Philanthropy, transparency, science, politics -- huzzah!

=== From a Scarcity Society to a Gift-based One? ===

Will we transform ourselves from an archaic Scarcity Economy to a "Gift Economy" - much as portrayed in Star Trek? Is philanthropy a crucial recycling direction for wealth to take? I participate in round tables on philanthropy theory. Here is an important one.

Philosopher Fed Turner has some interesting insights: ”There is a myth that we as a species have moved from having an edenic and arcadian gift exchange economy to a cold and corrupt market economy. As a myth it has its uses; as a fact it will not fly. Archaeologists and physical anthropologists now find trading practices among the earliest humans nearly 200,000 years ago; we were always buying, selling, hiring, trucking and bartering. And economists tell us that even in today’s advanced industrial economies the amount of value that is transferred by gift is greater than the amount transferred by market exchanges. This may sound counter-intuitive until we reflect that gift includes the free services rendered by parents to their children, husbands and wives to each other, friends to friends, hobbyists to their community, and the bequests of the dying to their heirs.

“We have plenty of theory about markets, since Locke and Smith and their ilk. There is some theory about gift exchange in traditional tribal societies (Marcel Mauss, for instance), but very little until now about the economic, moral, social, political, ecological, aesthetic, and spiritual implications of today’s gift economy in advanced societies like the United States.”

Finally, there's a fun item -- EON: the Eye of the Needle Foundation -- my own article that stimulated discussion in philanthropic circles, about an entirely new kind of charitable institution, one that might help dramatically enlarge the pot of modern generosity by offering the super-wealthy (and many of the rest of us, too) some unique incentives. Something for the man or woman who has everything.


Can We Learn Useful Things About Society/Security From Fiction & Magic?

Is fiction a security issue? DARPA wants to know how stories influence our thoughts and actions. And what form of literature can be more radical than science fiction – which teaches that the future can be different than the past – that humans might stop making the same mistakes over and over again.... and hence, that it will be our fault, if we choose not to stop.

Recording Police Abuse Could Get You ARRESTED! Magician, supertainer and paladin of freedom Penn Jillette recorded this episode of Penn Point back in June. I highly recommend Penn's rants; they are uniformly smart, vivid and informative. Even when I disagree, I feel glad he is out there, fighting for us, and proud to know him. (I have an ulterior motive in this case; Penn repeatedly touts my nonfiction book The Transparent Society.

I especially like one of Penn's aphorisms: "Always look for the solution that's for more freedom." I say something almost identical in The Transparent Society. Alas, in the info age, people point to problems and all-too often suggest solving them with LESS information flow.

Take recent arguments over renewing the Patriot Act. I despise the damned thing. See where I predicted it - as well as terror-doom for the WTC towers - in The Transparent Society on page 206 (shown above).

But I don't waste my time writhing over the parts of the Patriot Act that let government see more. That trend is inevitable and unstoppable and freedom knights who rail against those parts are just foolish. It is the OTHER portions of the Patriot Act that are demonic, hateful and downright dangerous... the sections that remove oversight and allow government to operate more in secret and less under our supervision. Those are the parts we should be fighting to eliminate. But political reflexes tend to be dumb, and liberals are no exception, even when they are on the right side of an issue.


== Symptoms of Sickness... Signs of Health ==

Want to perk up? Here are 25 minutes worth watching: Kevin Kelly on the future of book publishing, speaking about how value will be generated in a free copy world: “The internet is the world’s largest copy machine.” We can’t stop books from being copied, so we need to make it easier to pay for immediate, interactive, personalized content. Kevin is very smart and always worth-heeding. It happens I think he's wrong here in several ways. But tune in!

Caltech basketball team just won its first victory since 1986! A 310 game losing streak... done!

The team controlling the Kepler planet-hunter telescope has released a small part of its 1st 4 months of data recently. It revealed more than 1200 potential extrasolar planets. If a reasonable percentage of these worlds turn out to be independently verified, this treasure trove will yield more results in 4 months (1200+) than astronomy had found in the past 15+ years (550+ objects). (Um, than astronomy had found in the last 5,000 years.)

Kepler uses the transit or partial eclipse method to identify new planets. It keeps a constant vigil on 156,000 stars that are up to 3000 light-years away in a region close to the star dense galactic plane in the constellations of Cygnus and Lyra.... Since other planetary systems can exist at all different angles, we would only expect that a small percentage of extrasolar systems (1-10%) would be edge on to us. That means that Kepler is really only sampling 1,500 to 15,000 systems. That makes the fact that they have found 1200 potential planets all the more impressive!

Findings. Neptune-type worlds seem dominant. The large number of Super Earths (23.3%) that may be determined to be rocky after further study, combined with the significant percentage of Earth sized bodies (5.5%) suggests that a sizable percentage of stars that could show evidence of Earths seem to have them.

But note, Kepler’s results are so-far weighted toward finding planets with quick orbital “years.” Later data must gather to find those orbiting farther out. “There were 54 planets detected in the water-possible zone. Five (5) of those were Earth sized or smaller. This is where things really get interesting. These are the gems in the group.”

Those who have read (and enjoyed) STAR WARS ON TRIAL... or the original Salon article that first accused the Lucasian universe of nostalgic-romantic hatred of the future... might enjoy an hour-long podcast discussion that assesses the article, from the perspective of several british and australian writer-fans. They try hard. They are very silly, but they do try hard. (Someone tell them about STAR WARS ON TRIAL, in which George Lucas’s defenders have their chance... and come up wanting.


=== Unabashedly Political -- Be Afraid! ===

“Spending cuts approved by the House would end America's reign as a scientific leader if they are enacted into law, a former Bush administration Energy Department official said yesterday. "Left intact, the massive cuts in research contained in the bill passed on 19 February would effectively end America's legendary status as the leader of the worldwide scientific community," Raymond Orbach wrote in an editorial published online by the journal Science.

I guess the Saudis haven't changed their plans for us, after all. Their lackeys are still trying to end Pax Americana from within. This is war.

Speaking of mouthpieces for the real, behind-the-scenes instigators of Culture War... try this Glenn Beck conspiracy generator.

See this: How Rich are the Super rich?
Absorb it.
Spread it.

If you spread nothing else this year, spread that one link.

I consider myself a libertarian who believes in competition as THE great creative human force. Objecting to the rise of a dominant oligarchy is not a SOCIALIST issue! It is an issue to anyone who wants the enlightenment... including its competitive markets and small businesses... to survive.

I hated the soviets and commies as dangerous ignoramuses and threats to the enlightenment, markets and freedom.

I hate the new oligarchy for exactly the same reasons -- both bands of would be aristocratic lords think they can "allocate" wisely in secret cabals. Both communists and oligarchs believe that history and justice back up their monopoly of power. Both replicate EXACTLY the failure mode that ruined every other brief renaissance of openness and market freedom. The oligarchs try to hide this by relentlessly claiming to favor market competition -- without ever showing a single example of a competition-enhancing action on their parts.

I’ve said it again and again. The people who should be angriest at the neocons aren’t the liberals or even the pinko socialists (two very different things). The ones who should despise the neocons most of all - with red-hot livid hatred - should be the libertarians. And fools like the Pauls, who think that the GOP is a hold-your-nose choice that’s better than the democrats, are all profoundly stupid fools.

Some News is Pretty Good

* On his “Crooked Timbers” blog, John Quiggin offers a discussion of political shibboleths.  A shibboleth is "an affirmation that marks the speaker as a member of their community or tribe," a definition which seems almost perfectly made for the “birther” claim that President Obama was born in Kenya, is a Muslim and wants to impose Sharia law in the United States... a general belief set now held (according to recent polls) by a majority of likely Republican voters.

Quiggin’s essay is seriously thoughtful and filled with important insights. It is being widely circulated and deserves your attention, even (especially) if you are a conservative American who feels bewildered by the direction that your movement has lately veered. (Hint: what’s gone sour has nothing to do with any of the old-style, libertarian values espoused by Barry Goldwater. It is at right-angles to the so-called “left-right axis.”)

* Was it really only back in 1994 that major media figures were still saying “what’s an inter-net?” See this amazing Today Show clip.  And remember that five years earlier, in 1989, I portrayed what could only be web pages in my novel EARTH. (There was, as yet, no web!)

* Is the news all negative? In the category of: I have been telling you folks about this for years...

“A widely used index of civic scientific literacy, sufficient understanding of basic scientific ideas to be able to read the Tuesday Science section of The New York Times,  showed that 28% of American adults scored high enough to understand scientific ideas at that level.   In 1988, well before Science 2.0 and a time when only a few print magazines and expensive journals monopolized science, just 10 percent of U.S. adults had sufficient understanding of basic scientific ideas. ... In the wave of criticisms about America, one thing gets lost that explains American adult knowledge - America is the only major country that requires almost all its college and university students to complete a full year of science. So the scientific literacy of U.S. adults is higher than the general adult populations of other developed nations.”

* And in the category of “I’ll believe it when I see it...”  Apparently “hardcore Isaac Asimov purists who are already despondent at the idea of Roland Emmerich  on the Foundation Trilogy. It’s all in the headline, really: Emmerich’s adaptation of Asimov’s story won’t just be predictably big and explode-y; it will be 3D and made with motion-capture goodness.” 

* TED, an organization best known for its annual gathering of top thought leaders, launched a social discussion platform on its website today. The move is part of a larger effort to spread, as TED’s motto goes, “ideas worth spreading” beyond the 1,300-attendee, five-day conference.  --  Now, if only I had time to play this “quora” thing. 

=== SAVING THE FUTURE BY DISPERSING POWER? ===

Some folks are thinking about how to anchor-in the freedom enhancing effects of the internet, by fostering inherently cheap/free/distributed systems that cannot be centrally controlled.  (My own software invention may prove extremely useful in that effort. So has the general approach to openness pushed in The Transparent Society.)  Anyway, to get a good picture of how others view the need, read: “Decentralizing the Internet So Big Brother Can’t Find You,” in which reporter Jim Dwyer describes Professor Eben Moglen’s  efforts to develop a “freedom box.”
   
”If revolutions for freedom rest on the shoulders of Facebook, Mr. Moglen said, the revolutionaries will have to count on individuals who have huge stakes in keeping the powerful happy. “It is not hard, when everybody is just in one big database controlled by Mr. Zuckerberg, to decapitate a revolution by sending an order to Mr. Zuckerberg that he cannot afford to refuse,” Mr. Moglen said.

“By contrast, with tens of thousands of individual encrypted servers, there would be no one place where a repressive government could find out who was publishing or reading “subversive” material. In response to Mr. Moglen’s call for help, a group of developers working in a free operating system called Debian have started to organize Freedom Box software. Four students from New York University who heard a talk by Mr. Moglen last year have been building a decentralized social network called Diaspora.”  A key set of ingredients. Not only for ensuring freedom, but allowing even the slim possibility of human survival.

=== WATSON, COMING NEAR ===

Anyone watch the jeopardy “Watson” event?  Fascinating! One more milestone down. A commentary I found illuminating is by Kent Pitman.

I believe the one unfair aspect of the show was the input-output discrepancy. Input is a very large part of the difficult task faced by human contestants and hence, Watson’s should have been speech recognition. As Kent Pitman points out:  "IBM actually sells speech recognition software. This should have been a chance to showcase it." Also, I believe Watson should hand to send signals to a "hand" to push the regular buzzer, same as the humans.

(BTW... I have a particular use for speech recognition.  I attend a lot of conferences at which attendees have their laptops open in front of them, fiddling away while the speaker speaks onstage. (Funny about that; it would be rude if they read a newspaper!)  Thing is, I hope to offer a service at one conference where the people with laptops could have a window open while a speech recognition program scrolls the speaker's words as they are being spoken onstage.  This would let people take notes by selecting and copying passages as they scroll by. Yes, I know it would have many errors! The notes aren't expected to be accurate or perfect, just a way to save talking points for later consideration. Does anyone have a notion how to proceed with something like this?)

=== TAKING FRESH LOOKS AT FANTASY TALES ===

Almost as if the author had read my classic essay on J.R.R. Tolkien (and perhaps he had) there has appeared a new English translation of a Russian novel that retells Tolkien's "The Lord of the Rings" from the perspective of the “bad guys.” 

From the Salon review: “That's the philosophy behind "The Last Ringbearer," a novel set during and after the end of the War of the Ring (the climactic battle at the end of "The Lord of the Rings") and told from the point of view of the losers. The novel was written by Kirill Yeskov, a Russian paleontologist, and published to acclaim in his homeland in 1999. Translations of the book have also appeared in other European nations, but fear of the vigilant and litigious Tolkien estate has heretofore prevented its publication in English.”

Now let me be clear that I do not insist that Tolkien’s epic be viewed as “history written by the lying winners.”  I have enjoyed it both ways. First taking JRRT’s word for it that the villains were utterly deliberately vile, with self aware desire for ruination... and again the other way, with a critical awareness that the “good” elves had a lot to answer for -- a position that was actually held (if you read his deeper works) by Tolkien himself!

(I have always consider JRRT to be a retro-nostalgist romantic, and hence and enemy of the progressive enlightenment. But he was an honest and smart retro-nostalgist, who came by it with sound - or at least understandable - grievances against modern technological society, acquired on the killing fields of Flanders. Tolkien is miles better than other future-hating romantics, like George Lucas, who spit on a modern, scientific society that has been very, very good to them.)

In my essay I pondered if the “villains” in Lord of the Rings might have been rebels against a reactionary order -- one that insisted - for example - that all the glass boxes capable of showing faraway lands (which we call TVs and computer monitors) be held only by top elites (he called them “palantirs”) and that racism, classism and sexism be rigidly enforced. To me, it was just a brief thought experiment. Apparently (though I have not yet read it), Yeskov’s work goes headlong down this path!

“In Yeskov's retelling, the wizard Gandalf is a war-monger intent on crushing the scientific and technological initiative of Mordor and its southern allies because science "destroys the harmony of the world and dries up the souls of men!" He's in cahoots with the elves, who aim to become "masters of the world," and turn Middle-earth into a "bad copy" of their magical homeland across the sea. Barad-dur, also known as the Dark Tower and Sauron's citadel, is, by contrast, described as "that amazing city of alchemists and poets, mechanics and astronomers, philosophers and physicians, the heart of the only civilization in Middle-earth to bet on rational knowledge and bravely pitch its barely adolescent technology against ancient magic."  (From Laura Miller‘s Salon Magazine review. Read this before downloading!)

People who find such re-imaginings interesting should not miss Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality by Eliezer Yudkowsky.  Now this one I have read and can totally vouch for! It is fascinating and vastly better-written than the original books.

Is this the future of fiction?  Online publishing has many advantages... and disadvantages. Evasion of copyright restrictions? Unleashed creativity? Freedom to perform variations on a theme?  Greg Bear and Neal Stephenson have their MONGOLIAD project and I have some thoughts in mind.  Maybe. If time allows.

=== MISCELLANY ===

Bizarre 'Alien' Tumor Found Inside California Man.

And now, by popular demand... The abstract is online!

Evolution of Cometary Nuclei as Influenced by a Dust Component
by G David Brin
Doctoral Dissertation for the University of California, San Diego March 1981

Progress marches on... and "if it ain't true..."

==INTERNET & COMPUTERS==

“We live naked on the internet…in a brave new world where our data  lives forever,” writes John Hendel in The Atlantic. Americans have come to accept this, but Europeans are trying to maintain a legal “right to be forgotten” -- even a “right to delete” one's data trail. The bizarre assumption that anything "erased" will stay erased is nonsense. The mighty will never let themselves be blinded. A so-called 'right to delete' only guarantees the elite castes a permanent advantage.

Can you turn off the internet for a day without suffering Information Withdrawal Syndome? Its effects are similar to those seen in drug addicts.

A map of the Twitterverse: an evolving ecosystem  by Brian Solis.

Facebook topped Google as the most visited website of the year, accounting for 8.9% of all visits in the U.S. for 2010. Google accounted for 7.2% of visits, and Youtube 3.3%     

Wired's Clive Thompson bucks current wisdom, suggesting that Tweets and Texts actually serve as catalysts for subsequent in-depth analysis: "We talk a lot, then we dive deep."  Oh, I am sure that's true for some.  Still....

How do we define wealth? More and more, in the modern world, reputation is wealth: The Whuffie Bank (a term coined by author Cory Doctorow) aims to build an economy based, not on productivity, but on reputation -- which could be redeemed for goods (real and virtual) and services.

Quora: a site dedicated to questions and answers created and answered by users. My page is: http://www.quora.com/David-Brin

A graphic comparison of Facebook (500 million users) vs. Twitter (106 million users)

Room for mistakes? There are applications where a margin of error is acceptable. The payoff for allowing imprecise calculations is that computer chips could operate thousands of times faster.

Time for a return to cursive? Less legible fonts promote better recall of information.

Is there an afterlife in cyberspace? What happens to one's digital identity after death? Increasingly, the record of our life is online: photos, videos, musical creations, posts, tweets, opinions, manuscripts, avatars -- an unsorted, chaotic mass of digital expression. This will become profound legal implications in the near-future. Businesses are attempting digital afterlife management.

==INFORMATION OVERLOAD==

Welcome to the Information Age  Each day we are bombarded with the equivalent of 174 newspapers a day. There was a time when most of the news you needed landed on your doorstep each day.

The Coming Data Deluge:  Petabytes, exabytes and more. Our vocabulary expands to keep up with data-intensive science, such as mapping the brain's neurons, and sensors scattered across the Earth, tracking climate, toxins and ocean currents. The Large Hadron Collider will generate about 15 petabytes of data per year.

How much data can the world store and compute? See an attempt to quantify the world's capacity to compute...

==HOLLYWOOD & THE DARK SIDE==

My latest Youtube video: A look at sci-fi movies. Who was the bad guy in the movie, E.T. The Extraterrestrial? How about District Nine? Sometimes, the villains are obvious, as in Independence Day or Lord of the Rings - in other flicks, the real bad guy may not be who you think it is.

Inspired by news of uprisings overseas?  How about 12 Revolutionary Uprisings from Sci-fi movies, TV shows and books:  From Star Wars to District 9, I, Robot to V for Vendetta.

Five scientific reasons the Dark Side Will Always Win, by Paul & Trevor Pickett on Cracked.com

5. The color black is scientifically proven to intimidate people
4. Thinking evil thoughts & clenching your fist makes you stronger
3. Arrogance inspires confidence
2. Doom & gloom makes you smarter
1. Speaking with a deep voice gives you power

To which I would add Five Reasons the Good side will win:
5. Evil guys get better clothes, but messed-up faces. Good is always pretty.
Pretty always equals good.
4. Red glowing eyes really sting after a while.
3. Your underlings (whom you've Force-strangled) will sabotage the targeting sites in your special TIE fighter.
2. Wimpy American audiences can't stand unhappy endings
1. Really easy to convert new converts from dark side. They're so dumb, they'll believe unlikely stories about being someone's father.

==SOCIETY==

Evolutionary anthropologist Robin Dunbar claimed the size  of the average human's social network is 148 - correlating the size of the average human neocortex vs that of a primate & the size of species' social groups. Dunbar also said that in order to maintain a cohesive group, 42% of the group's time would be devoted to social grooming. Does nit-picking count? Clearly I'm going to have to unfriend a lot of 'friends' on Facebook...

Nit-picking? Studies of lice DNA shows humans first wore clothes 170,000 years ago

Time declared that 2045 is The Year Man Becomes Immortal with an article on the Singularity and Ray Kurzweil's vision for "humanity's immortal future."  Hm... well... maybe that's the year a baby will be born who will be the first immortal.  I am a really far-out thinker. But these singularity guys are just too UTTERLY similar to the wild-eyed transcendentalists who were around in every era.

==MISCELLANEOUS==

What if the world's population was reshuffled so that citizens of the most populous country (China) would spread out across the country with the largest land area (Russia). Members of the world's 2nd largest population (India) would move to Canada. Third in population, Americans would stay in the United States! Fourth in population, Indonesians would move to China. Why should Australians get so much empty land? Now they would move to Spain, and poor, overcrowded Pakistanis would take over Australia. It's like a game of Risk gone wild.

63 million video game consoles in U.S. homes consume as much energy in a year as the city of San Diego. Can't we hook those thumbs up to a generator? Seriously, part of the problem is games left idling. Gamers lose their progress when they shut down. My son is always saying, I can't stop now Dad….

A wonderful resource: everything you ever wanted to know about primate skeletons (developed by the University of Texas at Austin). You can also look at specific bones: i.e. compare the scapula of a gibbon to that of an orangutan.

Oriental hornets harvest solar radiation for energy. Chitin structures in abdomen trap light, bouncing it between layers. A pigment, xanthopterin transforms light into electrical energy.

====    =====    ===


I plan to write about the New Arab Rising soon, including a suggestion that is both profoundly radical and and immensely, world-changeingly practical. (Some of you who have read EARTH might foresee what epochal event I may be talking about.)

Meanwhile though, time to spread some cheer about the onward march of technological progress... plus a few worrisome problems that need solving.

----------

The Danger of Cutting Federal Science Funding.

Ceres has something to say to Pluto.

Can Vacuum have friction?  Maybe in spinning metal systems.  A phenomenon related to the Casimir Effect. Calling to mind the “spindizzies” that propelled starships in James Blish’s CITIES IN FLIGHT.

Sometimes SNOPES is great simply as a primary source for stuff that “if it ain’t true, it oughta be!”

Lots of interesting stuff!  Stay tuned...

Nobel for Wikileaks? Transparency and Society Stories... etc

First off... drop in at YouTube for my latest offering... reading aloud a popular passage from my novel Earth. “First came a supernova, dazzling the universe in brief, spendthrift glory, before ebbing into twisty, multi-spectral clouds of new-forged atoms. Swirling eddies spiraled until one of them ignited – a newborn star. The virgin sun wore whirling skirts of dust and electricity. Gas and rocks and bits of this and that fell iinto those pleats, gathering in dim lumps…planets…One tiny worldlet circled at a middle distance…”

A Nobel Prize for Wikileaks?

"WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange may soon have a new accolade to add to his resume -- "Nobel Prize winner." Reuters reports that a Norwegian parliamentarian has nominated WikiLeaks for what is arguably the world's most prestigious prize. "By disclosing information about corruption, human rights abuses and war crimes, WikiLeaks is a natural contender for the Nobel Peace Prize," said spokesman Snorre Valen."

Hm, well, for starters, it is Wikileaks and the principles of transparency that are actually nominated, not Assange. Heck, since the ideas were heavily promulgated by me in EARTH (1989) and in The Transparent Society (1997) ain't I just as responsible? ;-) Seriously, as you'll learn when I start posting my major analysis of the WikiLeaks Affair, I find Assange individually arrogant. His particular priorities and statements range from cogent to borderline crazy...

...but you cannot always choose your heroes or self-appointed paladins of transparency. Indeed, Assange has "done good" with his leaks in ways that no one would ever have imagined, certainly not him! Most surprisingly, his leaks have had the overall effect of vastly enhancing the credibility and reputation of the United States Government around the world, at a time when it was badly needed - a result that was almost-certainly diametrically opposite to his intent.

In any event, a Nobel for this KIND of activity would be a very important statement of support for the general movement toward world transparency. If the symbol for this movement must be Julian Assange, then so be it.

(Stay tuned, I will soon offer a suggestion that combines an old sci fi idea from Earth with WikiLeaks transparency and events in Egypt, offering a way to both benefit the people of that country and start the whole world down a road that is radically better and more hopeful than ever.)


=== TERRORISM

The Physics of Terror : Mathematicians and physics look for patterns in terrorist campaigns and frequency that might allow prediction of future threats. Terror events follow a power law, similar to earthquakes: more frequent attacks result in fewer deaths, while infrequent, large events kill the most people.

Debunking Theories of a Terrorist Power Grab. A power-system expert at Penn State recently refuted theories that our power infrastructure is highly vulnerable to terrorist attack.


=== PRIVACY & SECURITY

Are your apps spying on you? Your smartphone contains a wealth of personal data about you: your current location, contacts, phone numbers, age, gender, buying habits.  A survey by the WSJ found that 56 out of 101 popular smartphone apps regularly transmitted such personal info without the user’s knowledge or consent, often to tracking companies. As "Mr. Transparency" do I shrug this off? Not! Privacy must change. Not vanish!

Here are some privacy icons that tell you how sites use your personal data -- designed by Aza Rashkin for Mozilla.

Five Cyberthreats to watch for in 2011.

In Wired Magazine: 2010: The year the internet went to war.

President Obama is calling for an online privacy bill of rights -- to protect consumers and shield personal data from tracking. At this point, it would be voluntary, with sanctions from the FTC. Under discussion: a 'do-not-track' option, similar to the do-not-call list to block telemarketers.

Computers that See You and Keep Watch over You describes how facial recognition software is being used in prisons, hospitals, law enforcement, and the workplace. It is also used to sample audience reactions, as well in the front against terrorism.

Ten Ways a digital Big Brother can be good for you, by John D. Sutter, CNN. "These days, Big Brother doesn't need to do much snooping. We just tell him what we're up to." Yet, there are ways that this omniscience has improved our lives: health monitors, disaster response, traffic maps, smart city grids, environmental sensors, monitoring earthquakes...


=== SOCIETY

Facing a crisis in drug abuse, Portugal decriminalized possession of all illicit drugs in 2000, focusing on treating instead of punishing drug addicts. The results: an increase in the number of people who tried drugs -- but drug abuse declined, especially among youth. More drug addicts are in treatment. Police now focus on high-level drug traffickers; there’s been an increase in drugs seized. Read the experiment.

This issue shows that different regions have different blind manias. Europeans seem far more ready than Americans to accept calm, modernist, rationalist revisions of old ways. Revising stupid-awful drug prohibition is one of these. If Portugal gains a good track record with this, and other Eurostates follow, the statistics might get so overwhelming that California can follow. (Europeans have their own manias - e.g. that the universe owes them half a lifespan of pure leisure, and that honorable work - potentially one of the greatest parts of human existence - is an inherently evil thing.)

Do artificial beings deserve human rights? by Mike Treder, director of IEET To what degree will we anthropomorphize orbits and artificial intelligence?

Do you distinguish pronunciations for pin vs. pen, cot vs. caught, father vs. bother? How about Bach’s, box & balks? Even after the homogenizing influences of radio, TV, the internet, and the increased mobility of the last few decades, regional distinctions persist across America. This site has a fascinating wealth of information on American dialects, with maps and audio samples of regional speech patterns.

To aid the cash-strapped U.S. Postal Service, an adviser to the Postal Regulatory Commission has proposed adding sensor arrays to postal trucks, to turn the fleet into a widespread data collecting operation -- collecting real-time data on weather, pollutants, gaps in internet coverage, poor road conditions, as well as detecting chemical or biological threats.


Tidying my pile of miscellaneous items to share:

I gave an interview to "The Eerie Times" - a sci fi fan site - mostly about my career as a science fiction author.

Renowned author Robert Sawyer offers an interesting essay about how scientists and Sci Fi witers take both similar and very different approaches to dealing with a future that contains plenty of opportunities and dangers.

Telomerase-based rejuvenation? Or a great way to ignite a storm of tumors?

Did I show you this one yet? More than half of the predictions are right on!

Recently leaked: the original draft of the script for _The Empire Strikes Back_ by Leigh Brackett ... Quite different from what finally made it to the screen. It seems the credit for this being by far the best SW film falls unto Kasden, not Brackett, after all. In any event, this shows one of my pet peeves. There must be (literally) more than 10,000 scripts kept locked up by various producers and studios, some of them no-doubt trash... but others which may be genuine gems of writing. Why can we not at least read them as literature?

When you cut past all the excuses and rationalizations, it really boils down to “embarrassment insurance”... Suppose one in a hundred revealed but never filmed scripts gain a following and praise from critics, perhaps even letters urging that the screenplay be released for somebody to film. How does the studio benefit? Well, sure, in one percent of THOSE cases, they might get spurred into actually resurrecting a once-dead jewel and benefit enormously! But meanwhile, the ghosts of many past mistakes would be let loose, and even a glorious resurrection would result in recriminations. “What idiot squelched this in the first place!”

No, it is beyond unjustifiable - and a travesty-betrayal of the purpose of "intellectual property" - for them to be locked away forever. But what do you expect, given that Hollywood had become so cowardly that the rare non-sequel is trumpeted automatically as “brave,” what would you expect?

Gates, on the seductive lure of idiotic cynicism (a disease that infests both the left and the right). As John Stuart Mill said in 1828, in a quote from the book that I especially enjoyed: "I have observed that not the man who hopes when others despair, but the man who despairs when others hope, is admired by a large class of persons as a sage."

The most concise scientific paper ever.

Have a look at my friend Lou Aronica’s new crossover fantasy novel BLUE.

I was badgered recently to offer up my forecast for December 21, 2012! All right, here goes! On THAT VERY DAY the sun will appear to undergo REVERSAL in its path across the sky! Not the east-west rising-setting, but in its north-south travels! On that particular day - as foretold by ancient astronomers and many of today's top scientists (though they aren't talking about it!), the sun will (to the astonishment of many!) stop appearing to move ever farther south, each day at noon.

From that day forward, and for a period that I predict will last six whole months, each noon will see the sun passing through a point farther north than on the previous day! Arcing ever-higher in the sky of the northern hemisphere, this change of course will bring with it massive waves of weather change all across that hemisphere, causing ice and snow fields to melt and water to come flooding down mountains and valleys to the sea! Moreover, sometimes unbidden or unwanted by man, green growths will start infesting almost every outdoor surface! Insects will appear, individually and even in swarms, accompanied by flocks of noisy birds! In some locales, there will be frogs, or beasts, intermittent periods of darkness, and even outbreaks of vermin! Politicians and cable news folk will proclaim reasons to panic!

And thus winter will finish turning into spring... and spring into.... SUMMER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Whereupon, on June 21, 2013... just in the nick of time... I predict the Earth will be saved when (to the surprise of many) the Sun's ever-rising noontime passage will reverse. And yes I am daring to be specific and exact in my prophecy! And from that day forth - for a time I am willing to calculate for you - its lifegiving force will seem to ebb away toward the very bottom of the world.


=== More stuff...

Cool! the Bureau of labor statistics lets you calculate in a shot what an amount was worth at any point in the period since 1913.

Tyler Cowan’s new book: The Great Stagnation seems to cover some of the same territory (much more deeply!) as my graphic novel about industrial decline:TINKERERS

See a thought provoking parallel between Egypt in 2011 and tragic Turkey in 1911.

Variant movie listings in TV Guide: It's a Wonderful Life: "An accused criminal's descent into madness is interrupted by a visitor from a distant star, who brings about an episode of mass hysteria after a visit to a hellish parallel universe."

State of the Union: The Things Obama Did Not Have to Say - But Did Anyway

The president’s State of the Union Speech was - at long last - the one I wanted him to give. It went after the very poison that has so sickened the United States of America. His call for us to shake off the Cult of Future-Hatred, indulged in by both right and left, was about urging us to start looking forward again, instead of to some mythically better past.

Clearly, Barack Obama does not expect that to happen through a sudden coming-together in unity and courtesy.  (He did ask for those things, but we know that asking will not make them happen).  For those those demanding accountability for the greedocracy of a looming oligarchy he had only incremental steps toward transparency. And, while the President pointed out the hypocrisy of Teaparty “deficit fighters,” who plunged the nation into tsunamis of red ink during their watch, in the name of disproved Voodoo Economics, he did so in fairly gentle terms. For one simple reason.

Because none of these side-skirmishes are where the real battle lies.

As I’ve said for months, for years, the real agenda of the neoconservative movement - its one consistent theme - has been to wage bitter war against nearly all centers of American expertise.

You may have only heard of one part of this campaign -- the relentless and undeniable Republican War on Science, now so blatant that Glenn Beck, Sarah Palin and Rush Limbaugh have all taken to deriding “scientists” as a universally-damned caste, no longer even applying qualifiers or conditionals! It’s become so flagrant that - whereas twenty years ago thirty percent of U.S. scientists registered republican - now, according to the AAAS and the Pew Research Foundation, only 5% cling to their old political loyalties with the GOP. Many remain “conservative” over matters of fiscal or foreign policy, but none can any longer abide an all-out, Know Nothing campaign against fact-based reason.

Is this why I applauded, so heartily, the president’s repeated references to science, technological leadership, innovation, education and bold entrepreneurship, in his State of The Union address? To renew that post-Sputnik spirit -- the fierce dedication-to-curiosity that forged the keel of our prosperity and success?  Of course it was. 

It reminded me of the moment I liked best, back on election night in 2008, when Obama’s victory speech resonated in so many ways... but I kept aloof from the regular, ringing rhetoric, listening not for the words that he had to say, but those that he inserted wholly on his own account.

(Try to develop this habit. It can be illuminating!)

We expected him to endorse all the requisite motherhood and apple-pie phrases... some of them universal, or pan-american and some blandly liberal.  You know, like unity, brotherhood, responsibility and - yes, hope. Yada. Good things. And totally expected. 

But when he spoke of a nation propelled forward by curiosity... that was what I had been listening for.  It wasn’t a word on anybody’s requisite political litany or list of necessary catch phrases. It was not compelled by politics, polemic or audience expectations, nor by tradition or dire need. Nobody even commented on it, in all the speech postmortems. It was there simply because Barack Obama thought that it ought to be.

A nation propelled forward - in part - by curiosity.  In 2008, it was a drop-in hint.  Last night, it was the central theme!

Moreover, Make no mistake, it was militant. They were fighting words. For, I was watching closely, and every single time that Barack Obama referred glowingly to science, or innovation, or entrepreneurial boldness, you could see the Republican Speaker of the House, John Boehner, grimace or frown a little deeper, making clear that this is precisely where our deepest battle will take place.  Not across fictional gaps in a mythical and stupidly misleading so-called “left-right political axis.” But across a chasm between those dedicated to the past and those eager for the future.

Let’s be plain: I would have liked the speech even better, had President Obama directly challenged Congress to perform an act of good faith, by restoring the Office of Technology Assessment (OTA), and other independent advisory boards that were wiped out during Republican control, when they decided to dispense with the inconvenience of reality checks from even the most studiously impartial and nonpartisan commissions.  Not having restored the OTA, when she had the chance, counts as my biggest grudge against former Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Obama should have demanded this, and dared the GOP to justify its refusal.

Yet, this is about so much more than science and technology.  Last night’s speech hinted that the President at last understands; the “war on science” is only the most blatant, surface manifestation of a general campaign against all of our professional castes. 

Name one that isn’t under fire from the new-right! Scientists, teachers, university professors, attorneys, civil servants, diplomats, journalists... heck even cops! And yes, if you have watched carefully, or know anything about the “miracle of 2006”-- even the brilliant men and women of the United States Military Officer Corps have been under assault, for years.

Why? Why has such a broad campaign to discredit (almost) every highly skilled and educated expert class become the centerpiece of conservatism?  A hijacked version of conservatism that has Barry Goldwater spinning in his grave?  You have only to look at the few centers of elite expertise that have been left alone! Those that are spared this all-out onslaught. The financial industry, industry lobbyist associations, and the hyper-rich.

A select group who are spared attack by Fox News. Now why would these groups want to fund propaganda aimed at undermining all other intellectual elites? Unless... in order to the power of those with the skill and fact-based knowledge to notice and point fingers at outright lies....?

Hm... well... maybe we can analyze that another time.  For now, let’s get back to the speech.

I had one proud moment when I heard the president drop in another of those “he did NOT have to say that!” lines. There was one sentence, while he discussed our need to improve American schools, when Obama mentioned something that our schools do better than any others on the planet. Do you recall what it was?  Did any of you catch it? Even briefly?

I doubt one pundit in a hundred  noticed.  But it is something that we do SO well that  Education Ministries in Delhi, Tokyo and Beijing send out hundreds of minions, every year, re-training teachers to instruct their classes in a more American manner!
   
Boldness, confidence, creativity, and unabashed willingness to question.  These are traits that American schools (and parents) encourage very well! They are not easily measured by standardized tests, so they do not get mentioned in the news, nor do they become the fodder for hand-wringing political diatribes. But, at last, I have seen one politician notice! Moreover, it is important. In order to improve, it is necessary to grasp what you are doing right, as well as what’s wrong.

    Do I expect this speech to make much difference? Indeed, was it even worth the time I spent writing about it?

Not really.  Certain parties in high places, not just in America but in foreign lands, have already chosen to re-ignite Phase Three of the American Civil War. We are in it, right now, 150 years after the first shot was fired at Fort Sumter. (Which happened ten years after the Civil war actually began, in 1850. Ask me later.) When things have gone that bad, one doesn't hold out much hope for transformation emerging out of a single speech.

But at a time when all forms of expertise and skill and knowledge are the chief victims and targets in a bilious civil war, and when science is the paramount enemy - openly declared - of a faction that wants us to turn our backs upon tomorrow... any talk of "winning the future" is welcome, indeed.


----  FOLLOWUP ---

“During an appearance with Greta Van Susterin on Fox News, Sarah Palin criticized Obama for referencing Sputnik during the State of the Union, because she believes that Sputnik brought down communism. She said, “Yeah, they won, but they also incurred so much debt at the time, that it resulted in the inevitable collapse of the Soviet Union.” Yep, Sarah confused the space race with the arms race.”

Please, go read the article.  See what she said. Does it get any plainer than this? Choose tomorrow.

===

Conspiracy Theories... Plus Rightwing Loonies

First, just for the core community here... I have a help request for some techies, having to do with things like web page design and speech-to-text. I'll elaborate down below, in comments.


Blazingly Partisan Political Gleanings

Here are a few items I had set aside.  First, something that is not actually partisan. Rather, it is my Primer on Supply Side Vs Demand Side Economics.  The IEET has reposted one of my popular articles showing how the Left-Right "political axis" simply does not correlate with the actual issues that we face.  And that it is time to take a pragmatic, outcomes oriented appraoch, when it comes to determining whether a longstanding economic dogma should (at last) be relegated to the dustbin of history.  Hey, Marxism deserved to go to the trash heap.  See why the same has to be done to "supply side" voodoo.  

And now the choice, unabashedly stuff, skewering the villains in "Culture War."

Anderson Cooper's must-see birther interview: CNN anchor coolly takes down Texas State Rep. who asks why we don't "know anything at all" about the president. I was pleased, till I realized Cooper was leaving out the most devastating fact that exposes “birthers” as raving loons.  The fact that there were announcements of Barack Obama’s birth in the Honolulu Advertiser, way back when. You can find them in the paper’s archives, and in moldy piles in garages all over Oahu. We are dealing with Heinlein’s “Crazy Years” folks.  We are dealing with bona fide, real-deal insanity.

Read this about the inevitability of Class War.     Eek.

Heck, while we’re at it... Michael Shermer lays out characteristics of a conspiracy theory:

1.    Proof of the conspiracy supposedly emerges from a pattern of “connecting the dots” between events that need not be causally connected. When no evidence supports these connections except the allegation of the conspiracy or when the evidence fits equally well to other causal connections—or to randomness—the conspiracy theory is likely to be false.

2.    The agents behind the pattern of the conspiracy would need nearly superhuman power to pull it off. People are usually not nearly so powerful as we think they are.

3.    The conspiracy is complex, and its successful completion demands a large number of elements.

4.    Similarly, the conspiracy involves large numbers of people who would all need to keep silent about their secrets. The more people involved, the less realistic it becomes.

5.    The conspiracy encompasses a grand ambition for control over a nation, economy or political system. If it suggests world domination, the theory is even less likely to be true.

6.    The conspiracy theory ratchets up from small events that might be true to much larger, much less probable events.

7.    The conspiracy theory assigns portentous, sinister meanings to what are most likely innocuous, insignificant events.

8.    The theory tends to commingle facts and speculations without distinguishing between the two and without assigning degrees of probability or of factuality.

9.    The theorist is indiscriminately suspicious of all government agencies or private groups, which suggests an inability to nuance differences between true and false conspiracies.

10.    The conspiracy theorist refuses to consider alternative explanations, rejecting all disconfirming evidence and blatantly seeking only confirmatory evidence to support what he or she has a priori determined to be the truth.

The key element in conspiracy theories is self-flattery... the thing Glen Beck sells above all.  The notion that he and his viewers are in on the real poop, they can see what their stupid, stupid, stupid neighbors are too... well STUPID ... to see!

I call it the MENSA Effect, since I have never known a brainy under-achiever who did not cling to one form of conspiracy theory or another, from UFOs to Kennedy assassinations Spare Change to "we're living in a simulation."

(This is not to say that watchers of Fox News are MENSA-types! Far from it! They leave the thinking to Beck.  But the emotional need is the same.)

BTW my favorite conspiracy passes all of Shermer's tests.  It is entirely plausible that certain brilliant trillionaires who havs stated OPENLY that they wish to see a collapse of Western Civilization may have entered into alliance with another foreign billionaire who openly despises democracy, to openly fund a propaganda machine that has relentlessly and openly promoted the re-igniting of the American Civil War.

Motive, means, opportunity... and deadly effects. I do not blame the victims of the conspiracy... the consumers of Fox News... for falling for the propaganda.  The people I blame are the liberals and "blue americans" for seeing this awful phenomenon, bemoaning it, but refusing to connect the dots.

In this case, the weird hypothesis... the one beggaring the imagination and beyond all plausibility ... is that there is NOT a "conspiracy" going on.  And yet, I have met no one... not a single person... who is willing to even try the notion on for size.  The notion that powerful men are doing exactly what they appear to be doing, pursuing goals that they have openly admitted they desire.

==and now politics==

Heck... want more? A fascinating... and not entirely unsympathetic... perspective on Glen Beck.
   
This November, the future House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) rode the Tea Party rhetoric to power, promising to gut “business as usual” on Capitol Hill. Touting an earmark ban and public access to bills as clear moves toward transparency, Boehner seemed demonstrably clear on another accountability issue – congressional ethics. “I think the American people expect that their members of Congress should be held to a high ethical standard,” he said in August.  In spite of that expectation, Boehner is threatening to axe the Office of Congressional ethics.

Established in March of 2008 after the Jack Abramoff scandal, the Office of Congressional Ethics is responsible for “launching investigations of wrongdoings by House Members” in order to “stiffen the spine of the House ethics committee.” Operating as an inspector general of sorts, the OCE has “won praise for reviving the House’s notoriously moribund and secretive ethics process.” Despite strong conservative support for OCE, “GOP leaders are gearing up to kill the fledgling” OCE.

Okay.  Reminder time.  Cyclically, regularly (and always) keep checking on the Fox News Boycott.  You have a right to make your purchasing judgements based on many criteria.  Including a list of those who advertise with Glenn Beck.

"I hope we shall... crush in its birth the aristocracy of our moneyed corporations which dare already to challenge our government in a trial of strength, and bid defiance to the laws of our country."
Thomas Jefferson

Illegal Aliens Part One... and me NOT on the Colbert Report

Did anyone see the Colbert Report piece on "alien hunting" last night? Yes, that's the segment that I was cut from, after giving their crew an entire day in our home.  And now I can see why.  It...was... awful!

Look, I am a BIG fan of the show and admire Stephen Colbert immensely. I understand the need to put humor first. It is - after all - Comedy Central.  I even expected to be edited into an object of... well... some ribbing and poking. (All in a good cause!) When I was told that my portion of the bit was to be cut, I felt a bit of disappointment. But, I accept the needs of TV. When time is short, the sober-minded intellectual has gotta go.

Moreover, let me add that I was treated fine by the intelligent producer they sent out west to question me, and by the Colbert Report staff. (I loved the "Rally to Preserve Sanity…or Fear" schwag!)  I get a lot of film crews at the house and this experience was pretty good, all-told.

But as for the segment that finally aired, boy am I relieved I wasn't included! Unlike many other Colbert Report pieces, this one was tediously repetitious, banal, unimaginative and dull, it wasn't even remotely funny! (Well the part about vaginal contractions, beamed into space.  All right... but...) 

Look... one of the choice things about the Stewart/Colbert shows is that they appeal to us on many levels.  They have proved that hilarity and thought can blend.  That we can use humor to shine light on topics that genuinely merit further attention. When their crew spent 7 hours in our home, I tried to point out lots of aspects about the very wide and deep concept of extraterrestrial life... the search, the vast range possibilities (far beyond tiresome, big-eyed "gray-ufo types), and some strange personalities and quirks in the field, that might draw both viewer fascination and terrific laughs.

It is the only scientific field without any known subject matter... isn't that funny? Heck, I had the crew in stitches, giving my routine about what I'd say to gray UFO types, if I ever confronted one. (Hint: they are putzes who don't react at all well to taunting!)

I mean, dang, there is SO MUCH regarding the real issue of plausible aliens that could be made funny!  So why return to the tedious gray abductor nonsense... and do it badly, to boot?

See some of my writings on SETI: The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence vs METI: Messaging to Extraterrestrials.

Hey, I continue to consider myself a Friend of the Show. But I'm glad not to have been on that segment. Maybe they will revisit the topic, someday. Sigh.

=====

 Next time... the other kind of "aliens"... why both parties lie about their real agendas, when it comes to both legal and illegal immigration.

Tucson and the "Magazine Problem"

Alas.  The producer who interviewed me for the Colbert Report just called to say that the big two-parter about "possible alien invasion" had to be trimmed-down to make room for fast-breaking stories.

 Alack, that means they had to cut the calm and reasoned straight man from the piece.  In other words... me.  Ah well. I'm still a friend of the show. In fact, you should still tune in! It will be funny and you can try to guess where "Brin woulda been."

The topic - "whether and how the universe might be dangerous" - is one that simultaneously merits thought, argument... and humor.

= TUCSON & THE "MAGAZINE" PROBLEM =

 While thoughtful folks point to recent, tragic events in Arizona, appealing for Americans to tone down the horrifically polarized rhetoric of recent years, we all can see the opposite going on.  In an era when all scientists are painted (by one side) as conspiring traitors and liars, you can tell that we have entered what Robert Heinlein forecast as "The Crazy Years."

One element to the Tuscon rampage that I haven't seen mentioned, so far, is the role that was played by the gunman's use of an insanely large capacity, 31-round magazine, which allowed him to spray a helpless crowd, killing several elderly bystanders, a federal judge and a nine-year old girl, and critically injure the district's freely elected representative to the United States Congress, before he could finally be brought down, when his automatic pistol ran out of bullets.

Let's be plain here. The insistence of the NRA and other gun groups, on preventing any restraints on magazine size, or on the sale of assault rifles and automatic weapons, is not based on tradition or any legitimate personal need. 

Their stance of utter resistance to any constraint, is defended on the basis of "slippery slope" arguments. They maintain that any legal restraint on gun ownership is inherently part of a plot to eventually eliminate all forms of gun ownership. 

Now, lest anyone mistake me for a reflex lefty nannystater, let me avow that slippery slope arguments do have enough historical support to logically merit a proper place in any discussion. Firearm registration records in European countries, before World War Two, were later used by both Nazi and Communist tyrannies to strip the populace of registered weapons. This fact - recited ad nauseam - offers a core of justified fear that should be part of any reasoned discussion.

Elsewhere, I've tried to analyze the central fear of gun rights supporters... a crux worry that is deeply American and that (indeed) many liberals share. I tried to logically derive a solution that could satisfy any reasonable person... even one who wants to keep secret the kinds of weapons that would be most useful in a mass insurrection against some future Big Brother tyranny.  See my moderate suggestions in: "The Jefferson Rifle: Guns and the Insurrection Myth."

To be clear... right-wingers often repeat their mantra that "liberals want to take away our guns."  But they cannot point to any mainstream (non lefty-dingbat) democrat or liberal voices who have made any such moves, in decades.  Indeed, most thinking people now know that the flood of guns and ammunition that has filled America is long past unstoppable. It has come in tsunami layerings that are by now almost sedementary, a layer so thck that future geologists will find fossils of glocks and colts in the very rocks!  Firefighters are asking for bullet proof gear, before they go into some burning homes, so sure are they that the closets -full of ammo will go off.

 Liberals aren't pushing for gun control.  Given the hot rhetoric of Culture War and violence pouring from men like Glen Beck and Rush Limbaugh, more and more liberals are buying weapons of their own.

But no.  Even so. A line has to be drawn somewhere. If only because the world will not follow a Pax Americana that has gone insane.

 A good place to start is with those 31 round magazines.  They are only good for one purpose, pouring a lot of bullets into a crowd of people, too fast for anyone to react.  You cannot come up with another scenario for such  awful things. Even if you are in a B-Movie gun fight with a horde of motorcycle-riding zombies, that will take place over a period when you can change your freaking magazines. Heck, Lady Lara Croft does just fine with seven or nine-round clips.

Time and again, we have seen mass murdering gunmen brought down by brave citizen bystanders... at Columbine and when Reagan and Ford and Robert Kennedy were attacked... and in Tucson.  For the most part,  the take-down happened as soon as the bastard ran out of bullets!

This is one case where the slippery slope is all the nutters have. There are no other justifications for allowing Big Clips. If you can fantacize ever needing one... fantacize being part of the next unarmed crowd.

--See also my article: Names of Infamy: Deny Killers the Notoriety they Seek

Isaac Asimov & Human Destiny

Isaac Asimov and human destiny

Ever notice how many futuristic authors toy, now and then, with the concept of a global overmind? Arthur Clarke and Isaac Asimov both did... and my reply to them, a more subtle and diversity-based version, appeared in EARTH.

Now, have a look at The Living Earth Simulator, or the LES project, which aims to simulate everything taking place on planet Earth, both environmental factors and human influences -- integrating real-time data feeds  to model global environment, pollution, population,  as well as financial and political shifts and the spread of infectious diseases. 

And who dealt with the scale of human destiny better than the great Isaac Asimov, in his Foundation series?  Elsewhere I've said about him: "Asimov served wondrous meals-of-the-mind to a civilization that was starved for clear thinking about the future. To this day, his visions spice our ongoing dinner-table conversation about human destiny."

My own novel FOUNDATION'S TRIUMPH tied up nearly all of Isaac's loose ends - with enthusiastic approval of Isaac's heirs. (Read a sample.) In the afterword, I describe how Isaac would always see the flaw in his most-recent Foundation "solution" and inch along, decade-by-decade to new solutions.

What were his stages?

First, writing for John W. Campbell's ASTOUNDING in the 1940s, he came up with the lovely conceit that, in large enough numbers to swamp the effects of individuals, human societies can be modeled as if individuals were like gas molecules!  Appealing to Asimov the biochemist... and inspiring many readers to go into fields like economics.  For example Paul Krugman.  (In all honesty, the dream goes farther back, though Karl Marx was no Hari Seldon!)

Then Isaac got a lot of mail.  People had an inkling of something like what would become Chaos Theory - that random fluctuations or exceptions would perturb events until all projections become useless. Isaac's solution in his galactic universe? Perturbations must be corrected by an elite council or knowing meddlers, the Second Foundation.  Meddlers who soon gain access to psychic powers that they can breed into their gene lines, enabling them to meddle better and keep the Plan on track. Phew! Promlem solved.

Only then: he that realized his Second Foundation will become an inherited human aristocracy! Agh! Loyal to the Enlightenment, he knew how awful oligarchies were, in the past (and today.) So, the next decade, Isaac replaced or subsumed the human meddlers with a deeper layer of controlers who would be like... court eunuchs. Robots who cannot breed and hence could not become a human lordly class. (Aside. His empire was always more Chinese than Roman.) Sounds good?

Only, next decade, Isaac realizes...OMG! I've reversed power! The "servants" are now few, all-knowing, all-powerful and the human masters are as numerous and cheap as sand. Agh. So he finds a way for the masters to become mighty again.

His solution? An overmind made up of trillions of human brains, called Gaia-Galaxia! Okay then! Only then he realizes....

See? I had to continue his ongoing cycle of re-evaluation until... well... read FOUNDATION'S TRIUMPH and see how it actually all comes together is a fascinating pattern that winds up turning in... a... circle!

 Which brings us to... Adam Smith...

 I wrote a lot about this fellow, who liberals should rediscover and embrace, in order to free him from the right wingers and libertarians who always, always always misquote and betray him.  Well, OpenSalon dumped my work, so let me just offer a few quotations and a link to Blogging Adam Smith. Or actually read Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations, a book that any politically-minded person should read, top to bottom.

“No society can surely be flourishing and happy, of which the far greater part of the members are poor and miserable.” That could be a slogan for liberalism.

“Observe the accommodation of the most common artificer or day-labourer in a civilized and thriving country, and you will perceive that the number of people whose industry a part, though a small part, has been employed in procuring him this accommodation, exceeds all computation.” The whole tenor of this passage would, or should, outrage an Ayn Rand. Smith certainly didn’t take the view that the important agents of capitalism were CEOs or even inventors.

“The monopolists, by keeping the market constantly understocked... sell their commodities much above the natural price... The price of monopoly is upon every occasion the highest which can be got. The natural price, or the price of free competition, on the contrary, is the lowest which can be taken....” Maybe it’s the libertarians who need to read Smith; I’ve heard them denying that monopolies exist, or that they raise prices.

“We rarely hear, it has been said, of the combinations of masters [cartels]; though frequently of those of workmen. But whoever imagines, upon this account, that masters rarely combine, is as ignorant of the world as of the subject. Masters are always and everywhere in a sort of tacit, but constant and uniform combination, not to raise the wages of labour....” Another passage skipped over by the libertarians

 That's it for now.  Perhaps I will speak more about this soon. But meanwhile...

==More about the Economy: Past, Present and Future

Which Science is the most fundamental?

=== And now... many ways of viewing science! ===

Which science is the most basic? Watch my latest Youtube video: Which Science is the Most Fundamental? Physics might be considered the most fundamental of all sciences, for all others derive from basic principles of forces, motion, electromagnetism and thermodynamics. And yet, physical laws are mathematical models of the world; however, mathematics itself is abstract, deriving from theoretical constructs of philosophy. But, philosophy arises out of theories of mind, or psychology. The mind itself depends upon the biology of the brain....which is nothing but chemical reactions of molecules, such as neurotransmitters and proteins. And of course, chemistry depends upon the behavior of atoms and forces, which is constrained by physics. An eternal loop?

Actually, philosophy and logic and "reason" are looser versions of the same madness that is suffered by mathematicians... actually believing that you can prove anything with words or symbols of scribbles on paper.  The pragmatic (anglo-scots-american-yiddish) branch of the enlightenment (as opposed to the franco-germanic-italian wings) emphasizes the "show-me" dominance of objective over subjective reality. Let me stress that I am loyal to the pragmatist wing. Because it is the only system that ever shouted "ALL INCANTATIONS ARE 90+% DELUSION!"

Yes, even (especially!) Plato's so called "reason." Delusion is humanity's greatest talent, source of our great art, source of much of our love! But also nearly all our crimes. It has only, ever, been stymied from harm-doing by enlightenment methods.

And yet... we'd be nothing without our inacntatory arts. (What is sci fi?;-) And reason, in its proper place, serves as an important partner to science. Together, mathematics and logic and reasoning ccomprise be the great HYPOTHESIS GENERATING SYSTEM.  Hypotheses that real science can then test.

Of course, having said that, let me reiterate that all of their practitioners - all of those who actually believe in their metaphors, or that you can prove things on paper, or that "left-versus-right has any real meaning - are... well... completely mad. Almost as mad as sci fi authors! (Except we're honest about it.)

=== SCIENCE

Why Scientific Studies are so Often Wrong: The Streetlight Effect, by David H. Freedman, from his new book, Wrong: Why Experts Keep Failing Us -- And How to Know When Not to Trust Them.  The fundamental error cited here is based on an old joke: One night a policeman finds a drunkard crawling around under a streetlight. "What are you doing down there?" the officer asks. The man explains that he lost his wallet -- across the street. "Then why are you looking over here?" asks the officer. "Because the light's better over here," replies the man.

Similarly, scientists may have a tendency to conduct their research where the light is better -- quantifying and measuring what they can, on subjects that are available, on projects that can get funded. Freedman takes on the inaccuracy of economic predictions, the ever-shifting health and medical studies.

=== Might "Culture War" Have a Biological Cause?

"Toxoplasma gondii, a parasite of cats is able to reproduce only inside the gut of a cat. It needs to find a cat. Usually it does so by finding something that cats eat, such as rats. Inside rats, it makes its way to the brain where it causes the rats to be attracted to the smell of cat pee, which they would ordinarily avoid (who wouldn’t). A rat that follows cat pee ends up in the cat’s gut, where the Toxoplasma gondii can finally mate. But T. gondii also makes its way into humans (It is because of this parasite that pregnant women are urged to avoid cat litter). In fact,  sixty million Americans are estimated to be infected at any one moment."  Does T. gondii also affect human behavior? Preliminary research suggests yes. Scientists find it triggers the release of chemicals in our brains that make us more anxiety prone, decrease our reaction time and make us more likely to end up in dangerous situations.  Males and females react differently. 

Which makes me wonder... might a plague such as this one (or one as-yet unknown) be partly responsible for the surge of irrationality one sees in America, today?

=== Is "Peak Oil" A Myth?

Australia has what appears to be a duplicate of the Bakken field with current estimates of 5-11 billion barrels of recoverable oil based on current tech.

Paris basin could have more recoverable oil than the Bakken oil field. (Yes, that is Paris, France, all the way to Belgium.

Iraq oil production now over 2.7 million barrels per day. It increased about 350,000 barrels per day over the last two weeks. Iraq is targeting 12 million barrels per day in about ten years. Some think they may only get to 6 million barrels per day in ten years.

It appears that ancestral critters were very very busy transforming into hydrocarbons. The question is, will the current oil czars let their current power be undermined? And what do we do with the carbon?

=== A SNAPSHOT ON DOCTORATE PROGRAMS

Stunning statistics from the Pew Research Center: Only 6% of U.S. scientists are Republican, while 55% claim to be Democrats, 32% Independent, and 7% uncommitted. As American politics becomes increasingly polarized, science should be a middle ground of reason and rationality. And yet -- the Gingrich Congress erased and banned all scientific advisory panels from Capitol Hill.   Culture War is not about left versus right.  It is about riling up populist, know-nothing rage against all the people in society who actually know stuff.  All the folks who might challenge a return to feudalism.

See my article: Unscientific America: Denying Science at our peril.

Who is earning Science Ph.D.'s these days? For a wealth of data on doctorate degrees, see this NSF Study: Life sciences take the largest share (23%) of science PhDs. For the first time (2009), more women than men earned doctorates. Women earn 67% of doctorates in Education, 58% in Social Sciences, 31% in Engineering. Overall, women earned 42% of doctorates in Sci & Eng, up from 29% in '89. Non U.S. citizens earn 31% of doctorates, with the majority going to students from China & India. Minorities are still under-represented: Blacks 7%, Hispanics 6% of doctorates.

And yet, only 57% of doctoral students complete their PhD within ten years of beginning - due to lack of funding, poor supervision, or overall fatique. Even for those who finish, prospects are poor. Supply overwhelms demand: 100,000 received doctorates in America between 2005-2009, while there were only 16,000 job openings for new professors.

=== SPACE

Scientists find evidence that multiple  universes exist. Four circular patterns in the cosmic microwave background radiation may indicate multiple waves of Big Bangs.

President Obama challenges NASA to come up with a less expensive mode of launch: In response, NASA Engineers propose combining a Rail Gun with a Scramjet -- requires two miles of track, an airplane that can fly at Mach 10.

Voyager 1, launched in 1977, has reached the edge of our solar system - and is no longer receiving a push from the solar wind. After an epic journey passing by Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus & Neptune, Voyager 1 is travelling at a speed of 38,000 mph, escaping the sun's heliosphere, & heading off to interstellar space - where no probe has gone before. V-ger? (In Star Trek, V-ger was actually Voyager 6). Voyager is providing fresh data on the nature of the solar wind.

Smash an asteroid or comet into Earth on your computer - and calculate the resulting damage. Impact: Earth! is an interactive website used by NASA and the Department of Homeland Security. Enter the diameter, density & velocity of the incoming object, its angle of entry and target on Earth - and Bam! Each day, Earth is bombarded by over 100 tons of extraterrestrial debris, with large events occurring every hundred years or so.

=== And finally... the coming decade...

May it be one of ambition, adulthood, negotiation, science, curiosity, adventure, freedom and pragmatic, can-do problem solving. And may the Noughty Oughts serve as the highwater of those troglodytic dopes who actually think that the Enlightenment can be defeated by the old ways.

It will not be.