newWindow.document.write('<HTML><HEAD><TITLE>Usenet ASCII</TITLE></HEAD><BODY topmargin=0 leftmargin=0 BGCOLOR=#F1F1F1><table border=0 width=625><td bgcolor=midnightblue><font color=#F1F1F1>This Usenet message\'s original ASCII form: </font></td></tr><tr><td width=449><br><br><font face=courier><UL><PRE>Hey John, how are you?\n\n> The n-categories called "n-groupoids" magically know\n> everything there is to know about homotopy theory,\n\nThat part I know...\n\n> while those called\n> "n-categories with duals" know everything there is to know about the\n> topology of manifolds.\n\nBut how would this work? What are n-categories with duals anyway?\n\nBest regards,\nSquark.\n\n</UL></PRE></font></td></tr></table></BODY><HTML>');"> <IMG SRC=/images/buttons/ip.gif BORDER=0 ALIGN=CENTER ALT="View this Usenet post in original ASCII form">  View this Usenet post in original ASCII form </a></div><P></jabberwocky>Hey John, how are you?

> The n-categories called "n-groupoids" magically know
> everything there is to know about homotopy theory,

That part I know...

> while those called
> "n-categories with duals" know everything there is to know about the
> topology of manifolds.

But how would this work? What are n-categories with duals anyway?

Best regards,
Squark.

Urs Schreiber

Dec2-04, 03:48 AM

<jabberwocky><div class="vbmenu_control"><a href="jabberwocky:;" onClick="newWindow=window.open('','usenetCode','toolbar=no, location=no,scrollbars=yes,resizable=yes,status=no ,width=650,height=400'); newWindow.document.write('<HTML><HEAD><TITLE>Usenet ASCII</TITLE></HEAD><BODY topmargin=0 leftmargin=0 BGCOLOR=#F1F1F1><table border=0 width=625><td bgcolor=midnightblue><font color=#F1F1F1>This Usenet message\'s original ASCII form: </font></td></tr><tr><td width=449><br><br><font face=courier><UL><PRE>"Aaron Bergman" <abergman@physics.utexas.edu> schrieb im Newsbeitrag\nnews:cofdho\\$6tk\\$1@news.ks.uiuc.ed u...\n\n> The Yoneda pairing is defined in Griffiths and Harris. All I know about\n> the A_oo structure is that m_1 vanishes so the pairing is associative.\n\nSince the associator is\n\n[m_2, m_2] = [m_1,m_3] + [m_4,m_0]\n\n(in terms of Gerstenhaber brackets, maybe up to a sign here and there) it\nseems that the A_oo structure that you are talking about is either "2-term",\nso that m_i vanishes for all i > 3, or "standard", so that [m_i,m_0]\nvanishes?\n\nBTW, you wrote:\n\n> Sounds like an A_oo type structure to me, just like open strings.\n\nEven though there was non-associativity in what John Baez wrote it does not\nnecessarily imply that the A_oo algebra associated with it is related to\nthat enocuntered in string field theory. If the (A,B)-bimodules that we are\ntalking about describe brane configurations (as I think it should) there\nmight be some relation, but its a little vague so far.\n\nI find it interesting that in a somewhat similar context, where the\nnon-associativity is that in weak 2-groups, the A_oo algebra (or L_oo\nrather) that appears *seems* to describe non-associative concatenations of\nmembranes with boundary. (But don\'t ask for details. This is either wrong or\ntop-secret ;-)\n\n\n</UL></PRE></font></td></tr></table></BODY><HTML>');"> <IMG SRC=/images/buttons/ip.gif BORDER=0 ALIGN=CENTER ALT="View this Usenet post in original ASCII form">  View this Usenet post in original ASCII form </a></div><P></jabberwocky>"Aaron Bergman" <abergman@physics.utexas.edu> schrieb im Newsbeitrag
news:cofdho$6tk$1@news.ks.uiuc.edu...

> The Yoneda pairing is defined in Griffiths and Harris. All I know about
> the A_{oo} structure is that m_1 vanishes so the pairing is associative.

Since the associator is

[m_2, m_2] = [m_1,m_3] + [m_4,m_0]

(in terms of Gerstenhaber brackets, maybe up to a sign here and there) it
seems that the A_{oo} structure that you are talking about is either "2-term",
so that m_i vanishes for all i > 3, or "standard", so that [m_i,m_0]
vanishes?

BTW, you wrote:

> Sounds like an A_{oo} type structure to me, just like open strings.

Even though there was non-associativity in what John Baez wrote it does not
necessarily imply that the A_{oo} algebra associated with it is related to
that enocuntered in string field theory. If the (A,B)-bimodules that we are
talking about describe brane configurations (as I think it should) there
might be some relation, but its a little vague so far.

I find it interesting that in a somewhat similar context, where the
non-associativity is that in weak 2-groups, the A_{oo} algebra (or L_{oo}
rather) that appears *seems* to describe non-associative concatenations of
membranes with boundary. (But don't ask for details. This is either wrong or
top-secret ;-)

Aaron Bergman

Dec2-04, 08:23 PM

<jabberwocky><div class="vbmenu_control"><a href="jabberwocky:;" onClick="newWindow=window.open('','usenetCode','toolbar=no, location=no,scrollbars=yes,resizable=yes,status=no ,width=650,height=400'); newWindow.document.write('<HTML><HEAD><TITLE>Usenet ASCII</TITLE></HEAD><BODY topmargin=0 leftmargin=0 BGCOLOR=#F1F1F1><table border=0 width=625><td bgcolor=midnightblue><font color=#F1F1F1>This Usenet message\'s original ASCII form: </font></td></tr><tr><td width=449><br><br><font face=courier><UL><PRE>In article <3186m0F38t7htU1@individual.net>,\n"Urs Schreiber" <Urs.Schreiber@uni-essen.de> wrote:\n\n> "Aaron Bergman" <abergman@physics.utexas.edu> schrieb im Newsbeitrag\n> news:cofdho\\$6tk\\$1@news.ks.uiuc.edu...\n>\n> > The Yoneda pairing is defined in Griffiths and Harris. All I know about\n> > the A_oo structure is that m_1 vanishes so the pairing is associative.\n>\n> Since the associator is\n>\n> [m_2, m_2] = [m_1,m_3] + [m_4,m_0]\n\nI don\'t know what definition of an A_oo algebra you\'re using, but mine\ndoesn\'t include an m_0. In particular, the structure includes a set of\nmappings\n\nm_i : A^i -> A\n\nwhere A^i denotes a tensor power.\n\nThe associator is\n\nm_2(1 x m_2 - m_2 x 1) = m_1 m_3 + m_3(m_1 x 1 x 1 + cycles)\n\nwhich vanishes when m_1 does. (\'x\' denotes tensor product.)\n\nWritten differently, this is\n\n(A,(B,C)) - ((A,B),C) = Q(A,B,C) + (QA,B,C) + (A,QB,C) + (A,B,QC)\n\nup to some signs I won\'t bother trying to figure out.\n\nThese are all from Keller\'s "Introduction to A-Infinity Algebras and\nModules". This sort of thing seems to happen when you take the homology\nof a different A_oo algebra (like the open string algebra) with respect\nto m_1 (the BRST operator).\n\nAaron\n\n</UL></PRE></font></td></tr></table></BODY><HTML>');"> <IMG SRC=/images/buttons/ip.gif BORDER=0 ALIGN=CENTER ALT="View this Usenet post in original ASCII form">  View this Usenet post in original ASCII form </a></div><P></jabberwocky>In article <3186m0F38t7htU1@individual.net>,
"Urs Schreiber" <Urs.Schreiber@uni-essen.de> wrote:

> "Aaron Bergman" <abergman@physics.utexas.edu> schrieb im Newsbeitrag
> news:cofdho$6tk$1@news.ks.uiuc.edu...
>
> > The Yoneda pairing is defined in Griffiths and Harris. All I know about
> > the A_{oo} structure is that m_1 vanishes so the pairing is associative.
>
> Since the associator is
>
> [m_2, m_2] = [m_1,m_3] + [m_4,m_0]

I don't know what definition of an A_{oo} algebra you're using, but mine
doesn't include an m_0. In particular, the structure includes a set of
mappings

m_i : A^i -> A

where A^i denotes a tensor power.

The associator is

m_2(1 x m_2 - m_2 x 1) = m_1 m_3 + m_3(m_1 x 1 x 1 +[/itex] cycles)

which vanishes when m_1 does. ('x' denotes tensor product.)

Written differently, this is

(A,(B,C)) [itex]- ((A,B),C) = Q(A,B,C) + (QA,B,C) + (A,QB,C) + (A,B,QC)

up to some signs I won't bother trying to figure out.

These are all from Keller's "Introduction to A-Infinity Algebras and
Modules". This sort of thing seems to happen when you take the homology
of a different A_{oo} algebra (like the open string algebra) with respect
to m_1 (the BRST operator).

Aaron

Urs Schreiber

Dec3-04, 05:45 AM

<jabberwocky><div class="vbmenu_control"><a href="jabberwocky:;" onClick="newWindow=window.open('','usenetCode','toolbar=no, location=no,scrollbars=yes,resizable=yes,status=no ,width=650,height=400'); newWindow.document.write('<HTML><HEAD><TITLE>Usenet ASCII</TITLE></HEAD><BODY topmargin=0 leftmargin=0 BGCOLOR=#F1F1F1><table border=0 width=625><td bgcolor=midnightblue><font color=#F1F1F1>This Usenet message\'s original ASCII form: </font></td></tr><tr><td width=449><br><br><font face=courier><UL><PRE>"Aaron Bergman" <abergman@physics.utexas.edu> schrieb im Newsbeitrag\nnews:abergman-20C924.20232402122004@localhost...\n> In article <3186m0F38t7htU1@individual.net>,\n> "Urs Schreiber" <Urs.Schreiber@uni-essen.de> wrote:\n\n>> Since the associator is\n>>\n>> [m_2, m_2] = [m_1,m_3] + [m_4,m_0]\n>\n> I don\'t know what definition of an A_oo algebra you\'re using, but mine\n> doesn\'t include an m_0.\n\nOk, in some texts it is not included. But it easily can and is necessary for\nsome applications.\n\nMy current reference to A_oo algebras is\n\nEzra Getzler & John D. S. Jones:\nA_oo-Algebras and the Cyclic Bar Complex\nIll. J. Math, 34(2), 256-283 (1990) ,\n\nwhere m_0 is included. For the applications that I am concerned with (which\nis not, at least not directly (see below), related to open string field\ntheory) the m_0 is a necessary ingredient. It specifies the (possibly\nnonabelian) 2-form field when you do nonabelian gauge theory over path\nspace. In this context m_1(a) = da + A(a), where A(a) is the (adjoint)\naction of the 1-form A on the element B and m_2 is the wedge product times\nsome product on the Lie algebra.\n\nThis is more or less what Hofmann describes in his hep-th/0207017, though in\nthe context of 2-groups there are slight modifications to what he does.\n\n\n> The associator is\n>\n> m_2(1 x m_2 - m_2 x 1) = m_1 m_3 + m_3(m_1 x 1 x 1 + cycles)\n\n\nYes, sure. This is abbreviated by those "Gerstenhaber brackets" that I wrote\ndown. Given a n1-ary m1 and an n2-ary m2 we have the Gerstenhabe bracket\n\n[m1,m2] = sum m1(1 x ...x 1 x m2 ( .... ) x ... x 1) - sum m2(1 x ...x\n1 x m1 ( .... ) x ... x 1)\n\nup to signs which are determined by the natural grading of the m1, m2. This\nreduces to the formula you give above when m2 = m_2 and m1 = m_1 .\n\n\n> which vanishes when m_1 does. (\'x\' denotes tensor product.)\n\n\nYes, I understand that. I was asking because if you include m_0 there is\nalso the term [m_0,m_4], which you did not have. Now I undertand that you\nassumed m_0 = 0.\n\n\n\n> These are all from Keller\'s "Introduction to A-Infinity Algebras and\n> Modules".\n\n\nThanks for this reference, I haven\'t looked at it yet.\n\n> This sort of thing seems to happen when you take the homology\n> of a different A_oo algebra (like the open string algebra) with respect\n> to m_1 (the BRST operator).\n\n\nYes. As I mentioned above, in other contexts m_1 is an exterior differential\ncoming from the exterior differential on path space.\n\nBut in fact I would expect there to be some relation. That path space gauge\ntheory is really living in the context of string boundary states. On those\nthe BRST cohomology is characterized by reparameterization invariance plus\nits supersymmetric square root, G + i\\bar G . Rep-invariance is really a\nconstraint very easily solved by suitable constructions, so that the BRST\noperator here reduces to that polar sum of worldsheet supercharged G + i\n\\bar G . This is essentially the exterior derivative on path space that I\nwas talking about. Conjugating it by a nonabelian Wilson line gives path\nspace connection with the above mentioned m_0, m_1 and m_2 operators\nappearing.\n\n\n\n</UL></PRE></font></td></tr></table></BODY><HTML>');"> <IMG SRC=/images/buttons/ip.gif BORDER=0 ALIGN=CENTER ALT="View this Usenet post in original ASCII form">  View this Usenet post in original ASCII form </a></div><P></jabberwocky>"Aaron Bergman" <abergman@physics.utexas.edu> schrieb im Newsbeitrag
news:abergman-20C924.20232402122004@localhost...
> In article <3186m0F38t7htU1@individual.net>,
> "Urs Schreiber" <Urs.Schreiber@uni-essen.de> wrote:

>> Since the associator is
>>
>> [m_2, m_2] = [m_1,m_3] + [m_4,m_0]
>
> I don't know what definition of an A_{oo} algebra you're using, but mine
> doesn't include an m_0.

Ok, in some texts it is not included. But it easily can and is necessary for
some applications.

My current reference to A_{oo} algebras is

Ezra Getzler & John D. S. Jones:
A_{oo}-Algebras and the Cyclic Bar Complex
Ill. J. Math, 34(2), 256-283 (1990) ,

where m_0 is included. For the applications that I am concerned with (which
is not, at least not directly (see below), related to open string field
theory) the m_0 is a necessary ingredient. It specifies the (possibly
nonabelian) 2-form field when you do nonabelian gauge theory over path
space. In this context m_1(a) = da + A(a), where A(a) is the (adjoint)
action of the 1-form A on the element B and m_2 is the wedge product times
some product on the Lie algebra.

This is more or less what Hofmann describes in his http://www.arxiv.org/abs/hep-th/0207017, though in
the context of 2-groups there are slight modifications to what he does.

> The associator is
>
> m_2(1 x m_2 - m_2 x 1) = m_1 m_3 + m_3(m_1 x 1 x 1 + cycles)

Yes, sure. This is abbreviated by those "Gerstenhaber brackets" that I wrote
down. Given a n1-ary m1 and an n2-ary m2 we have the Gerstenhabe bracket

[m1,m2] = sum m1(1 x ...x 1 x m2 ( .... ) x ... x 1) - sum m2(1 x ...x
1 x m1 ( .... ) x ... x 1)

up to signs which are determined by the natural grading of the m1, m2. This
reduces to the formula you give above when m2 = m_2 and m1 = m_1 .

> which vanishes when m_1 does. ('x' denotes tensor product.)

Yes, I understand that. I was asking because if you include m_0 there is
also the term [m_0,m_4], which you did not have. Now I undertand that you
assumed m_0 = .

> These are all from Keller's "Introduction to A-Infinity Algebras and
> Modules".

Thanks for this reference, I haven't looked at it yet.

> This sort of thing seems to happen when you take the homology
> of a different A_{oo} algebra (like the open string algebra) with respect
> to m_1 (the BRST operator).

Yes. As I mentioned above, in other contexts m_1 is an exterior differential
coming from the exterior differential on path space.

But in fact I would expect there to be some relation. That path space gauge
theory is really living in the context of string boundary states. On those
the BRST cohomology is characterized by reparameterization invariance plus
its supersymmetric square root, G + i\bar G . Rep-invariance is really a
constraint very easily solved by suitable constructions, so that the BRST
operator here reduces to that polar sum of worldsheet supercharged G + i\bar G . This is essentially the exterior derivative on path space that I
was talking about. Conjugating it by a nonabelian Wilson line gives path
space connection with the above mentioned m_0, m_1 and m_2 operators
appearing.

Dan Christensen

Dec7-04, 11:12 AM

<jabberwocky><div class="vbmenu_control"><a href="jabberwocky:;" onClick="newWindow=window.open('','usenetCode','toolbar=no, location=no,scrollbars=yes,resizable=yes,status=no ,width=650,height=400'); newWindow.document.write('<HTML><HEAD><TITLE>Usenet ASCII</TITLE></HEAD><BODY topmargin=0 leftmargin=0 BGCOLOR=#F1F1F1><table border=0 width=625><td bgcolor=midnightblue><font color=#F1F1F1>This Usenet message\'s original ASCII form: </font></td></tr><tr><td width=449><br><br><font face=courier><UL><PRE>baez@galaxy.ucr.edu (John Baez) writes:\n\n> I\'d be happy to understand it more. Sounds like there\'s some homological\n> algebra I haven\'t gotten around to yet: the A_infinity structure of the\n> Yoneda pairing of Ext groups! I know what an Ext group is, but not their\n> Yoneda pairings... A_infinity stuff is no problem for me but I don\'t know\n> what an A_infinity structure on a pairing would be....\n\nAs you know, Ext groups can be defined in various ways. For the\npurpose of understanding the Yoneda pairing, the best way to define\nExt^n(A,B), where A and B are modules over a ring (or more generally any\ntwo objects in an abelian category), is as the set of equivalence\nclasses of exact sequences of the form\n\n0 --> B --> C_1 --> ... --> C_n --> A --> 0\n\nwhere two such sequences\n\n0 --> B --> C_1 --> ... --> C_n --> A --> 0\n\n0 --> B --> D_1 --> ... --> D_n --> A --> 0\n\nare equivalent if there is a zig-zag of morphisms\n\n0 --> B --> C_1 --> ... --> C_n --> A --> 0\n| | | |\n| | | |\nv v v v\n0 --> B --> D_1 --> ... --> D_n --> A --> 0\n\nbetween them which are the identity at the ends.\n\nThen there is a pairing from Ext^p(A,B) x Ext^q(B,C) to Ext^{p+q}(A,C)\nwhich takes two sequences and simply splices them together, dropping\nthe B.\n\nIn the case of Ext^*(A,A), you get a graded ring.\n\nI don\'t know much about the A_oo aspect of this, but would be\ndelighted to hear more about it...\n\nDan\n\n</UL></PRE></font></td></tr></table></BODY><HTML>');"> <IMG SRC=/images/buttons/ip.gif BORDER=0 ALIGN=CENTER ALT="View this Usenet post in original ASCII form">  View this Usenet post in original ASCII form </a></div><P></jabberwocky>baez@galaxy.ucr.edu (John Baez) writes:

> I'd be happy to understand it more. Sounds like there's some homological
> algebra I haven't gotten around to yet: the A_{infinity} structure of the
> Yoneda pairing of Ext groups! I know what an Ext group is, but not their
> Yoneda pairings... A_{infinity} stuff is no problem for me but I don't know
> what an A_{infinity} structure on a pairing would be....

As you know, Ext groups can be defined in various ways. For the
purpose of understanding the Yoneda pairing, the best way to define
Ext^n(A,B), where A and B are modules over a ring (or more generally any
two objects in an abelian category), is as the set of equivalence
classes of exact sequences of the form

--> B --> C_1 --> ... --> C_n --> A -->

where two such sequences

--> B --> C_1 --> ... --> C_n --> A -->

--> B --> D_1 --> ... --> D_n --> A -->

are equivalent if there is a zig-zag of morphisms

--> B --> C_1 --> ... --> C_n --> A -->
| | | || | | |
v v v v
--> B --> D_1 --> ... --> D_n --> A -->

between them which are the identity at the ends.

Then there is a pairing from Ext^p(A,B) x Ext^q(B,C) to Ext^{p+q}(A,C)
which takes two sequences and simply splices them together, dropping
the B.

In the case of Ext^*(A,A), you get a graded ring.

I don't know much about the A_{oo} aspect of this, but would be
delighted to hear more about it...

Dan

Urs Schreiber

Dec13-04, 11:03 PM

<jabberwocky><div class="vbmenu_control"><a href="jabberwocky:;" onClick="newWindow=window.open('','usenetCode','toolbar=no, location=no,scrollbars=yes,resizable=yes,status=no ,width=650,height=400'); newWindow.document.write('<HTML><HEAD><TITLE>Usenet ASCII</TITLE></HEAD><BODY topmargin=0 leftmargin=0 BGCOLOR=#F1F1F1><table border=0 width=625><td bgcolor=midnightblue><font color=#F1F1F1>This Usenet message\'s original ASCII form: </font></td></tr><tr><td width=449><br><br><font face=courier><UL><PRE>and\nmarketing techniques and need money to satisfy their craving for goods\nand services. Thus science is not a PURE surrogate activity. But it is\nin large part a surrogate activity.\n\n91. Also, science and technology constitute a mass power movement, and\nmany scientists gratify their need for power through identification\nwith this mass movement (see paragraph 83).\n\n92. Thus science marches on blindly, without regard to the real\nwelfare of the human race or to any other standard, obedient only to\nthe psychological needs of the scientists and of the government\nofficials and corporation executives who provide the funds for\nresearch.\n\nTHE NATURE OF FREEDOM\n\n\n\n93. We are going to argue that industrial-technological society cannot\nbe reformed in such a way as to prevent it from progressively\nnarrowing the sphere of human freedom. But because "freedom" is a word\nthat can be interpreted in many ways, we must first make clear what\nkind of freedom we are concerned with.\n\n94. By "freedom" we mean the opportunity to go through the power\nprocess, with real goals not the artificial goals of surrogate\nactivities, and without interference, manipulation or supervision from\nanyone, especially from any large organization. Freedom means being in\ncontrol (either as an individual or as a member of a SMALL group) of\nthe life-and-death issues of one\'s existence; food, clothing, shelter\nand defense against whatever threats there may be in one\'s\nenvironment. Freedom means having power; not the power to control\nother people but the power to control the circumstances of one\'s own\nl\n\n\n</UL></PRE></font></td></tr></table></BODY><HTML>');"> <IMG SRC=/images/buttons/ip.gif BORDER=0 ALIGN=CENTER ALT="View this Usenet post in original ASCII form">  View this Usenet post in original ASCII form </a></div><P></jabberwocky>and
marketing techniques and need money to satisfy their craving for goods
and services. Thus science is not a PURE surrogate activity. But it is
in large part a surrogate activity.

91. Also, science and technology constitute a mass power movement, and
many scientists gratify their need for power through identification
with this mass movement (see paragraph 83).

92. Thus science marches on blindly, without regard to the real
welfare of the human race or to any other standard, obedient only to
the psychological needs of the scientists and of the government
officials and corporation executives who provide the funds for
research.

THE NATURE OF FREEDOM

93. We are going to argue that industrial-technological society cannot
be reformed in such a way as to prevent it from progressively
narrowing the sphere of human freedom. But because "freedom" is a word
that can be interpreted in many ways, we must first make clear what
kind of freedom we are concerned with.

94. By "freedom" we mean the opportunity to go through the power
process, with real goals not the artificial goals of surrogate
activities, and without interference, manipulation or supervision from
anyone, especially from any large organization. Freedom means being in
control (either as an individual or as a member of a SMALL group) of
the life-and-death issues of one's existence; food, clothing, shelter
and defense against whatever threats there may be in one's
environment. Freedom means having power; not the power to control
other people but the power to control the circumstances of one's own
l

John Baez

Jan30-05, 01:00 PM

<jabberwocky><div class="vbmenu_control"><a href="jabberwocky:;" onClick="newWindow=window.open('','usenetCode','toolbar=no, location=no,scrollbars=yes,resizable=yes,status=no ,width=650,height=400'); newWindow.document.write('<HTML><HEAD><TITLE>Usenet ASCII</TITLE></HEAD><BODY topmargin=0 leftmargin=0 BGCOLOR=#F1F1F1><table border=0 width=625><td bgcolor=midnightblue><font color=#F1F1F1>This Usenet message\'s original ASCII form: </font></td></tr><tr><td width=449><br><br><font face=courier><UL><PRE>\n\nIn article <coisoa\\$207\\$1@news2.netvision.net.il>,\nSqua rk <fiis5d@yahoo.com> wrote:\n\n>Hey John, how are you?\n\nGood! Busy! As you can see, I don\'t read newsgroups too often\nanymore - I\'m just now reading this post of yours dated December 1st!\n\nI have been working with Toby Bartels, Urs Schreiber and a guy\nnamed Danny Stevenson on categorified gauge theory. Danny is an\nexpert on gerbes who is teaching at UCR for a couple of years.\nUrs will be visiting in February, and the bunch of us plan to\nhave some marathon sessions figuring stuff out. There are lots\nof interesting ways this stuff shows up in string theory and the\nloop approach to gauge theories (e.g. gravity).\n\nThis stuff is part of a bigger project of categorifying differential\ngeometry. I spent the fall finishing up a paper with my undergrad student\nAaron Lauda on categorified Lie groups, and a paper with my\ngrad student Alissa Crans on categorified Lie algebras. Annoyingly,\nwe proved that some of the most interesting categorified Lie algebras -\nthe ones related to central extensions of loop groups - don\'t come\nfrom categorified Lie groups! This means our definition of\ncategorified Lie groups isn\'t general enough. A guy I know claims\nto have solved this problem:\n\nhttp://www.math.northwestern.edu/calendar/abstract.cgi?id=1104458415\n\nso I\'m curious to see what his solution amounts to.\n\nMeanwhile, in the quantum gravity seminar this year we\'re talking\nabout 2d and 3d TQFTs and spin foam models:\n\nhttp://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/qg-fall2004/\nhttp://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/qg-winter2005/\n\nand I have two grad students who plan to work on stuff like this -\nJeffrey Morton and Derek Wise. As part of this seminar I\'m writing\na history of n-categories and physics (still in draft form). This\nwill show up in the proceedings of the conference Peter May and I\nran last summer... when we finally get around to putting this proceedings\ntogether.\n\nSo, I\'m busy and mostly happy.\n\nI\'ll tackle your question about n-categories with duals in\na separate post - I have to hang up some laundry now, or I\'ll\nget in trouble.\n\n\n</UL></PRE></font></td></tr></table></BODY><HTML>');"> <IMG SRC=/images/buttons/ip.gif BORDER=0 ALIGN=CENTER ALT="View this Usenet post in original ASCII form">  View this Usenet post in original ASCII form </a></div><P></jabberwocky>In article <coisoa$207$1@news2.netvision.net.il>,
Squark <fiis5d@yahoo.com> wrote:

>Hey John, how are you?

Good! Busy! As you can see, I don't read newsgroups too often
anymore - I'm just now reading this post of yours dated December 1st!

I have been working with Toby Bartels, Urs Schreiber and a guy
named Danny Stevenson on categorified gauge theory. Danny is an
expert on gerbes who is teaching at UCR for a couple of years.
Urs will be visiting in February, and the bunch of us plan to
have some marathon sessions figuring stuff out. There are lots
of interesting ways this stuff shows up in string theory and the
loop approach to gauge theories (e.g. gravity).

This stuff is part of a bigger project of categorifying differential
geometry. I spent the fall finishing up a paper with my undergrad student
Aaron Lauda on categorified Lie groups, and a paper with my
grad student Alissa Crans on categorified Lie algebras. Annoyingly,
we proved that some of the most interesting categorified Lie algebras -
the ones related to central extensions of loop groups - don't come
from categorified Lie groups! This means our definition of
categorified Lie groups isn't general enough. A guy I know claims
to have solved this problem:

http://www.math.northwestern.edu/calendar/abstract.cgi?id=1104458415

so I'm curious to see what his solution amounts to.

Meanwhile, in the quantum gravity seminar this year we're talking
about 2d and 3d TQFTs and spin foam models:

http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/qg-fall2004/
http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/qg-winter2005/

and I have two grad students who plan to work on stuff like this -
Jeffrey Morton and Derek Wise. As part of this seminar I'm writing
a history of n-categories and physics (still in draft form). This
will show up in the proceedings of the conference Peter May and I
ran last summer... when we finally get around to putting this proceedings
together.

So, I'm busy and mostly happy.

I'll tackle your question about n-categories with duals in
a separate post - I have to hang up some laundry now, or I'll
get in trouble.

John Baez

Feb1-05, 01:31 PM

<jabberwocky><div class="vbmenu_control"><a href="jabberwocky:;" onClick="newWindow=window.open('','usenetCode','toolbar=no, location=no,scrollbars=yes,resizable=yes,status=no ,width=650,height=400'); newWindow.document.write('<HTML><HEAD><TITLE>Usenet ASCII</TITLE></HEAD><BODY topmargin=0 leftmargin=0 BGCOLOR=#F1F1F1><table border=0 width=625><td bgcolor=midnightblue><font color=#F1F1F1>This Usenet message\'s original ASCII form: </font></td></tr><tr><td width=449><br><br><font face=courier><UL><PRE>\n\nIn article <coisoa\\$207\\$1@news2.netvision.net.il>,\nSqua rk <fiis5d@yahoo.com> wrote:\n\n>John Baez wrote:\n\n>> The n-categories called "n-groupoids" magically know\n>> everything there is to know about homotopy theory,\n\n>That part I know...\n\n>> while those called\n>> "n-categories with duals" know everything there is to know about the\n>> topology of manifolds.\n\n>But how would this work? What are n-categories with duals anyway?\n\nWe don\'t know a general definition, but we have a good idea\nin low-dimensional cases. Consider the category Hilb, where the\nobjects are finite-dimensional complex Hilbert spaces and\nthe morphisms are linear operators. This category has a tensor\nproduct so we call it a monoidal category. In any monoidal category,\nwe can say what it means for an object to have a "dual". In the\ncase of Hilb, every object H has a dual H* - the dual Hilbert space.\nWe can also say what it means for a morphism to have a "dual". In\nthe case of Hilb, every morphism f: H -> H\' has a dual f*: H\' -> H -\nthe adjoint operator. So, we say our category has duals for objects\nand morphisms.\n\nInterestingly, the main source of monoidal categories with duals\nis topology: categories of cobordisms. This suggests an interesting\nrelation between quantum mechanics (which uses Hilb) and topology.\nIndeed, this relation is precisely what we exploit in topological\nquantum field theory! In fact, I claim it will eventually make a\nlot of mysteries in quantum theory seem less mysterious. The\nreason we find quantum theory mysterious is that it\'s based on\nmonoidal categories with duals, and these are fairly unfamiliar -\nUNTIL we start drawing pictures of cobordisms and see that they\nformalize simple ideas about spacetime topology!\n\nSo, I hope that quantum theory will become a lot clearer when we\nunify it with a theory of spacetime. I explain this hope in vastly\nmore detail here:\n\nhttp://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/quantum/\n\nNow, to make a little more progress in explaining n-categories\nwith duals, I should explain why they are a bit like n-groupoids,\nwhich are n-categories with inverses.\n\nTo start, let me explain why the dual of a finite-dimensional\nvector space, is similar to the inverse of a number.\n\nI assume you know that multiplying numbers is a lot like tensoring vector\nspaces. For example, just as multiplication distributes over addition,\ntensoring distributes over direct sums. Also, just as there is a number\ncalled 1 which is the unit for multiplication, there is a 1-dimensional vector\nspace, the ground field itself, which is the unit for tensoring. Let me\ntake the unusual liberty of writing tensor products by juxtaposition, so\nthat xy is the tensor product of the vector space x and the vector space\ny, and let me call the 1-dimensional vector space that\'s the unit for\ntensoring simply "1".\n\nNow, if a number x has an inverse y, we have\n\nyx = 1\n\nand\n\n1 = xy.\n\nSimilarly, if a vector space x has a dual y, we have linear maps\n\ne: yx -> 1\n\nand\n\ni: 1 -> xy\n\nWhat are these linear maps? Well, the whole point of the dual vector\nspace y is that a vector in y is a linear functional from x to 1.\nThis "dual pairing" between vectors in y and those in x defines a\nlinear map e: yx -> 1, often called the "counit". On the other hand,\nthe space xy can be thought of as the space of linear transformations of\nx. The linear map i: 1 -> xy sends any scalar (i.e., any vector in 1)\nto the corresponding scalar multiple of the identity transformation of\nx.\n\nSo we see that dual vector spaces are a bit like inverse numbers, except\nthat we don\'t have yx = 1 and 1 = xy, and we don\'t even have that yx is\n*isomorphic* to 1 and 1 is *isomorphic* to xy. We just have some maps\ngoing from yx to 1, and from 1 to xy.\n\nThese maps satisfy two equations, though. Here\'s the first. We start\nwith x, use the obvious isomorphism to map to 1x, then use i: 1 -> xy to\nmap this to xyx, then use e: yx -> 1 to map this to x1, and then use the\nother obvious isomorphism to map back to x. This composite of maps\nshould be the identity on x. What this says is that the identity linear\ntransformation of x really acts as the identity!\n\nWe can draw this as follows. Draw the counit e: yx -> 1 as follows:\n\ny x\n\\ /\n\\ /\n\\/\n\nand draw the unit i: 1 -> xy as follows:\n\n/\\\n/ \\\n/ \\\nx y\n\nThen the above equation says that\n\nx x\n/\\ | |\n/ \\ | |\n/ \\ | |\nx| y\\ x/ = |\n| \\ / |\n| \\/ |\nx x\n\nHere the left side, which we read from top to bottom, corresponds to the\ncomposite x -> 1x -> xyx -> x1 -> x. (The factors of 1 are invisible in the\npicture, since they don\'t do much.) The left side corresponds to the\nidentity map x -> x.\n\nThe second equation goes like this. We start with y, use the obvious\nisomorphism to map to y1, then use the unit to map this to yxy, then use\nthe counit to map this to 1y, and then use the other obvious isomorphism\nto map back to y. This composite should be the identity on y. What\nthis says is that the identity linear transformation of x also acts\ndually as the identity on y! We can draw this as follows:\n\ny y\n| /\\ |\n| / \\ |\n| / \\ |\ny\\ x/ y| = |\n\\ / | |\n\\/ | |\ny y\n\nIn general, whenever we have a monoidal category, we say an object\nx has a dual y when it\'s equipped with morphisms i: 1 -> xy, e: yx -> 1\nsatisfying these two equations - which are called the "zig-zag identities".\n\nYou can see already that curves in the plane give us an example of\na monoidal category where all the objects have duals.\n\nSo, you can begin to see the relation between monoidal categories\nwith duals and the topology of 1-dimensional manifolds embedded in\n2-dimensional space. This is the tip of an enormous iceberg called\nthe "tangle hypothesis", which is explained here:\n\nhttp://www.arxiv.org/abs/q-alg/9503002\n\nIn particular, if this hypothesis could be made precise, we would\nhave a completely algebraic description of smooth manifolds in terms\nof n-categories with duals. For some progress see this:\n\nhttp://www.arxiv.org/abs/math.QA/9811139\n\nwhich gives an algebraic description of 2-dimensional manifolds\nembedded in 4-dimensional space in terms of braided monoidal\n2-categories with duals.\n\n(Maybe you can already guess the pattern!)\n\nThere\'s a lot more to say but maybe this is a start.\n\n\n</UL></PRE></font></td></tr></table></BODY><HTML>');"> <IMG SRC=/images/buttons/ip.gif BORDER=0 ALIGN=CENTER ALT="View this Usenet post in original ASCII form">  View this Usenet post in original ASCII form </a></div><P></jabberwocky>In article <coisoa$207$1@news2.netvision.net.il>,
Squark <fiis5d@yahoo.com> wrote:

>John Baez wrote:

>> The n-categories called "n-groupoids" magically know
>> everything there is to know about homotopy theory,

>That part I know...

>> while those called
>> "n-categories with duals" know everything there is to know about the
>> topology of manifolds.

>But how would this work? What are n-categories with duals anyway?

We don't know a general definition, but we have a good idea
in low-dimensional cases. Consider the category Hilb, where the
objects are finite-dimensional complex Hilbert spaces and
the morphisms are linear operators. This category has a tensor
product so we call it a monoidal category. In any monoidal category,
we can say what it means for an object to have a "dual". In the
case of Hilb, every object H has a dual H* - the dual Hilbert space.
We can also say what it means for a morphism to have a "dual". In
the case of Hilb, every morphism f: H -> H' has a dual f*: H' -> H -
the adjoint operator. So, we say our category has duals for objects
and morphisms.

Interestingly, the main source of monoidal categories with duals
is topology: categories of cobordisms. This suggests an interesting
relation between quantum mechanics (which uses Hilb) and topology.
Indeed, this relation is precisely what we exploit in topological
quantum field theory! In fact, I claim it will eventually make a
lot of mysteries in quantum theory seem less mysterious. The
reason we find quantum theory mysterious is that it's based on
monoidal categories with duals, and these are fairly unfamiliar -
UNTIL we start drawing pictures of cobordisms and see that they
formalize simple ideas about spacetime topology!

So, I hope that quantum theory will become a lot clearer when we
unify it with a theory of spacetime. I explain this hope in vastly
more detail here:

http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/quantum/

Now, to make a little more progress in explaining n-categories
with duals, I should explain why they are a bit like n-groupoids,
which are n-categories with inverses.

To start, let me explain why the dual of a finite-dimensional
vector space, is similar to the inverse of a number.

I assume you know that multiplying numbers is a lot like tensoring vector
spaces. For example, just as multiplication distributes over addition,
tensoring distributes over direct sums. Also, just as there is a number
called 1 which is the unit for multiplication, there is a 1-dimensional vector
space, the ground field itself, which is the unit for tensoring. Let me
take the unusual liberty of writing tensor products by juxtaposition, so
that xy is the tensor product of the vector space x and the vector space
y, and let me call the 1-dimensional vector space that's the unit for
tensoring simply "1".

Now, if a number x has an inverse y, we have

yx = 1

and

1 = xy[/itex].

Similarly, if a vector space x has a dual y, we have linear maps

e: [itex]yx -> 1

and

i: 1 -> xy

What are these linear maps? Well, the whole point of the dual vector
space y is that a vector in y is a linear functional from x to 1.
This "dual pairing" between vectors in y and those in x defines a
linear map e: yx -> 1, often called the "counit". On the other hand,
the space xy can be thought of as the space of linear transformations of
x. The linear map i: 1 -> xy sends any scalar (i.e., any vector in 1)
to the corresponding scalar multiple of the identity transformation of
x.

So we see that dual vector spaces are a bit like inverse numbers, except
that we don't have yx = 1 and 1 = xy, and we don't even have that yx is
*isomorphic* to 1 and 1 is *isomorphic* to xy. We just have some maps
going from yx to 1, and from 1 to xy.

These maps satisfy two equations, though. Here's the first. We start
with x, use the obvious isomorphism to map to 1x, then use i: 1 -> xy to
map this to xyx, then use e: yx -> 1 to map this to x1, and then use the
other obvious isomorphism to map back to x. This composite of maps
should be the identity on x. What this says is that the identity linear
transformation of x really acts as the identity!

We can draw this as follows. Draw the counit e: yx -> 1 as follows:

y x
\ /\ /
\/

and draw the unit i: 1 -> xy as follows:

/\
/ \/ \
x y

Then the above equation says that

x x
/\ | |/ \ | |/ \ | |x| y\ x/ = || \ / || \/ |
x x

Here the left side, which we read from top to bottom, corresponds to the
composite x -> 1x -> xyx -> x1 -> x. (The factors of 1 are invisible in the
picture, since they don't do much.) The left side corresponds to the
identity map x -> x.

The second equation goes like this. We start with y, use the obvious
isomorphism to map to y1, then use the unit to map this to yxy, then use
the counit to map this to 1y, and then use the other obvious isomorphism
to map back to y. This composite should be the identity on y. What
this says is that the identity linear transformation of x also acts
dually as the identity on y! We can draw this as follows:

y y
| /\ || / \ || / \ |y\ x/ y| = |\ / | |\/ | |
y y

In general, whenever we have a monoidal category, we say an object
x has a dual y when it's equipped with morphisms i: 1 -> xy, e: yx -> 1
satisfying these two equations - which are called the "zig-zag identities".

You can see already that curves in the plane give us an example of
a monoidal category where all the objects have duals.

So, you can begin to see the relation between monoidal categories
with duals and the topology of 1-dimensional manifolds embedded in
2-dimensional space. This is the tip of an enormous iceberg called
the "tangle hypothesis", which is explained here:

http://www.arxiv.org/abs/q-alg/9503002

In particular, if this hypothesis could be made precise, we would
have a completely algebraic description of smooth manifolds in terms
of n-categories with duals. For some progress see this:

http://www.arxiv.org/abs/math.QA/9811139

which gives an algebraic description of 2-dimensional manifolds
embedded in 4-dimensional space in terms of braided monoidal
2-categories with duals.

(Maybe you can already guess the pattern!)

There's a lot more to say but maybe this is a start.

Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz

Feb4-05, 08:35 AM

<jabberwocky><div class="vbmenu_control"><a href="jabberwocky:;" onClick="newWindow=window.open('','usenetCode','toolbar=no, location=no,scrollbars=yes,resizable=yes,status=no ,width=650,height=400'); newWindow.document.write('<HTML><HEAD><TITLE>Usenet ASCII</TITLE></HEAD><BODY topmargin=0 leftmargin=0 BGCOLOR=#F1F1F1><table border=0 width=625><td bgcolor=midnightblue><font color=#F1F1F1>This Usenet message\'s original ASCII form: </font></td></tr><tr><td width=449><br><br><font face=courier><UL><PRE>\n\nIn <ctji0a\\$em9\\$1@glue.ucr.edu>, on 02/01/2005\nat 07:31 PM, baez@galaxy.ucr.edu (John Baez) said:\n\n>Consider the category Hilb, where the\n>objects are finite-dimensional complex Hilbert spaces and the\n>morphisms are linear operators.\n\n>This suggests an interesting\n>relation between quantum mechanics (which uses Hilb)\n\nTo a limited extent, e.g., for representations of spin, but most of QM\nuses infinite dimensional Hilbert spaces.\n\n--\nShmuel (Seymour J.) Metz, SysProg and JOAT <http://patriot.net/~shmuel>\n\nUnsolicited bulk E-mail subject to legal action. I reserve the\nright to publicly post or ridicule any abusive E-mail. Reply to\ndomain Patriot dot net user shmuel+news to contact me. Do not\nreply to spamtrap@library.lspace.org\n\n</UL></PRE></font></td></tr></table></BODY><HTML>');"> <IMG SRC=/images/buttons/ip.gif BORDER=0 ALIGN=CENTER ALT="View this Usenet post in original ASCII form">  View this Usenet post in original ASCII form </a></div><P></jabberwocky>In <ctji0a$em9$1@glue.ucr.edu>, on 02/01/2005at 07:31 PM, baez@galaxy.ucr.edu (John Baez) said:

>Consider the category Hilb, where the
>objects are finite-dimensional complex Hilbert spaces and the
>morphisms are linear operators.

>This suggests an interesting
>relation between quantum mechanics (which uses Hilb)

To a limited extent, e.g., for representations of spin, but most of QM
uses infinite dimensional Hilbert spaces.

--
Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz, SysProg and JOAT <http://patriot.net/~shmuel>

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