Science fiction, science fact, and misc wonders

Making a series of announcements can offer an excuse to slip in one extra posting, this month... so....

Here's a special offer for Hugo Award voters (and everybody else)! Baen's UNIVERSE Magazine has now posted my new novella "Shoresteading" (now available on my website for open-free access to anybody who wants to read a rollicking, near future adventure story, set in a world of rising seas, big ideas and strange hopes!

I provided the very first editorial for the newly launched site of SIGMA - the “think tank of scientific science fiction authors.” SIgma formalizes what has long been a practice at many government agencies of consulting SF writers about our area of most intense interest -- the future and processes of change. The theme of my editorial is one I have discussed before... the increasing brittleness of our civilization - one in which we depend ever-more upon a paint-thin layer of skilled professionals to anticipate and protect us from all possible dangers.  An approach that is fragile and deeply contrary to the American tradition.  We need to remember our roots, as a civilization that has always depended, also, upon resiliency.

Rounding out a list of “David Brin announcements...”

Starship Sofa has produced -- on its audio magzine Aural Delights a spoken version of my story “Temptation.” The narration is by Julie Davis. A story by Geoff Ryman makes the lengthy experience worthwhile.
   
The second part of “Temptation” is also up (1hr 20min in to the show). Part 3 will appear soon. (The text of the story Temptation is also available on my website.)

==OTHER INTERESTING ITEMS==

Toys of tomorrow! 

A fascinating epistemological analysis ‘The trouble with conspiracy theories’ by Edward Feser, addresses some of the matters I have raised before, e.g. the difficulty of recruiting - and maintaining loyalty from - skilled henchmen in any sort of large scale and ongoing/concealed betrayal of the proncipal belief systems that most of them were brought up in.  Neither Fesr nor I deny the existence of small scale conspiracies.  In fact, I believe he downplays conspiracies too much.

There are many logical holes in his neat refutation. For example, there are ways that  a tight-knit “inner conspiracy” of a few fanatics could control much larger groups who did not consciously think of themselves as committing a betrayal.  (Suppose, for example, just half a dozen blackmailed/suborned men held the highest offices in a nation; they could then appoint fools and delusionally partisan rationalizers into lower positions, who could then achieve high levels of damage without the ever becoming aware that they were doing so.  The same effect can be achieved through clever use of prodigious amounts of cash.)  Still, it is an interesting perspective.

Come to the San Diego Science Festival this year. 

Speaking of which, see a lovely essay about how the “rightful place” of science is not only in making better tools for a better world, but in teaching by far the highest moral values.

The color red can make people’s work more accurate, and blue can make people more creative.

Google Earth now lets you zoom around Mars.

Note the following might be claimed as a predictive hit on my part... even though some aspects of the reportage itself strike me as, well, a bit fishy. Researchers in Great Britain and the United States have imaged the first high definition imprints that dolphin sounds make in water. The resulting "CymaGlyphs" are reproducible patterns that are expected to form the basis of a lexicon of dolphin language, each pattern representing a dolphin "picture word."

The CymaScope captures actual sound vibrations imprinted in the dolphin's natural environment -- water, revealing the intricate visual details of dolphin sounds for the first time.  "There is strong evidence that dolphins are able to 'see' with sound, much like humans use ultrasound to see an unborn child in the mother's womb," said Florida based dolphin researcher Jack Kassewitz. "The CymaScope provides our first glimpse into what the dolphins might be 'seeing' with their sounds."  The CymaScope will be used to image the sounds so that each CymaGlyph will represent a dolphin "picture word." The ultimate aim is to speak to dolphins with a basic vocabulary of dolphin sounds and to understand their responses."

There is growing evidence that dolphins can take a sonic "snapshot" of an object and send it to other dolphins, using sound as the transmission medium, so the dolphin's primary method of communication may be picture based.

It sure SOUNDS like what I described many years ago....    (Alas, the link stopped working.  As I expected, it may have been too good to be true.)

See the web site of my friend and fellow author T. Jackson King, who has posted a cool variety of stories and chapters.

See an incredibly alien place on Earth

---
“A major Indian-German geoengineering expedition set sail this week for the Scotia Sea, flouting a U.N. ban on ocean iron fertilization experiments in hopes of garnering data about whether the process  actually does take carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere and sequester it in the deep ocean, a technique that may help reverse global warming.”  There are so many variables.  (1) I cannot believe that iron will do this all by itself.  Indeed, we should start by replicating nature and doing ocean fertilization by stirring up mud from the ocean bottom... exactly as I depicted in EARTH.  (2) One issue is iron-caused acidification.  (3) Also, could this stimulate more “desert ocean” areas to be useful fisheries?  By itself worth testing.  (4) There are also regions e.g in the Gulf of Mexico, that are dying of Eutrophy or too MUCH fertilizer washing in from farms up the MIssissippi.  In those cases, installing bubblers that inject air into the water might cause fisheries and CO2 absorption.”

China officially started construction of a Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical Telescope (FAST), the largest in the world, in a remote southwest region on Friday. Preparation and research for the project took some 14 years. The dish-like telescope, as large as 30 football fields, will stand in a region of typical Karst depressions in Guizhou Province when it's done in 2013.  FAST's main spherical reflector will be composed of 4,600 panels. Its observation sensitivity will be 10 times more powerful than the 100-m aperture steerable radio telescope in Germany. Its overall capacity will be 10 times larger than what is now the world's largest (300 m) Arecibo radio telescope developed by the United States, according to Nan Rendong, the chief scientist of the project and an NAO researcher

Mike Gannis stumbled on this Wikipedia entry for a clever but terribly meanspirited British “reality” show.

  As Stefan Jones pointed out: “We are as gods and might as well get used to it. So far, remotely done power and glory as via government, big business, formal education, church has succeeded to the point where gross obscure actual gains. In response to this dilemma and to these gains a realm of intimate, personal power is developing power of the individual to conduct his own education, find his own inspiration, shape his own environment, and share his adventure with whoever is interested. Tools that aid this process are sought and promoted by the WHOLE EARTH CATALOG." And now, they have finally put a lot of the WHOLE EARTH archives from 1968-1971 online.  Have a look at this marvel. Why, it's like finding out that people were trying hard to invent the internet before there were personal computers!  So far just a few of the articles are PDFs. But literally thousands of pages of the ginormous Whole Earth Catalogs and the various journals have been scanned in. Go flip through the first 20 or so pages of The Last Whole Earth Catalog; it's like finding a sub-index of the Encyclopedia Galactica.

I highly recommend looking at the site for Random Acts of Conditionless Kindness (RACK) offering ways to do little things that help a lot.

Bruce Willis’s film SURROGATES will appear in September.  “Set in a futuristic world where humans live in isolation and interact through surrogate robots, a cop (Willis) is forced to leave his home for the first time in years in order to investigate the murders of others’ surrogates.”  And yes, it does eat off the same plate as KILN PEOPLE... with also some resemblance to Asimov’s THE NAKED SUN.  Ah well.  I will forgive all if it turns out to be an actual original movie that’s smart and well done!  In this era when most studio execs should be shot for cowardice and lack of imagination, that’d be really something.

Researchers Evaluate Climate Cooling Potential of Different Geoengineering Schemes.

Among highlights:

*Existing activities that add phosphorous to the ocean may have greater long-term carbon sequestration potential than deliberately adding iron or nitrogen. COMMENT: Then farm fertilizer runoff may not be so bad?  Theplume of algae that is "killing the Gulf of Mexico" comes to mind.  Might such a site be the best place to seed iron, to try shifting the bloom from algae to plankton?  Or would such a plume better reach its potential by bubbling in air, so that anoxic conditions reverse and algae-eaters can then swoop in, turning the region into both a new fishery and a carbon sink?

* On land, sequestering carbon in new forests and as bio-char (charcoal added back to the soil) have greater short-term cooling potential than ocean fertilization as well as benefits for soil fertility.
-----
Interesting anti-cynicism from the Progressive Policy Institute:

In dollar terms, America's ties with poor nations span aid, charity, trade, and remittances. Government aid and private charity flows, at $22 billion and $9 billion, account for the least money but are essential in emergencies and can bolster public health, primary education, and other public services. Remittances are larger -- immigrants send at least $45 billion home from the United States each year  raising family incomes in rural districts and urban slums. Imports from low-income countries, excluding energy and goods from China, totaled $405 billion (or $35 billion per month) in 2007. This is a much larger figure than those for aid, charity and remittances, but complements rather than replaces them by supporting tens of millions of middle-class and lower-middle class urban jobs and raising farm incomes, in poor countries.

A quick table on the U.S. role in poor-country finance, excluding energy and China, as of 2007, finds the United States buying about a quarter of poor-country exports; providing a fifth of foreign direct investment, foreign aid, and remittances; and accounting for nearly two-thirds of charitable donations.

The World Bank defines "absolute poverty" as life on $1.25 a day or less (in constant 1993 dollars) and has estimated poverty rates on this basis back to 1981. In that year, 52 percent of the world's people were very poor. By 1990, the figure was 42 percent. In 2005, the most recent year available, only 25 percent of the world's people were very poor. East Asia recorded the most progress, with the absolute-poverty rate falling from 78 percent in 1981, to 55 percent in 1990, and 16 percent in 2005. In one generation, then, Asian poverty fell from the near-universal experience of life to the sad exception. Drops elsewhere in the world have been slower but real: Since 1981, Latin America has cut absolute poverty from 13 percent to 8 percent; India and its neighbors from 60 percent to 40 percent; the Middle East from 8 percent to 4 percent; Africa from 54 percent to 51 percent. In eight low-to-middle income countries without oil -- Chile, Jamaica, Mexico, Uruguay, Egypt, Jordan, Thailand, and Malaysia -- the absolute-poverty rate has fallen below two percent. Conclusion: if poor countries have good education, financial, infrastructure, anti-corruption, and other policies; if they are free of wars and coups; and if rich countries help through aid, trade and easy remittance, poverty often falls quickly and permanently.

        United States World Total

Goods imports*     $405 billion ~$1.8 trillion
Service imports     $71 billion ~$350 billion
Remittances**     $45 billion $248 billion
 investment     $41 billion $215 billion
Foreign aid     $22 billion $105 billion
Private charities     $9 billion $15 billion

* Excluding oil, gas, fuel and Chinese goods. With energy and China trade, the figure was $1.1 trillion.
** $248 billion in total

 The World Bank charts the decline of poverty, 1981-2005.

All right, that last excerpt was a bit long.  But it's thought provoking and suggests there still may be hope.

Invite the Filibuster!

Just a brief thought here.

Like anybody sensible, I have reservations about the great big Christmas Tree Stimulus Bill.  Half a dozen GOP senators are doing what the whole party ought to do, pointing out reasonable objections and negotiating about them in good faith.  Partly because there are still a few reasonable  Republicans in the Senate (gerrymandering has insured  there are almost none in the House) and in part because they were deputized to do so, by a party that knows what will happen, if they obstruct too much.

But a thought occurred to me that I must share (despite breaking my vow to limit political postings to a minimum.)  You see, there is a fascinating mythology going around. Everybody seems to think it's necessary for the Democrats to gather  a super-majority of 60 votes in the Senate, in order to pass legislation, because that is the number needed to invoke a motion of cloture, limit debate and terminate a fillibuster.  But consider underlying assumptions.

 First , that Republican party discipline will remain uncannily strong.  Second, that a filibuster of the Stimulus Bill comes without silver linings. Yes, party discipline is strong in a GOP that has been honed into an instrument of incredibly narrow dogmatism, especially in the House. But this runs counter to the country's mood, and may backfire.

Remember that a filibuster is - above all - an act of political theater. (Which is one reason Democrats used it so seldom during the Bush years.) In fact, it is a bluff.  If the majority ever called that bluff, the minority would have to maintain a tiring, round-the-clock tag team blather festival, in which elderly, bleary-eyed, elderly Southern senators would have to keep on talking and talking -- trawling for increasingly incoherent things to say in front of CSPAN cameras -- calling themselves "heroic" for standing up against legislation that has the backing of a popular president and a large majority of Americans.

And this is a losing situation for the Democrats... how? And who then gets the blame, with every bad piece of economic news?

There is something to be said for having the Dems deal with the filibuster threat right up front, by calling the Republicans' bluff.  Forcing the issue while the President is popular and the issues are stark would put the GOP on notice and also set the precedent that Obama is willing to face such threats down.

 Then, once this shiboleth is broken - and true to his nature -  let the President offer his hand.

Now is the winter of our discontent... made glorious summer by “that one” Barack....

Get it? Rolls off the tongue? Ah well.

Having cut back my political screeds to once a month - and maybe twice a month for other matters - let me start February's mensual political flashflood with....

1. THE OTHER “C-WORD”

In my previous missive, I remarked on how President Obama’s inaugural address proposed to “restore science to its proper place.” Signifying that we may (at long last) be departing a proudly know-nothing era.   Only later did I recall where I had seen a similar phrase:

Our countrymen have recovered from the alarm into which art and industry had thrown them; science and honesty are replaced on their high ground.
     - Thomas Jefferson, on entering office and repealing the Alien & Sedition Acts

Dang, is Obama mining everybody for ideas?  First Lincoln, then both Roosevelts, JFK, Reagan, Ike and now Jefferson?  Not that I’m complaining about the quality of his sources...

Also last time, I spoke of what I considered to be the most “telling” word in his speech - notable because he did not have to mention it.  Of course, I was glad to hear tolerance, responsibility, justice, progress, openness, accountability and so on, spoken with intense sincerity, for a change.  Other virtues, freedom and leadership, seemed to be rescued from the bizarre half-meanings they held in recent years.  Still, in a sense, he had to mention all of those.  But what sparked my interest was a word that nobody expected - and that would win no particular political or rhetorical points.  It was totally his own volition to include curiosity.  I suggested that this may reveal much about the man.

As a quick followup, before heading on to other matters in a long monthly compendium, I must turn from curiosity to the other “c-word” that lurks, like a ghost at the banquet. Almost diametrically opposite, this anti-virtue represents perhaps the worst trait of the awful gang who left our country such a shambles.  No, not “corruption” or “criminality” or “cretinous.” The worst Bush era anti-virtue was certainty.

The kind of absolute certainty manifested by a clade that demolished the very same Pax Americana they claimed to love, by pursuing, with absolute determination (plus contempt for all criticism) policies that proved to be at-best wrong, and often criminally delusional. Even the “reform minded” McCain-Palin ticket shared this strange and childish anti-value, stressing proudly, over and over, their perfection of will, an iron-jawed grit that arises straight from the gut, not out of any namby pamby enlightenment process of assertion, evidence, argument, negotiation or reciprocal accountability. A stubborn, schoolyard obstinacy that is elevated and extolled as something somehow admirable.

This, I believe, is the root cause of the situation that Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell bemoaned last week, in a blunt warning to Republicans: “We’re all concerned about the fact that the very wealthy and the very poor, the most and least educated, and a majority of minority voters, seem to have more or less stopped paying attention to us. And we should be concerned that, as a result of all this, the Republican Party seems to be slipping into a position of being more of a regional party than a national one.”

No doubt, in McConnel’s mind, the GOP “region” is geographical -- largely the South and the Mormon Belt.  But I think a map that would be even more telling is wherever towns and counties have seen their smartest young people move away, via university and profession, leaving behind those who feel viscerally abandoned, resentful and hurt.  I refer to Limbaugh-Land, where citizens have only limited access to diversity, or diverse opinions, but live instead immersed in media voices who preach nothing but indignant fury.  And if there is one thing about addictive indignation, we know that it flourishes best in an ambience of unswerving, unquestioned certainty.

Oh, there are some things in life that do merit gritty resolution. Love of family.  Loyalty. Freedom (in the true sense, and not reducing it to a tribal totem-slogan). Also courage, charity, and a willingness to keep fighting for a better world -- first through negotiation but also by confronting bona fide “evil-doers.”  Heck, I can go for all of that, and fie upon snooty/urban fools who sneer at such things, from an equally-flaky left!  We need to improve, a great deal!  But of all nations -- especially those that were ever tempted by great power -- none could ever brag of a higher ratio of goodness over villainy and error.

Anyway, wasn’t that supposed to be the purpose of Pax Americana?  Moreover, from the ecstatic worldwide reception given President BHO, perhaps people all over the world still feel that ought to be our role.  We may have one more chance to prove we deserve it for the crucial time that it takes to forge a grownup civilization.  Of that much, I feel certain.

Nevertheless, it’s become clear why right-wing “certainty” has such a grip, festering still, in at least a quarter of the nation.  It offers a clear and simple rebutal against those postgrad-educated folk who talk like they know so much -- and probably do -- but who are so superior and irritating.  After all, in Hollywood films, isn’t it the villain who goes on and on, in polysyllabic, explanatory monologues about how logical his plan is?  Until the hero -- Bruce Willis, or Sylvester or Arnold -- simply shouts “Oh, yeah?” and blasts the scoundrel with utter moral... certainty?

In other words, doesn’t this attitude resonate in American tradition?  Without it, might we long ago have tumbled into a different nightmare?  Technocracy, or rule by the smartypants? Ew!

During our present pendulum swing back toward sanity and calm thought, let’s remember that the know-nothings do have a complaint.  It is 95% crap, but we would be wrong to respond to their moronic contempt with a similar (if reciprocal)... certainty.


2.  AN ILLUSTRATION OF HOW BAD IT’S BEEN

Which leads me to an article published recently in the Wall Street Journal by Eliot A. Cohen, Condoleeza Rice’s foreign policy advisor, or the (supposedly) smart guy who guided the smart people who guided Pax Americana for all but two months (so far) of the 21st Century.  In “How Government Looks at Pundits” Cohen offered his list of reasons why government insiders have little patience or use for input from others, beyond the narrow circle of those who receive “three-to-six-inch-thick briefing books, every day.”

 On the discussion list of SIGMA (the “think tank of scientific science fiction authors”) several members were all-aflutter over how this splash of cold water should remind us outside consultants to keep our expectations low, no matter who is in power or what philosophies or personalities guide our myriad agencies.

Appalled at this complacent acceptance, I’m afraid I went a bit ballistic!  Nobody else seemed to recognize Cohen’s article as a lengthy and utterly horrific apologia by one of the chief architects of the demolition of the American Pax,. In-effect, a longwinded whine about how nobody but a uniform and self-referential ingroup should ever expect to be heeded.

In vain, I searched his article for any mention of processes that might track outcomes and/or re-appraise policies in light of predictive success or failure.  No mention of the pragmatic aim of finding people - both inside and outside of government - who happen to be right a lot and bringing them into the “briefing books” layer.  No interest - or curiosity - about how his own error-avoidance methods might improve.  Nor, of course, any awareness that the self-limiting perspective that he described might be a pathology. A perniciously destructive one, that merits correction by smart, sincere, skilled and patriotic people.

What I did find was the following especially bizarre excerpt:

”Do not prescribe a policy that the current group of officials cannot hope to implement because of who they are. I have had highly intelligent individuals -- including some with senior government experience -- sit in my office and lay out perfectly plausible policies that the current team, limited by time remaining in office, the pressure of competing and more urgent crises, and the all important mix of personalities, could never hope to put into effect. Moreover, core beliefs and style constrain policy makers profoundly. So don't ask them to do something outside their range of psychological possibility by, for example, proposing cold-eyed realpolitik to a band of idealists or vice versa.”

So, let me get this straight.  We are to be guided by a core “band” that steers the ship of state with gut-level certainty, while accepting no advice, no feedback or course-correction based on ongoing metrics, having culled themselves of not only diversity of philosophy, but any difference in personality?   As if any leader worth more than a bucket of warm seawater would not make sure to employ realists and idealists and all kinds that might both temper and challenge one another?  Questioning assumptions and seeking good ideas, whatever the source?

Reminder, this was the best and most highly-touted kind of “expert” that we got under Bush.  The very brightest of the brightest of those who have been ruling us, all but two months of the 21st century. With results and outcomes that are blatantly obvious to all.


3.  CAN WE BE MORE ROBUST?

What bothers me above all else?  I’ve raised it many times before, from Defense Department consultations to magazine articles -- the issue of fragility vs resilience, and how much less robust we’ve become.  Especially, my teeth ache over small tweaks of public policy that might address so many these manmade fralities and potential failure modes.  A few examples:

1) Reversing the inventory tax (e.g Thor Power Tools) into a mild inventory incentive could ease a curse that was bequeathed on us by the same MBA dunces who invented "efficient investment instruments."  I speak of "just-in-time" delivery practices that leave our industries and cities without any reserves, to keep us going in case of transport disruptions.  (Taxing inventory would seem to be especially unwise right now, when unsold goods are piling up at companies in delicate health.)

2) A minuscule tax on un-hardened electronics - something very small would do no harm but exert perpetual pressure on Intel, Ford etc to come up with chips and electronics that won't be fried by a simple EMP.

3) Require that all cell phones have a backup peer-to-peer, packet-based system, allowing simple text messages to leave an afflicted area, even when normal cell towers are down.  Thus empowering citizens to communicate, when they need it most.

4) Tax incentives for companies to sponsor CERT team (civil defense) training among employees and neighbors.

Those are just four (of many) relatively small "stitch in time" policy endeavors that could add robustness to society without costing much at all.

Here is another one from author Wil McCarthy: Adding some capacitance to the power grid would be a big deal, too. The  reason our current grid can't support more than about 10% wind power is because it's an LRC circuit with no C. The reason power failures can cascade out of control: same deal. The current system is very brittle. A power grid with distributed capacitance could, for example, go into a  "safe mode" where all the interconnects were severed either regionally,  locally, or even down the neighborhood level, and run independently for a few minutes (or even hours) while the problem is sorted out. The ability to break up the grid for even a few seconds would make it a lot less vulnerable to spikes, EMP, sabotage, etc. Why not pay property owners to house an ultracapacitor or battery bank, the same way cell phone companies pay for towers? For serious storage, you can even go to hydrolysis and fuel cells, although that's more hazardous and requires more infrastructure. I'm also a big fan of the Mormon practice of keeping a two-year supply of food on hand.


4. A SUGGESTION FOR DEALING WITH GOP TACTICS

Some of you have checked out my “100 unusual suggestions for the Obama Administration.”  Now here’s another.

 Facing Obama’s 70% approval ratings (the highest since Eisenhower), and especially after experiencing the President’s forthcoming and genial engagement, Congressional republicans are playing nice... verbally, that is. Said Mitch McConnell: "I know I'm speaking for every single member of our conference that we appreciated his coming up (to meet with Coingressfolk), and enjoyed the whole exchange." To some extent, Republicans -- along with the rest of the country -- may still be getting used to having a president who realizes Congress exists as an independent branch of the federal government, and not merely as a collection of 535 minor irritants to be alternately steamrolled or ignored. As another GOP aide joked, Obama paid more attention on Tuesday to House Republicans than George W. Bush did in most of the last eight years.

Alas, this did not extend to offering any support for the economic rescue package. (Which, frankly, has in it some items I would like to have seen the GOP members assertively and pragmatically bargain-down!  The aren’t always wrong, at the level of specifics.) The GOP members voted nay, as a bloc, in order to position themselves, in case BHO’s program fails.

One tactic the dems might try -- pass, by a narrow partisan majority, a bill without any GOP-loved sweeteners.  Then offer a vote on a replacement package that contains such sweeteners, but requiring a super-majority.  Let’s see if their business constituents will act swiftly to null out the political gamesmanship.


5. REMINDER OF RECENT ITEMS

Those who have been following my political commentaries know that I have long favored efforts to wean our more decent conservative neighbors away from their reflex-driven alliance with the kleptos and know-nothings who have hijacked their movement.  Conservatism, in its better form, deserves a place at the negotiating table, but it can only return to credibility if its saner members gather the courage and patriotism to do what democrats and liberals did in 1947 -- by cutting themselves off from monsters, dogmatists, troglodytes and a bona fide criminal gang.

And an older essay (still relevant).

Those interested in following up on this concept can find more grist for thought in "Building a Rhetorical Bridge To (and For) Reasonable Conservatives," by my colleague in the SIGMA think tank of scientific science fiction authors, Dr. Charles E. Gannon. Most insightful.

Ex GOP Congressman and Heritage Foundation co-founder Mickey Edwards writes about his realization that today’s neocon movement has abandoned Ronald Reagan’s version of conservatism -- along with Locke and Madison and any kind of common sense.  Of course, I’ve been long pointing out that it is much worse than that.  Today’s “conservatism” has betrayed - above all - Adam Smith and market capitalism.  Indeed, its central paradigm is to assist the quasi feudal crony-aristocratism that Smith despised as the worst and most consistent foe of market enterprise.

Somebody refer Mr. Edwards to my paper about the “miracle of 1947”? 


6. SATIRES

Atlas Shrugged Updated For The Current Financial Crisis. by Jeremiah Tucker

In The Know: Should The Government Stop Dumping Money Into A Giant Hole?


And now... although I have more items (a lot!) to offer, I’ll clip and offer them only to the die-hards among you!  By posting them below, under “comments.”  Some are cute or weird.  All political.

Above all, I am hoping that politics will simply matter less, real soon! I am tired of it.  I want civilization to consider politics just another problem solving tool, one among many, and no longer obsess on it, as (ironically) has been the case under the error... er, era... of the neocons.

Secret (and telling) words in the Inaugural Address

Even amid my pleasure and relief, that the moment had finally come,  I  felt compelled to examine Barack Obama's Inaugural Address, closely and critically.  If for no other reason, then to see if the new president would telegraph something different and revealing, about his underlying goals or character.  Some indicator that went beyond the expected eloquent platitudes, or reassuring words of determination and optimism.

Of course, those would have been enough for a good start. I was duly inspired by President Obama's call for a new spirit of purpose and idealism, evoking history and mission, duty and vision.  Indeed, I hope the speech moved all Americans, along with people around the world - even those whose guarded respect is as-yet tinged with suspicion.  Perhaps even grudging doubters will be swayed toward firmer feelings of appreciation, over the coming years, not only by words, or the skill and character of the Obama team, but also by events.   By the historical validation that is bestowed by great success. 

And yet, I don't feel compelled to write very much about those soaring themes and sentiments, all of which will be noted by others.  Instead, what I'll do - out of habit - is bring notice to a few side-glimmers and exceptional points that won't (I reckon) be mentioned by most pundits, or even historians.  

For example, it struck me that President Obama repeatedly called upon us to rise up as adults from the quagmire of dogma and culture war.  In order to do this, we'd have to do more than just listen to the angels of our better natures, or simply heed our high ideals.  Both in the campaign and on his first day in office, he emphasized the need to rediscover arts of negotiation and problem-solving. The calm pragmatism that undergirds all those lofty principles, without which they so easily dissolve into platitudes or self-righteous rationalizations. (As, indeed, the word "freedom" was cheapened in recent years, into a mere totem  for "my side.")

Other nations have known duty, honor, patriotism, self-sacrifice... and even freedom.  But it is the mix of those fine things with other ingredients -- with patience and craftsmanship, with both eager competition and willing cooperation, with reciprocal respect and healthy self-doubt -- that made our loftier ideals truly world-transforming.   And that notion of anchoring idealism in pragmatic action is the message that I felt through my bones - deeper than through my ears - during Barack Obama's inaugural address.

It was the same message that he pushed the day before, in dedicating Martin Luther King Day to practical public service. Do you want other examples?

"To those (overseas) who cling to power through corruption and deceit and the silencing of dissent, know that you are on the wrong side of history; but that we will extend a hand if you are willing to unclench your fist."

How simple an offer, based upon a clearcut image of cause-and-effect.  Then came a sentence that both rebuked the recent past and expressed far greater confidence in us than we have seen expressed (alas) by recent leaders:

"As for our common defense, we reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals."

Of course you'll recognize a central theme of my book The Transparent Society: Will Technology Make Us Choose Between Privacy and Freedom? And especially since the dire events of 9/11, as I kept hoping (and preaching) that Americans should reject the dismal and insipid "devil's dichotomy" we were constantly offered for eight years, as fools demanded that we trade-off between two things we cannot live without.

Those two passages were certainly noted by others. Moreover, without question, President Obama had to say them, whether or not he meant quite the emphasis that I perceived. 

 But two other paragraphs contained - tucked within - what I feel are vital hints to Barack Obama's character and agenda.  Because they are things he did not have to say.  Very few of the two million people attending in Washington, or close to a billion watching around the world, will remark upon them.  But I suggest that you do.

"We will restore science to its rightful place, and wield technology's wonders to raise health care's quality and lower its cost. We will harness the sun and the winds and the soil to fuel our cars and run our factories. And we will transform our schools and colleges and universities to meet the demands of a new age."

Yes, yes.  Education, sustainability, health, plus the new technologies that may not only help save the nation and planet, but also kick-start the next economic boom, in much the same way that our government's internet research sparked the last one... all of that was profoundly welcome, and expected.  But to put science first, ahead of all the others, and thus signaling it's "rightful place," struck me deeply.  This is one lawyer who knows that good decisions cannot be based upon incantations, but must ultimately depend on actual, honest-to-God facts.

We have had enough of leaders who arrogantly believed that all you need to govern is one thing, a powerfully certain and egotistically subjective force of will.

But then, it can be argued that Obama also "had to" mention science, after all the travesties of recent years.  Perhaps that, too, was no surprise. Or I may be reading too much into it. So let me reach deeper for my final clue.

"Our challenges may be new. The instruments with which we meet them may be new. But those values upon which our success depends - hard work and honesty, courage and fair play, tolerance and curiosity, loyalty and patriotism - these things are old. These things are true. They have been the quiet force of progress throughout our history. What is demanded then is a return to these truths. What is required of us now is a new era of responsibility - a recognition, on the part of every American, that we have duties to ourselves, our nation, and the world, duties that we do not grudgingly accept but rather seize gladly, firm in the knowledge that there is nothing so satisfying to the spirit, so defining of our character, than giving our all to a difficult task."

Did you see it?  The word he did not have to mention?  And hence, one that he chose to insert, simply because he thought it important?

It is an under-rated word, though in some ways deeply sacred, since it represents a deep and profoundly American value -- one that stands behind our greatest achievements and underpins our loftiest ambitions.  Yes, all the other values that he listed in that paragraph are profound and vital.  But the one that caught and briefly transfixed me is a crucial, though oft-forgotten trait that makes us at-once both wondrously childlike and yet also mature, in the best sense of the word.

Mature enough to ask that precious question (the foundation of true science) "what if I am wrong?" The question that we have learned - the hard way - leads to wisdom, justice, self-discovery, empathy, humility, and incremental progress.

Look again.  It is the one word that you never heard used to describe the dismal bunch who have finally departed and who will not be missed.  Even though, crossing all party lines, it once applied - and may yet again - to broadminded conservatism, as much as it does to liberals.

 The new president did not have to mention it.  But he did.  And that one word -- tucked in among so many fine phrases -- tells us plenty. It shows that he wants not only to preside and rule.  He wants to learn.

 =======

My 100 "Unusual Suggestions for America and the Obama Administration" are posted.  If you find any of them unique or worthwhile, feel free to spread word. Or join the discussion.

Meanwhile, here's to hope, confidence, and a renaissance.

David Brin

http://www.davidbrin.com

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Political "Suggestions" to a New Administration posted...

My Unusual Suggestions for America and the Obama Administration are now posted...so please now spread the word!!!

One benefit of "change" is my fond hope that politics will be less important in coming years, letting folks like you and me relax enough to go back to stimulating the world with great projects and keen ideas! 

But first, let me announce that the series  of "unusual proposals" that I ran here - important ways that both the new president and the people might make things better - is now conveniently gathered and presented in a clear way. (With deep gratitude to our charismatic and highly skilled webmaster, Beverly Price!)

It seems everybody has "suggestions" for Barack Obama and an incoming emergency Government of National Sanity. My own list includes some sure to be so unusual, even you brainiacs haven't seen them before. Crackpot? Well, yes, some of them. (I'd hate to disappoint, after all ;-)  
But different. Guaranteed.

The other posting I want to announce carries forward a theme of mine... that a main political goal should not be to "crush conservatism" (that will only help Karl Rove maintain his unholy alliance), but to show decent conservatives how their movement has been hijacked by monsters... and thus break up a bizarre coalition that transformed the GOP into a modern Know Nothing Party.

(Hint: to do that, try showing your neighbors that change is needed, even from a decent conservative perspective.)

One allegory that I offer concerns a strange event that happened sixty years ago -- the Miracle of 1947 -- when liberals and Democrats went through a wrenching, painful self-transformation, similar to what decent, patriotic conservatives should do, in 2009.

Thus, we may win the greatest victory of all, one not of parties or single points of view, but of reason and pragmatism over an insane Culture War that has poisoned a once great nation.  Well, one can dream.

And now -- putting faith in people, nation, civilization, more than any one man (but hoping for him, too) -- let me shout -- enough #*$#! politics!

Back to the future!

  ===   === 

David Brin

 Visit me via:  http://www.davidbrin.com


PS... this was a LOT of work!! You folks helped and devoted time too.

Please do find ways to circulate the concepts. Especially, if any volunteers want to cross post at change.gov? ???

Me? I promised. Fiction. Must ... write... fiction...

A must see article

Yowch -- (and echoing some of my recent "Economic Suggestions" -- here is an absolute essential.

Eight Years of Madoffs: How American taxpayers lost $50 billion: "our collective contribution to the $117 billion spent (as of mid-2008) on Iraq reconstruction -- a sinkhole of corruption, cronyism, incompetence and outright theft that epitomized Bush management at home and abroad."

By FRANK RICH
in the New York Times

On TV again... and a sweep of "stuff"

Seems I’ll be on the telly again. The two-hour special “First Apocalypse” aka “What Really Killed the Dinosaurs” is scheduled to air on Wednesday, January 07 @ 09:00 PM on History (please check your local listing)They put an hour of my blather in the can, but you never know how much they'll use.

Starship Sofa has produced -- on its audio magzine Aural Delights a spoken version of my story “Temptation.” The narration is by Julie Davis. A story by Geoff Ryman makes the lengthy experience worthwhile. Parts 2 & 3 will appear soon.

Anybody care to gather all three parts into a single audio file?

Again, in order to see several of my recent novellas, subscribe to Universe Magazine... Type in coupon code EE329517B2 - which is good for $5 off any subscription!

FROM HERE ON... it’s all just accumulated stuff... that I am clearing out of a file and not preparing at all. (Posting it all now because of the TV announcement.)

My science predictions, submitted to SEED magazine: “Efforts to recreate extinct species, like mammoths or Neanderthals, with be stymied as we learn the egg -- the reader-translator -- is as important as the DNA code. Cosmologists will admit “the Big Bang was an actual explosion (with a center), after all...” and then they’ll change their minds again. SETI will shift from expensive arrays that sift for aliens in the frequency domain, to thousands of backyard radio telescopes that cover the whole sky. Amateur science will grow important as millions of private sensors join together in ad hoc networks that become indispensable to governments, corporations and specialists”

A lot of speculations are gathered at John Brockman's EDGE site. A majority are a bit tedious, predictable and utterly tied to the writer's specific agenda. But a few stood out. Howard Garner, Stuart Kaufman, Shermer, Metzinger. Kelly and both Dysons.

An excellent overview of the multiverse concept as it applies to the anthropic principle and the cosmic “coincidence numbers.”

I am among several score experts, futurists and pundits who were interviewed for a new report issued by the Pew Internet & American Life Project, to assess predictions about technology and its roles in the year 2020. The report entitled "Future of the Internet III" is built around respondents' responses to scenarios stretching to the year 2020, and hundreds of their written elaborations address such topics as: the methods by which people will access information in the future; the fact that technology is expanding the potential for hate, bigotry and terrorism; the changes that will occur in human relationships due to hyper-connected communication; the future of work and employer-employee relationships; the evolution of the tools for and use of augmented reality and virtual reality; the strength of respondents’ concerns that the global corporations and governments currently in control of most resources might impede or even halt the open development of the internet; and the challenges to come as issues tied to security, privacy, digital identities, tracking and massive databases collide.

From my friend Mark Frazier: Openworld has to do with mobilizing some of the currently highly limited well of philanthropic sources to empower people at grass-roots levels for purposes of self-organization using (for example) the cell phones that are becoming ubiquitous even in the developing world. “Openworld has mapped ways for transparency-enhancing reforms to awaken human capital and dormant land values for community uplift...” Also worth mentioning is the entrepeneurial schools endeavor. One appraoch maps a self-funding path way for microvouchers to bring aspiring talent online, and map out self-organizing alternatives to the status quo, in part by giving poor but bright kids internet-mediated tasks that they can perform for both pay and experience. “We'll be glad to sponsor some microscholarships for students at entrepreneurial schools in poor communities to do web research, translation,or other work-study projects.” Anybody out there have any tasks you'd like to send their way? I love it and deeply respect the effort.
entrepreneurialschools.com. www.Openworld.com

One of you wrote in about a single celled organism, a distant relative of microscopic amoebas, the grape-sized Gromia sphaerica. At up to three centimeters (1.2 inches) in diameter, they're also enormous compared to most of their microscopic cousins.

Read about the Science & Entertainment Exchange. From my own experiences in Hollywood, let me say it's about time! I hope it does some good.

A mile and a half (two and a half kilometers) underwater, a remote control submersible's camera has captured an eerie surprise: an alien-like, long-armed, and—strangest of all—"elbowed" Magnapinna squid.

The illusion of body-swapping -- making people perceive the bodies of mannequins and other people as their own -- has been achieved by Swedish neuroscientists.
In one experiment, the team fitted the head of a mannequin with two cameras connected to two small screens placed in front of volunteers' eyes, so that they had the same view as the mannequin.
When the mannequin's camera eyes and a participant's head were directed downwards, the participant saw the mannequin's body where the person would normally have seen their own body.
The researchers created the illusion of body-swapping by touching the stomach of both the mannequin and the volunteer with sticks. The person saw the mannequin's stomach being touched while feeling (but not seeing) a similar sensation on their own stomach. As a result, the person developed a strong belief that the mannequin's body was actually their own.

"This shows how easy it is to change the brain's perception of the physical self. By manipulating sensory impressions, it's possible to fool the self not only out of its body but into other bodies, too," project leader Henrik Ehrsson, of the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, said in a news release.

See a lively and interesting tour comparing modernist images to sci fi images by artist John Powers at:

A LIST OF WORTHWHILE LINKS:

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=robot-cartoons-cute

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/pf/98196571.html

http://blog.wired.com/cars/2008/11/in-north-americ.html

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v4ijDlbvAxw

http://www.wired.com/wired/issue/found

Moving? Be sure to pick up a map of natural hazards in your new 'hood.

See a spectacularly interesting lecture by multiple entrepreneur Steve Blank, at the Computer History Museum, about how Silicon Valley got its start.... earlier than you’d think!

See the origins of the name R2D2... in Bell Labs of all places!

Apple computer was invented in a garage. Same with the Google search engine. Now, tinkerers are working at home with the basic building blocks of life itself. Using homemade lab equipment and the wealth of scientific knowledge available online, these hobbyists are trying to create new life forms through genetic engineering — a field long dominated by Ph.D.s toiling in university and corporate laboratories. In her San Francisco dining room lab, for example, 31-year-old computer programmer Meredith L. Patterson is trying to develop genetically altered yogurt bacteria that will glow green to signal the presence of melamine, the chemical that turned Chinese-made baby formula and pet food deadly.So far, no major gene-splicing discoveries have come out anybody's kitchen or garage. But critics of the movement worry that these amateurs could one day unleash an environmental or medical disaster. Defenders say the future Bill Gates of biotech could be developing a cure for cancer in the garage. Many of these amateurs may have studied biology in college but have no advanced degrees and are not earning a living in the biotechnology field. Some proudly call themselves "biohackers" — innovators who push technological boundaries and put the spread of knowledge before profits.


AND NOW THE REMINDER. IF I POST HERE MORE THAN TWO OR THREE TIMES A MONTH... KICK ME! AND DO NOT EXPECT TO SEE ME UNDER COMMENTS. I AM TRYING TO BUCKLE DOWN AND WRITE!

Suggestion #20: Seek ways to end Culture War

Let’s finish this series of “Unusual Suggestions for America and the Obama Administration.”  with the one that is simplest and most basic. Something that seems so easy and wise, you really have got to wonder why it hasn’t already been done.  Or at least tried.

Let me lay it on the line. We have one priority, above all others, because solving it will unleash our native aptitude at fixing every other problem. That priority is to cure the sickness that is eating away at the guts and marrow of the greatest nation in history.  The nation that Jean Francois Revel called the “best hope” for the “best kind of human revolution.”  The kind of revolution that leads us to far higher horizons and to becoming better people, all around the world.

That priority is to put a stop to the treason that is called “culture war” and get us back to talking to one another again, as grownups.

President Obama can only play an important role in this endeavor.  Most of the heavy lifting must be done by us, in shaking off simplistic dogmas, in re learning the arts of negotiation. In rediscovering that skill and ingenuity and goodness are more important than celebrity or cash. Insisting that both we and our neighbors cut out the sick habit of outrageous indignation, an addiction that makes fools of us and strawmen of our opponents.

Nevertheless, President Obama will be the most important single individual.  And so, I want to conclude with a sincere suggestion to him.  It isn’t anything huge, just a gesture. Something simple, easy and cheap, but offering profound resonance, perhaps setting a tone that would ring across the land.  I have proposed this idea before: Honoring the Losing Majority. Here it is one more time.

---Honoring (and winning over) the losing side ---

What does “majority rule” mean? Suppose your candidate wins by close to a 60/40 vote margin. You can call that a solid victory, in modern political terms. But it still means that four in ten voting citizens did not want your guy in office. To that forty percent, the word "mandate" translates as -- drop dead!

Might there be some way to acknowledge the losing minority? One that both lessens their sense of humiliation, and making them more willing to accept that the winners really do mean well?  Imagine our new President making the following pledge:

"I now ask my honorable opponent in the recent election -- Senator McCain -- to help pick a panel of Americans who are well-outside my normal political or social circle.  In this case, I’d like him to help fill it especially with many varied types of “conservatives.”

“This panel will have one power.  Except during periods of crisis, they will get control over my appointment calendar one afternoon per month. On that afternoon, I’ll meet with -- and listen to -- individuals or delegations beyond my regular horizon.  In this small way, I hope Americans of all persuasions will feel just a little more sure that I do not live in a tower of ideological isolation, but that I stand ready to hear diverse -- even dissenting -- points of view."

Such a pledge would cost Barack Obama little to make or to fulfill. There is no obligation to act on what the delegations say, only to be accessible, listening occasionally to more than one ideology. More than one brain trust of cloned advisors. Indeed, the legitimacy of an administration will be enhanced if we see the president receive articulate, passionate emissaries, representing diverse opinions and walks of life.

(In fact, what better way to contrast his administration vs the Bush-Cheney era?)

  --- A return to our traditions ---

During the first era of our republic, private citizens used to knock on the door of the White House and ask to see their nation's leader. As recently as the time of Harry Truman, there was a slim chance of seeing the president somewhere in public, buying socks for real, not as a publicity stunt. Not thronged by photographers and Secret Service agents. There is genuine peril in losing this connection between power and everyday life.

If today's president cannot safely venture among us, representatives of sundry outlooks should have a route to him or her. With this precedent set, not just public figures, but individuals from the ranks of the poor and dispossessed might win a chance to plead their case before the highest official in the land.

Moreover, this would give those tens of millions who lost the election something. A token perhaps.  But far more than they expect. A gesture of respect. A vow to listen.

--------

And that concludes this series. (See the beginning of Unusual Suggestions to the Obama Administration)

I will post the entire series at: http://www.davidbrin.com/labor.html

I am proud to live in an era and a nation where a fellow like me -- notoriously outspoken and contrarian -- has the means and opportunity to voice proposals that range from mundane to ingenious to outright crackpot.  We all have to offer what we can, in order to keep momentum going, in this, the greatest of all human renaissance eras.

Final note:.... I have vowed to deeply REDUCE blogging, limiting myself to maybe two postings per month.  (Except for quickie news flashes.)  In fact, those who really care or admire me at all will help me keep to this promise!

Of course, this fond hope is based on a fervent wish and prayer that this nation, civilization, species has a good year ahead, a steady climb toward wisdom...

...as I hope and pray for you, in the year and years ahead.

======

Suggestion #19: Consider a few CRACKPOT ITEMS

Concluding this series of “unusual suggestions for America and the Obama Administration.)”   I will offer a list of notions that are even more unusual -- some possibly borderline strange -- befitting a guy who earns his living partly from sci fi!

Then I’ll finish with a final suggestion --something that is just plain wise.

---- First Crackpot Item ---

Are you sick of the way the Loony Right keeps dodging and weaving and shifting ground?  They do this in part to dazzle and distract the Decent Conservatives of America from noticing that their hijacked movement is no longer about facts, but two decades of bizarre stories and never-fulfilled predictions. Disprove one and it is always replaced by new stories, new distractions. Examples from a vast bestiary:

- “Supply side gifts and tax breaks for the rich won’t worsen deficits, but will erase them! It will stimulate the economy and lessen social gulfs, rather than widen them!”  (A thirty year experiment, decisively disproved.)

 - “Saddam has weapons of mass destruction... no, that wasn’t our reason for going in, at all!  It was ties to terror! No, it’s nation-building! Did we once call ‘nation-building’ stupid? Us?  Never!”

 - “Just you wait: the Clintons will be proved corrupt traitors and murderers, just as soon as decent republicans control the Justice Department and open all the files! And whenever you prove one allegation false, I’ll hurl others!”  (Hint: after 14 years, not one Clinton official has ever even been indicted for a single crime-of office. Not one. Ever.)

I could go on, ad infinitum, and most of you are already familiar with this tidal wave of nonsense.  But the key point here is not to indict the Right for being wrong a lot! The public has already awakened to that fact.  Rather, it is to express awe toward the neocon spinmeisters, who can veer and gyre with stunning agility, spewing story after story to keep their base in a culture-war rage, without ever proving even one of their tales.

Hence, my first crackpot suggestion:

Make wagers!  I have experimented with this method and it really does work.  Every time my gopper pals come up with yet another story -- about Obama’s nefarious background or his plans to confiscate all private firearms -- I dare them to lay money on the line.  To back their certainty and bluster with guts and cash!

“If you’re so certain about this,” I demand, “then give me odds!  It should be easy money for you.”

Watch how fast they backpedal!  Oh, how I wish I had done this over their supply side predictions, their UN “black helicopters”, their Vince Foster inanities, and so many other fabulations.  Make it a matter of both currency and courage!  Demand that they back up their slanders and fictions, like men.  Or else, calm down and earn some credibility, for a change.  (Again, I have found this really does work.  I’ve not only forced friends to take some deep breaths and back off... but also made some nice wads of cash, when they foolishly agreed!)

(Added note: every time I hear someone yatter nonsense about doomsday in the year 2012, I demand a bet!  You should too!  Think about how it’s a total win-win!)

---- A related matter: take credit! ---

     The most agile thing the democrats could do is to make explicit that free enterprise works better when they rule. In fact, everything conservatives should want does better, including reduced premarital sex, STDs, domestic violence and even abortion.

So?  Time to get aggressive. Attack the right’s rationalizations and fictions.  For example, under Jimmy Carter, capital gains taxes went from 49% to 24%, far more of a tax cut than under Reagan. Carter did more and far better deregulations of unwarranted government meddling in markets, even while adding much-needed government efforts in energy, that would have borne fruit by now, if Reagan hadn’t gelded them.  Just one Carter reform, allowing pensions to invest 10% in Venture funds, is credited with stimulating the Silicon Valley boom that gave us the prosperous nineties. (Note my special trick here. Every criterion I have chosen is one that conservatives supposedly care about! In fact, liberals and moderates should always do this - point out that conservative Americans should despise conservative leaders and the GOP and prefer the democrats... entirely in conservative terms!)

Above all, pound home the correlations that can no longer be denied.  Except under Eisenhower, and a couple of years of Reagan, things generally go far worse under republican rule than when dems are in charge.  Fight “stories” with facts..

----- Launch a peace and love offensive aimed at Tehran. ---

     Think Nixon-to-China.  The Iranian people are ready.  At least the students and urban folk are, plus several million expatriates. All intelligence info and polls show that they are sick and tired of the mullahs and only Condi Rice’s incessant saber rattling has sufficed to drive them into the arms of the islamists time and again.  In fact, nothing terrifies the mullahs more than an American charm offensive... starting with the one thing that the Iranians have demanded since 1979 -- an apology for the Shah.  (What would it cost us?)

Timed and phrased right, this can be done without sacrificing US honor or prestige... and might even help the moderate, Khatami, get back into power. And if we’re snubbed?  It will hurt us HOW, to be seen earnestly trying for friendship?

 Only remember who you’ll cross if you do this!  Not only the mullahs, but the Saudis, as well.  The reason they ordered Condi’s saber-rattling is clear.  Fear of a restored friendship between America and Iran.

------  States rights. ---

 Why didn’t even one democrat raise this issue?  When every republican effort in this century seemed aimed at concentrating power in an imperial presidency?   Oh, meanwhile, collect all the Cheney-isms about how the Presidency is answerable to nobody, and hurl them in the neocons’ faces.  Without, that is, actually using their awful rationalizations.

And now, just to prove that I’m not biased in favor of the (fictitious) “left”... here’s a far more “rightward” (but reasonable) crackpot item from my 2006 “Suggestions to Congress" article.  

--- Steal and co-opt the "good parts" of gingrich's  "Contract With America" ----

    Wait! Don't leave! Please stop and think about it. What deed could possibly embarrass the GOP more than pointing out half a dozen solemn promises from the "contract" that Republicans betrayed?  Here are the “good parts” of that Contract that the GOP never kept..

- requiring all laws that apply to the country also apply to Congress;
 - arranging for regular audits of Congress for waste, fraud or abuse;
 - limiting terms of committee chairs and party leadership posts;
 - banning the proxy votes in committee and law-writing by lobbyists;
 - requiring committee meetings to be open & public;
 - guaranteeing honest accounting of our Federal Budget.

Really, who could object to these items? Indeed, what could be a more powerful blow to the GOP than to remind Americans of these broken promises... and then for Democrats to fulfill them at long last? (While mocking the “bad” parts of the Contract, that were fulfilled.)

Indeed, just the right olive branches may lure the “decent conservatives” out there to finally perform their own “miracle of 1947” and cut off their unholy alliance with kleptos and troglodytes.  It seems worth a gesture or two!

---- Do something about the prisons ----

   Now, veering “left” again... (actually, staying “sensible”), let’s fix the absurd fact that the USA has by far the highest percentage of its population behind bars.  Far more that Cuba or China or Russia.  Of course this is related to the absurd Drug War and so, finding some reasonable “medical” solution to personal drug use would seem to make sense.  One example: perhaps half of our prisoners might better be declared semi-competent wards of the state who must check in weekly to clinics, while living at home and working -- or possibly getting clean at voluntary conservation camps -- rather than costing us millions to incarcerate.  I don’t have any perfect answer.  But, what we’re doing is wrong.

--- Initiate a discussion about the future of capitalism. 

    Among possible reform topics that would not disrupt our creative markets, but possibly prod them back toward sanity:

- Does the present “C Corporation” - an immortal entity with most of the rights of a human being, but very few of the responsibilities - need some tweaking or revision? So that “success” is rewarded across decades, and not by maximizing stock price peaks for insider sales? Or so that the minimal conscience of a normal person can be expected or demanded?  See also the concept of the “B Corporation.”

 - Revise “corporate democracy” to reward involved, long-term stockholders and limit the power of passive proxies.  Consider a transaction tax to limit volatility and to control a “churn-hungry” financial caste.

 - Sharply limit the recent abuse of interlocking corporate directorates, with a narrow CEO clan of golf buddies voting each other vast compensation packages in the most outrageous racket ever seen.  (Think about it. If CEO compensation truly were “competitive,” then these high salaries would have -- by natural capitalist incentive -- drawn fresh supplies of managerial talent toward the field! Till the price of good managers fell back down again. That’s something called -- capitalism. In other words, every excuse for these “incentive packages” boils down to anti-market hypocrisy.)

 - Ban the undergraduate business major?  I am only partly joking or exaggerating about this one.  We have been very badly served by an “MBA caste” made up of people who think that the purpose of companies is to give them papers and money and people to shuffle around, while charging commission on each shuffle.  Hypocrites on the right think this is solely a crime of government, but it is in the corporate world that locust swarms of bureaucrats have taken over, thinking they are geniuses because they vote each other bonuses.  Would it hurt for every member of the managerial caste to have at least once been required to make a product or deliver an actual service, so they might remember what market capitalism is supposedly for?

---- Let’s finally find out who owns what!  ----

    I’ve mentioned this before, but it seems crucial.  Instead of seeking to raise taxes or more socialist interventions, we should respond to the recent kleptocratic raid by demanding that the present laws, taxes and markets be allowed to work!  And one thing would help above all, revealing who owns what and where all the money is.”

The only people who ought to fear this are crooks and tax evaders. Moreover, the billions that could be reclaimed from them might not only erase deficits but even let tax rates fall, for honest men and women.  It is called transparency, economists (even right wing ones like Hayek) know it is the fundamental element needed for markets to function, and it could be radically better than it is.  And if transparency becomes radically better, ironically, it could stave off many forms of radicalism.  (Conservatives who oppose this, again, are the most fragrant hypocrites.)

Oh, while we’re at it... at long last, call in the greenback!  Every other major country has replaced its currency by now, with important positive effects for honest taxpayers.  The rationalizations being offered by opponents - who claim the greenback is forever special, different, and sacred - are getting ridiculous and awfully long in the tooth.

---- Create a whistleblowers/predictions registry!----

    The intelligence communities, the economic bureaucrats, the professionals of all stripes, keep promising that they are on top of things.  That they can anticipate what’s coming.  But every year, we hear of people who were right in the past, yet ignored.  In the 1980s, one fellow forecast the S&L crisis.  Did he rise in influence after?  In the 1990s, another warned repeatedly that Orange County would go bust.  What about those who said Saddam would invade Kuwait in 91? Or that there were no WMDs in 2002?  Or take this example:

His repeated warnings that Wall Street money manager Bernard Madoff was running a giant Ponzi scheme have cast Harry Markopolos as an unheeded prophet.

But people who know or worked with Markopolos say it wasn't prescience that helped him foresee the collapse of Madoff's alleged $50 billion fraud. Instead, they say diligence and a strong moral sense drove his quixotic, nine-year quest to alert regulators about Madoff.  Markopolos waged a remarkable battle to uncover fraud at Madoff's operation, sounding the alarm back in 1999 and continuing with his warnings all through this decade. The government never acted, Madoff continued his ways, and people lost billions.

Some modest strides toward prognostication-accountability are coming, through the new field of prediction markets.  Some intelligence agencies are making timid steps. But this is an area we simply have to get far better-at, and fast!  This isn’t the place for details, but I raise some intriguing possibilities elsewhere. http://www.davidbrin.com/predictionsregistry.html

--- Let’s talk about Privatized Force... ---

   Blackwater in Iraq is just the tip of the iceberg.  More and more, aspects of security, and even justice, are being diverted into secretive and unaccountable private hands. sometimes featuring terrible abuses, as happened during Hurricane Katrina.  This is an ancient pattern going back to before history began, and we re enter the Mercenary Era at great risk.

Even if we put aside moral implications, there are historical dangers: Mercenaries inherently do not want to solve problems completely, but rather to maintain ferment as a source of demand for lucrative services. Quiet-calm-efficient means of achieving national goals get replaced by noisy-frenetic-inefficient ones that offer opportunities for parasitism. The power of prison guard unions illustrates what can happen when this becomes a full-scale political constituency.

--- ...and the privatized sky ---

    Anyway, the rich are already abandoning us to our fates, in the deteriorating airports and airlines, fleeing from First Class into charters and corporate jets, avoiding all the frisking and hassles.  I’ve spoken of this before.  When the elites abandon a mode of transportation (e.g. railroads in the 1950s) it starts to die.  And the gulf between the mighty and the Little People widens.  (For more on this see David Rothkopf’s book SUPERCLASS.  And see if anybody would deny that free enterprise faces just as much danger from an ancient human tendency, even older and more dangerous than socialism.

--- Stop letting taxpayer subsidized companies “shout” into space ---

     All right, this one is going to sound super-crackpot.  But as we speak, a private company, the Deep Space Communications Network, in Florida, is engaged in the routine practice of using dishes that were paid for by the U.S. taxpayer, to assist in NASA missions, to transmit commercial stunt messages -- for everything from snack food companies to Craigs List -- into outer space.  Supposedly to sell music videos and garage sale items to aliens.  Sure, it sounds harmless enough, and it might be!  But that’s the problem, we just don’t know.

See an evaluation of the cult phenomenon called METI or “Message to Extraterrestrial Intelligence: Shouting to the Cosmos.”

What’s offensive isn’t that these messages are likely to bring alien invasion or death. (It doesn’t seem likely.) But that it is being done without a scintilla of open discussion in the scientific community, or the slightest consideration by government, which is, after all, supposed to be looking out for even unlikely dangers, and giving them whatever study they deserve.

In fact, this is part of a very general problem.  We have no idea why humans seem to be alone in the cosmos.  But it may imply the universe is dangerous, with many ways for intelligent species to fail -- ways that go beyond nuclear war, bio-terror and climate change (the perils that seem right in front of our faces.)  I suppose what I am saying is that at least a little effort should be given to appraising, cataloguing and rating a list of things that might go wrong, like they try to do over at the Lifeboat Foundation.  After all, isn’t that supposed to be one of government’s jobs?

And if that notion seems too crackpot, the other one is (unfortunately) all to down to Earth and real.

See more articles on SETI: The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence.

--- Look into the radicalization of the Military Academies --

   Hardly any attention has been paid to a potentially disturbing issue.  Indeed, all I have to go on is anecdotes from a few high-placed sources.  Nevertheless, there is strong reason to believe that a hundred or so extremist members of Congress  -- the sort who are only in office because of district-level radicalism that is propelled by geerymandering (see#18) -- have been using their appointment privilege to wage Culture War against the United States of America, by appointing cadets to several of the elite U.S. service academies, based not upon intellect or other relevant qualifications, but based primarily upon adherence to severely dogmatic creeds.

Judging by anecdotes and appearances, the problem is worst at the Air Force Academy and has been resisted stiffly by the US Navy.  Frankly, I cannot say that this phenomenon has crested to dangerous levels, though harrassment of non evangelical cadets has been scandalous at Colorado Springs.  But I do believe that the new administration should assign some people to look into it. Procedures may need changing. Certainly, all religion-based intimidation has got to stop.

Go ahead and search.  You’ll not find anyone who spoke up earlier to defend the United States Officer Corps against the abuse and suffering that was inflicted by Bush and his minions upon these brave and dedicated and extremely brainy men and women.  There are ways in which they have -- often discreetly and quietly -- stood up for us all against enemies both foreigh and domestic -- the latter requiring care and tact and precise judgment.  Now is not the time to allow fanatics to conspire a change in the fundamental character of this crucial American clade.  And Democrats, above-all, need to wake up to this fact.

 We have been well-served by an Officer Corps that is elite, professional, intellectually impressive and dedicated, above all else, to the Constitution

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All right.  That’s a lengthy enough list of “crackpot items.”  Any one of which might make it easy for clusters of folk to dismiss me as a kook.  Which is a pity.  Because that makes them far too closeminded!  Fortunately, this is the first civilization to recognize that The Wide Perspective is a gift ;-)  And when you think wide and deep, it means challenging assumptions.  In other words, I’d be a failure at my job and craft, if some fraction of my ideas did not sound... well... strange.

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Note:  The next posting will be my last in this series.  And it will also be well into a new year -- when I have vowed to deeply REDUCE the blogging!  After this, I will try to limit myself to maybe two postings per month.  (Except for quickie news flashes.)  In fact, those who really care or admire me at all will help me keep to this promise!!   But first....one last suggestion.

Or: Return to the Beginning of the series