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“There Is An Alarming Possibility That Our Economy Is Moving In The Direction Of What Some People Call A Two-Tier Society”

January 14, 2014 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

In addition to a 1987 edition of Omni featuring Bill Gates and Dr. Timothy Leary opining on the future of technology in America, the publication also invited the economist Robert Heilbroner to speculate on the U.S. economy in 2007. He was spot-on about income inequality, the creative disruption of technology and the threats to American exceptionalism, though he whiffed on Japan’s place in today’s global marketplace. His forecast:

“There is an alarming possibility that our economy is moving in the direction of what some people call a two-tier society — a large population of people with middle-class or higher incomes and values, with a considerable bulge at the top. and a large number of people who have been economically and culturally uncoupled from the main society.

What’s most alarming is that the ladder that has connected the bottom to the top is now missing some important rungs. There were certain industries, like the steel and auto industries, that provided more or less continuous ladders of jobs from the bottom to the top. You could enter as an unskilled person, acquire new skills, and move up the ladder to secure, unionized, better-paying jobs. But now these industries have been seriously imperiled, and their place as employers has been replaced by what I call the McDonald’s employers. More people work for McDonald’s than work for U.S. Steel, but McDonald’s has no ladders. The problem is serious.

A great many economists, myself included, feel uneasy about the fact that 70 percent ol the economy does what is called service work and only 30 percent does what is called goods-related work. New technology keeps entering the economy and disrupting employment. When you look back at how the American economy developed, you see a migration off the farm into the factory and out of the factory into the office. The main push has come from technology. There has been relatively little new machinery to push people out of the office, but that’s changing now. If the computer creates jobs in the office, the service sector will increase and there will be no squeezing of employment. But if technology bumps service people out of work, I don’t know where they are going to go.

Personally. I think American optimism is in for a very severe challenge. We have always considered ourselves virtually to have a right to be number one in the world. But of course we don’t have any such right or assurance. And we have to resign ourselves to the unsettling fact that we are number two, or three, or four in many ways. In terms of health, for instance, we have fallen seriously behind, and that’s a big blow to our self-image.

In the next 20 years the government will have to take active steps in providing work and income tor the bottom one third of the population. The government grudgingly provides some sort of income, but it doesn’t provide work. And work is essential for people’s self-esteem and also for the building of many kinds of infrastructures that are needed in the country.

It is quite possible, it seems to me, that America will emerge from its present, wholly unaccustomed struggle for world position very worse off than it is today; that we will not find the right combination of talents and the right distribution of workforce in various occupations; that we will not develop the right technologies and will end up with a seriously disadvantaged economy. Not so long ago England was still regarded as one of Ihe most remarkable economies in the world, but it is now slightly less productive than Portugal. I think it is quite possible that the day of unquestioned American preeminence may be finished.

We could suddenly find that the way Americans live, their chances for life expectancy, their amenities of life are not as. good as, let’s just say, the Germans’ or the Swedes’. We might fail to produce the necessary output to bring our living standards and quality of life up to an acceptable level.

In the old days we tended to think about political possibilities in terms of left and right. Since Iran we’ve realized there is another dimension ‘up and down.’ There is potential for a great deal of political mischief and sabotage in ‘underdeveloped’ countries, and anyone who tries to think about the future has to consider that. There is going to be lots of trouble.

It is clear which countries are emerging as economic powers. It is entirely possible that Japan is going to be the England of the future — I mean the 1850’s England. Japan may be the organizer for a ‘Pacific Rim’ economy — as England was for Europe a century ago. Japan may combine its leadership and technology with the inexpensive manpower and the intelligence of the Chinese, the Malaysians, the Taiwanese, the Indians, the Koreans. It is quite possible that there will be a new world economic ’empire’ out there, which will severely challenge the formerly undisputed hegemony of the West. Meanwhile, the Soviet Union, as far as I can see, will continue to be very bureaucratic and will be very unlikely to make any economic changes.

Sooner or later this terrific debt problem has to be resolved, and there is only one possible way to resolve it, and that is to ‘forget’ it. The debt is unrepayable, and it is going to be swallowed by a number of people taking their lumps— banks, corporations, and governments. And some of the borrowers will have to swallow bitter pills. The decks have to be cleared. I suspect that under international agreements the old debts are going to be washed away, forgiven, or rephased — such wonderful jargon words!

I think everyone recognizes now that the achievement of a better world is more complicated and difficult than some of us thought 20 years ago.”

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“NSA Officials Are Infuriated That All This Havoc Was Caused By Some Random Contractor”

January 14, 2014 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

In an addendum of sorts to his recent Wired article, “How the NSA Almost Killed the Internet,” Steven Levy, who wrote one of my favorite books ever, has published some takeaways from his recent conversations with the embattled government organization. One example about a certain freelancer:

“They really hate Snowden. The NSA is clearly, madly, deeply furious at the man whose actions triggered the biggest crisis in its history. Even while contending they welcome the debate that now engages the nation, they say that they hate the way it was triggered. The NSA has an admittedly insular culture — the officials described it as almost like a family. Morale suffers when friends and neighbors think that NSA employees are sitting around reading grandma’s email. Also, the agency believes that the Snowden leaks have seriously hurt national security (though others dispute this). NSA officials are infuriated that all this havoc was caused by some random contractor. They suggest that had Snowden been familiar with the culture and the ethos of the agency, understood the level of training undergone by its employees, seen the level of regulations and oversight, he would have been less likely to abscond with all those documents. (Snowden’s interviews indicate otherwise.) Still, they are stunned that someone ‘inside the fence’ would do what Snowden did. Even if Snowden is eventually pardoned, he’d do well to steer clear of Fort Meade.”

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“I Think The Notion We Have Contained Too Big To Fail Is Ludicrous”

January 14, 2014 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

Tom Easton, American Finance Editor at the Economist, just did an Ask Me Anything at Reddit about what a big honking mess the U.S. is financially. A few exchanges follow.

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Question:

You’ve commented that the US economy is moving towards the state-run model used in China and you’ve seen the effect of that first hand. There are many people in the US who think that’s not a bad thing. Can you briefly summarize the top 3 benefits and top 3 disadvantages to this model?

Tom Easton:

The Chinese economy functions because of a vibrant semi-legal market built around companies that do not pay taxes or follow national laws. At a certain point of maturity, they come under the system and lose their vitality. This is becoming sort of true in America as well, in as much as even though companies follow laws, the laws themselves are Orwellian – all equal, but more equal for some entities then others. Ones falling into this category include the various branches of private equity companies, master limited partnerships, real estate investment trusts, and business development companies. They largely avoid paying taxes on a corporate level, and are growing components of the American economy. When they get extremely large (and perhaps they are nearing this point), pressure will lead to change (maybe). The good part of this facet of America is that allows economic dynamism. The bad part is that it is extremely unfair. That is just like what occurs in China.

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Question:

Treasury Secretary Lew–and the current Administration more broadly–recently began to promote the idea that Dodd-Frank and related Basel III capital and liquidity reforms have solved the problem of Too Big to Fail.

What are your thoughts on the metrics economists and analysts use to measure TBTF, specifically the existence of a “subsidy” in the form of cheaper debt financing as a result of implicit government support. Does the subsidy accurately measure TBTF? And if not, how can we know when we have addressed one of the core symptoms of the financial crisis?

And what do you think of the glaring holes in financial regulatory reform that the TBTF debate seems to ignore, i.e., securities financing transactions, money market funds, and other shadow banking entities.

Tom Easton:

I think the notion we have contained too big to fail is ludicrous. In many ways, during the crisis we merely shifted risks from private institutions to the government, and governments can still fail. Student loans, medicaid and social security are all structurally unsound, as are numerous large public pension plans. Nobody understands Dodd Frank, and I say this having read it, heard incoherent blather from its named authors, and spoken to numerous lawyers making a fortune from its nuances. Worse, perhaps the one uncontroversial ingredient of the financial crisis was its tie to improperly backed housing loans, and there is every indication the administration is pushing in this direction once again. Risk can not be eliminated and to suggest otherwise is to deceive. At best, it can be channeled and made more transparent. Consider one key plank of Dodd Frank: the stress test by the Fed. No one really understands what is in the test, and to the extent there is opacity, good credit will be curtailed and credit broadly will be provided by other sorts of entities that aren’t exposed to the same bureaucracy. There are already signs that it will come through companies which themselves are backed by bank, merely making the system more convoluted. The end of this questions suggests the author, bae8, clearly understands the limitations of the rules. We may have gotten the worst of both worlds – a “safety” net full of holes that nonetheless asphyxiates virtuous economic activity.

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Question:

Do you think there will be any economic repercussions down the road due to the late start young adults are having in terms of jobs, starting careers, settling down etc?

Tom Easton:

At the Economist we have meetings in the editors office. Ideas are debated and often research cited. Sometimes I feel that what I hear is exactly contrary to what I have experienced. This is one of those areas. In a meeting I attended, one of our economic writers cited a piece that said the damage caused by a delayed or adverse start to a career will cause profound long-term damage to a career, and the reverse is true as well – there are golden moments to begin work. I have certainly seem anecdotal evidence of the latter – business school graduates from the late 1940s controlled vast swathes of the American economy. That said, I found that many of the most talented, driven and open people I have encountered were hit hard early on by adverse economic circumstances. When I began my career, the most extraordinary people I encountered had lived through bitter times during the Depression. It is no secret that Apple and Microsoft were founded in the 1970s. I think the key is how miserable the person is about their late start. The more miserable they are, the happier they will be.

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Question:

What do you think is the biggest danger to the world economy that isn’t talked about in the media or intellectual circles today?

Tom Easton:

The single biggest danger is that there is no consensus, and perhaps no understanding, on underpins a viable economic system. In America, I think we are at a point where there is no agreement – and again maybe no understanding – of what defines the structure of a company, the role of the state, illegal activity, and even ownership. People often refer to the “american system” but whatever this may be is currently in great flux. That is a huge challenge to the rule of law – meaning clear demarcations of what is right and just, and what constitutes appropriate activity. The result is that there a movement toward cronyism – success is tied to who you know and the friends that can be purchased. The good news is that I believe many in America are aware of this, and it is not illegal to discuss it (untrue in much of the world) and consequently, I anticipate the emergence of better ideas and conditions.•

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“Something’s Happening Here In San Francisco”

January 13, 2014 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

San Francisco is ground zero in the tech-driven divide of haves and have-nots, with gourmet cafeterias and private transportation for the those inside the ‘plex and diminishing returns for the unlucky on the outside looking in. It’s not that corporations are responsible for curing all of society’s ills, but they can be held to account for making them worse through dodging taxes and privatizing basic services–by disengaging from a bustling city into a gated community. It’s a utopia; it’s an earthquake.

There have been a torrent of articles on the topic recently, but Katharine Blake McFarland’s 3 Quarks Daily essay is particularly good. The opening:

“Something is happening in San Francisco. It’s nothing new, exactly; the widening gap between rich and poor is a story unfolding across the nation and the world and San Franciscans are growing weary of the spotlight. But the story here is hard to keep quiet about because it’s unfolding dramatically, at an accelerated pace and on an exaggerated scale. The numbers speak for themselves: in the city of San Francisco, the median price for a two-bedroom apartment is now $3,875, the highest in the country, and eviction notices are up 40 percent since 2010. On the one hand, the city counted 6,436 homeless people, more than half of whom suffer from mental illness, earning San Francisco fourth place in the nation for its homeless population. On the other, if all Stanford-alumni-founded companies formed a nation, its economy would be the 10th largest in the world, creating 5.4 million jobs and generating an annual revenue of $2.7 trillion.

It’s more than statistical extremity that accounts for the drama: characters here play their roles with pizzazz. In December, at one of the private bus protests, Union organizer Max Apler pretended to be a Google employee and his rant went viral: ‘This is a city for the right people who can afford it…Can’t afford it? You can leave.’ Residents’ willingness to believe the gag points to the problem. Then realer villains took the stage. AngelHack CEO Greg Gopman posted a Facebook tirade about ‘the degenerates’—San Francisco’s ‘crazy, homeless, drug dealers, dropouts, and trash … [who] gather like hyenas, spit, urinate, taunt you, sell drugs, get rowdy…’ He wrote:

The difference is in other cosmopolitan cities, the lower part of society keep to themselves. They sell small trinkets, beg coyly, stay quiet, and generally stay out of your way. They realize it’s a privilege to be in the civilized part of town and view themselves as guests. And that’s okay…

You can preach compassion, equality, and be the biggest lover in the world, but there is an area of town for degenerates and an area of town for the working class. There is nothing positive gained from having them so close to us. It’s a burden and a liability having them so close to us. Believe me, if they added the smallest iota of value I’d consider thinking different, but the crazy toothless lady who kicks everyone that gets too close to her cardboard box hasn’t made anyone’s life better in a while.“

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“First Offense, A Team Loses Two Wins”

January 13, 2014 in Excerpts, Sports | Permalink

Of all the terrible suggestions regarding MLB’s discipline of PED users, Troy Renck of the Denver Post has come up with the most ludicrous and illogical. He wants to deduct wins from teams when one of its players tests positive for banned substances. That idea suggests that a team should be punished because it somehow failed to properly police its players. Teams, of course, have no ability to test players for drugs. That’s handled by the commissioner’s office in conjunction with the MLBPA and the clubs themselves must remain passive in the execution of these tests. It’s a part of the Collective Bargaining Agreement and can’t be defied in any way. From Renck:

“The Yankees are freed roughly $25 million of ARod’s salary. They can take that savings and stay under the $189 million luxury cap threshold. Or throw it at Tanaka. ARod has three years and $61 million left when he returns. I realize that’s a big amount, but the yankees, more than any other team, would be in position to eat it to make him go away. 

The Yankees get an advantage getting rid of a declining player’s contract for a season. That doesn’t seem fair… In regarding PED punishments, I’d like to see team penalties. First offense, a team loses two wins. Too often, a team gets the positive stats, then washes hands of players after PED test. Would a team sanction create a different view of roster construction?”

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“The Dream Of Having The World Database At Your Fingertips Will Have Become A Reality”

January 13, 2014 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

In 1987, two software moguls, Bill Gates and Dr. Timothy Leary, were asked by Omni to make predictions about life 20 years in the future. Gates was more accurate in his prognostications, though Leary provided some gems like this one: “What will you be? A performer. Everyone will be performing.”

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Bill Gates, Chairman of the Board, Microsoft Corporation:

The processing of digital information is improving very quickly. In ten years you’ll have 30 to 40 times as much computational power, and you’ll be able to manipulate the images and sounds that you now receive just passively from TV — you’ll insert yourself into a game or even change the outcome according to your wishes. So in 20 years your ability to get information will be expanded exponentially.

Take one example; You’re sitting at home. You’ll have a variety of image libraries that will contain, say, all the world’s best art. You’ll also have very cheap, flat panel-display devices throughout your house that will provide resolution so good that viewing a projection will be like looking at the original oil. painting. It will be that realistic.

In 20 years the Information Age will be here, absolutely. The dream of having the world database at your fingertips will have become a reality. You’ll even be able to call up a video show and place yourself in it. Today, if you want to create an image on a screen — a beach with the sun and waves— you’ve got to take a picture of it. But in 20 years you’ll literally construct your own images and scenes. You will have stored very high-level representations of what the sun looks like or how the wind blows. If you want a certain movie star to be sitting on a beach, kind of being lazy, believe me, you’ll be able to do that. People are already doing these things.

Also, we will have serious voice recognition. I expect to wake up and say, “Show me some nice Da Vinci stuff,” and my ceiling, a high-resolution display, will show me what I want to see — or call up any sort of music or video. The world will be online, and we’ll be able to simulate just about anything. Let’s say you want to go out to a racetrack. When you wake up you’ll say, “Hey, rent me one of those formula cars in Daytona,” and with some local controls, a little steering wheel you pull out of your drawer, you’ll be able to get the image and feel like you’re driving the car.

There’s a scary question to all this: How necessary will it be to go to real places or do real things? I mean, in 20 years we will synthesize reality. We’ll do it super-realistically and in real time. The machine will check its database and think of some stories you might tell, songs you might sing, jokes you might not have heard before. Today we simply synthesize flight simulation.

A lot of things are going to vanish from our lives. There will be a machine that keys off of physiological traits, whether it’s voiceprint or fingerprint; so in 2007 Mick Jagger will be onstage, and when Mick feels heat, you’ll feel heat. If a spray of water hits Tina on the back, you’ll feel that, too. I hope passive entertainment will disappear. People want to get involved. It will really start to change the quality of entertainment because it will be so individualized. If you like Bill Cosby, then there will be a digital description of Cosby, his mannerisms and appearance, and you will build your own show from that.

People will like the idea that the machine really knows them and that the machine can create experiences formed around the events in their lives to fulfill their particular needs and interests. But there’s a danger, too. It will be easy to feel worthless or overwhelmed by the amount of data. So what we’ll have to do is make sure the machine can tailor the data to the individual.

Probably all this progress will be pretty disruptive stuff. We’ll really find out what the human brain can do, but we’ll have serious problems about the purpose of it all. We’re going to find out how curious we are and how-much stimulation we can take. There have been experiments in which a monkey can choose to ingest cocaine and the monkey keeps on pushing that button until he dies. Well, we are going to create some pretty intense experiences through synthesized video-audio. Do you think you’ll reach a point of satisfaction when you no longer have to try something new or make something better? Life is really going to change; your ability to access satisfying experiences will be so large.

Take the change in movies in the last few years. Just a few years ago you had to find out where the movie was playing, then go to a certain neighborhood and stand in line to see the movie. Now you can go two blocks and find 10,000 titles. You feel inadequate. It’s going to be intimidating.

Twenty years ago I was ten years old. We already had color TV. I didn’t have theories about what the world might be like. But in the next 20 years you won’t be able to extrapolate the rate of progress from any previous pattern or curve because the new chips, these local intelligences that can process information, will cause a warp in what it’s possible to do. The leap will be unique. I can’t think of any equivalent phenomenon in history.•

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Timothy Leary, President, Futique Software Company:

By 2007 the problem of scarcity will be solved. Because most work will be done by robots and computers, you won’t have to work. Material possessions won’t mean as much to us as they do now, If there are nine Porsches in your garage. you’re going to say, “Take them away.” We’ve done that with wheat and grain, and we can do it with other things if we put our minds to it.

The way we define human beings will change. You won’t be a serf, a slave, or a worker. What will you be? A performer. Everyone will be performing. Passive listening, passive observing, passive watching will disappear. Of course, Big Brother, both of the Reagan and Ihe Gorbachev type, want us to be passive. They don’t want us to think for ourselves.

In 2007 you’ll be living in an information society in which information will be what money and machinery were in the Industrial Age. Everyone is going to be a psychologist, computer whiz, philosopher. Mind play, mind performance, psychological skill are going to be the equivalent of land, money, and power in the earlier ages.

Now to the nuts and bolts of this stuff: Every kid will learn how to communicate at a very young age; every kid will have his own computer — like a pair of sneakers, a pair of Nikes. No one will steal a computer, because you’ll throw them away. And everyone will learn how to chart his thoughts and his mental performance — like a baseball player’s stats. Even kids will plot their thoughts like they plot their batting average. The name of our species is Homo sapiens. That means we’re the organism that thinks, and our species finally will be proficient in thinking.

The biggest effect will be on blacks and members of other minority groups in this country. In the Information Age, to keep any poor kid from having a computer would be like keeping him from having food, medicine, shelter, or clothing now.

Within 20 years we’ll have scrapped the current system of partisan politics. Partisan politics belongs back in an age of feudalism, or at most the Industrial Age. It is insane to run a highly complicated, technological, pluralistic society like America when you have in the cabin of the spaceship a Democratic and a Republican candidate kneeing and gouging and beating up each other to see who’s going to be president for four years. In an electronic society an intelligent person would no more send Tip O’Neil to Washington to make his laws than you’d send Tip O’Neill to the wine shop to pick out a good wine for you.

Everyone is going to be responsible for government. It will be done by televoting, perhaps every Sunday between, say, twelve and one. But we’ll be voting on major issues — not parties, people, or a glamorous candidate who will play on our superstitions and emotions. You’ll educate yourself on the issues by using your own thought-processing appliances, the new computers. So you’ll be continually teaching yourself, continuously learning.

Right now there is a great deal of concern about the drug problem. In 20 years there will be hundreds of neurotransmitters that will allow you to boot up and activate your brain and change mental performance. There are going to be what I call brain radios — hearing aids you put in your ear— that will pick up and communicate with the electricity in your brain. You will be able to tune in any brain aspect, like sex, that you want. You will speed up or slow down your thinking. Anything you can do with chemicals you can do with brain waves, and they are so much healthier.

Drugs will be old-fashioned. No one will be addicted because you can just turn on the ultimate orgasm and keep it going for an hour. But how long are you going to do that? You’ll get bored. You’re going to want to turn it down or off. The criminality of drugs is what is causing the so-called drug crisis, but if you legalize a brain radio — and you’re going to have to — everyone will have the ability to dial into any emotional, mental, or sensual experience. We will use these radios to think more clearly and, above all, to communicate more clearly. The key to the twenty-first century will be five words: “think for yourself,” and “question authority.”

People will become more intelligent. I am really bored with the level of intelligence on this planet. There’s no one to talk to, and there is so much superstition. I am just waiting for people to smarten up. In 20 years I’ll have more fun, and I’ll have more people to talk to. People will be teaching me, and life is going to be more exciting. Twenty years ago — 1967 — the summer of love was just beginning, and I was busy performing the rituals that had to be performed then. The computers were IBM business machines that were used to de- personalize and control us. I frankly was too dumb to look ahead.•

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“The Next Global Conflicts Are More Likely To Be Fought In Tightly Packed Urban Areas”

January 12, 2014 in Books, Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

From Hope Landsem’s WSJ review of David Kilcullen’s new book about the future of warfare, a passage about the heat of the battle potentially shifting to areas of population density:

“Out of the Mountains: The Coming Age of the Urban Guerrilla is his attempt at a study of future threats. The author says he was alerted by ‘a sense of dissonance about our reliance on ‘pure’ or binary theories that are framed around the nature of a specific threat group.’ Mr. Kilcullen worries that previous counterinsurgency theories, his own included, don’t adequately address current or potential problems, including global trends like population growth, urbanization, and the ready dissemination of military expertise and technology such as cellphones and drones.

These trends, Mr. Kilcullen says, will have a profound effect on the future of warfare. Take Libya, where anti-Gadhafi rebels in 2011 were able to use their technical expertise to modify weapons in factories near Benghazi—despite their lack of prior military experience. In Syria, urban areas became breeding grounds for dissatisfaction following years of diminishing water supplies. Social networks and social media helped fuel Syria’s 2011 uprising, which subsequently devolved into a sectarian civil war centered around cities.

As these examples show, the next global conflicts are more likely to be fought in tightly packed urban areas rather than in mountain environs. Coastal regions present extremely likely future threats, Mr. Kilcullen says—fitting, given that coastal regions contain more than 80% of the world’s cities.”

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“Even Our Best And Brightest Devices Must Be Accommodated Within Existing Practices And Assumptions”

January 12, 2014 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

We often see technological development as a silver bullet that can change everything, but that bullet still has to be sized to fit a gun, even if it’s a 3D-printed gun. Structural changes are usually incremental and new technologies have to accommodate that pace. It’s evolution, not revolution. It can’t impose perfection and order upon the world. The telephone, for instance, started conversations but did not end wars. 

In his final BBC column, Tom Chatfield addresses revolution as it relates to technology. The opening:

“Lecturing in late 1968, the American sociologist Harvey Sacks addressed one of the central failures of technocratic dreams. We have always hoped, Sacks argued, that ‘if only we introduced some fantastic new communication machine the world will be transformed.’ Instead, though, even our best and brightest devices must be accommodated within existing practices and assumptions in a ‘world that has whatever organisation it already has.’

As an example, Sacks considered the telephone. Introduced into American homes during the last quarter of the 19th Century, instantaneous conversation across hundreds or even thousands of miles seemed close to a miracle. For Scientific American, editorializing in 1880, this heralded ‘nothing less than a new organization of society – a state of things in which every individual, however secluded, will have at call every other individual in the community, to the saving of no end of social and business complications…’

Yet the story that unfolded was not so much ‘a new organization of society’ as the pouring of existing human behaviour into fresh moulds: our goodness, hope and charity; our greed, pride and lust. New technology didn’t bring an overnight revolution. Instead, there was strenuous effort to fit novelty into existing norms.”

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“A State Can End War, But A Traditional Society Cannot”

January 12, 2014 in Books, Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

From Amy Chozick’s New York Times Magazine interview with Jared Diamond in which the scientist defends his recent book, The World Until Yesterday, from criticism:

“NYT:

On the other hand, the book has been criticized for saying traditional societies are very violent.

Jared Diamond:

Some people take a view of traditional society as being peaceful and gentle. But the proportional rate of violent death is much higher in traditional societies than in state-level societies, where governments assert a monopoly on force. During World War II, until Aug. 14, 1945, American soldiers who killed Japanese got medals. On Aug. 16, American soldiers who killed Japanese were guilty of murder. A state can end war, but a traditional society cannot.

NYT:

People have called the book racist, saying it suggests third-world poverty is caused by environmental factors instead of imperialism and conquests.

Jared Diamond:

It’s clearly nonsense. It’s not as if people in certain parts of the world were rich until Europeans came along and they suddenly became poor. Before that, there were big differences in technology, military power and the development of centralized government around the world. That’s a fact.”

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“Cyberwar Is Not Something That Will Take Place In A Far-Off Realm”

January 10, 2014 in Books, Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech | Permalink

P.W. Singer, author of Wired for War, has a new book about cybersecurity and sat for an interview on the topic with Alyson Sheppard of Popular Mechanics. An excerpt:

“Question:

How are countries coming to terms with the ethics of using digital weapons in a military context?

P.W. Singer:

It’s a new realm of international competition and conflict and it’s very much on its way to becoming an arms race. I mean the worst aspect of arms races in the past, where countries spend a lot of money competing with each other but end up all less secure. We explore in the book the role of international negotiations and the potential of new laws and arms control. It’s going to be really difficult, but that doesn’t mean there’s not value in trying.

You also have this issue to be worked out on the national level. You have more than 100 countries building cyber military command equivalents. The civilian side needs to better understand the ramifications. This is most definitely a concern in both the U.S. and China, particularly right now when there’s a buildup of capabilities and military doctrines that are not well understood by the civilian leaders.

It’s not just our role as citizens of these countries and netizens of the Internet itself, but it’s all affecting this online world that we depend on. Cyberwar is not something that will take place in a far-off realm. It’s something that will happen on the Internet that we all use. It’s not just that we might be targeted—it’s that it will go through us.”

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“Outlandish Stories Take Away From The Real Tragedy”

January 10, 2014 in Excerpts, Politics | Permalink

Los Angeles Times foreign correspondent Barbara Demick just did an Ask Me Anything ay Reddit about life inside Dennis Rodman’s go-to spring break retreat, North Korea. A few exchanges follow.

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Question:

What’s with the sensationalism by the media when reporting on the country?

Barbara Demick:

People are inclined to believe anything about North Korea, the more bizarre the better. Executions using packs of hungry dogs, Christians run over by steamrollers, etc. There was a story going around once that when somebody was caught stealing food, they were burned to death and their family required to light the fire. I told a North Korean that story once, and he laughed- pointing out correctly that firewood was way to scarce to kill anybody that way. Unfortunately, the outlandish stories take away from the real tragedy– which is that millions of North Koreans perish slowly, painfully as a result of chronic malnutrition.

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Question:

Do you believe the dog story?

Barbara Demick:

That Jang Sung Taek was eaten alive by a pack of hungry dogs? No, I don’t believe the story. But probably many North Koreans will and that will only enhance their fear of the regime. I think the North Korean government sometimes deliberately spreads urban legend to keep people in line.

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Question:

Do the people of North Korea ever think about revolting, or do they think the country is relatively “normal” compared to the rest of the world.

Barbara Demick:

One of the ways the North Korea regime has kept power is by keeping its people ignorant of the living standards in the outside world. That’s the underlying lie that supports the regime– not that their country is “normal” but that they are better off. The title of my book, Nothing to Envy, is taken from a popular children’s song “We have nothing to envy in the world” about how wonderful life is inside North Korea. Here’s a Youtube link, sorry no English subtitles.

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Question:

What do you believe are Kim Jong Un’s top three international relations priorities today (overt or covert)?

Barbara Demick:

Kim Jong Un wants North Korea to be accepted as a nuclear power. Like his father, he has no intention of giving up nuclear weapons, which he believes are the only thing that prevent him from being unceremoniously ousted like Saddam Hussein or Gaddafi. I think he also wants foreign investment and the lifting of international sanctions in order to build the economy, but not if it means giving up nuclear weapons. North Korea introduced a new slogan last year called “Byungjin,” meaning simultaneous, the idea being that they develop the economy and the nuclear program at the same time.

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Question:

Do you think Dennis Rodman’s “basketball diplomacy” will have any significance in US-NK relationship?

Barbara Demick:

I always think it’s good when Americans visit North Korea– the more engagement the better as far as I’m concerned. Rodman should have been more thoughtful about how he behaved and what he said. He squandered a great opportunity. But I hope he goes again and takes his mission more seriously.•

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“Extremely Short Exposures To A Relatively Simple Computer Program Could Induce Powerful Delusional Thinking In Quite Normal People”

January 10, 2014 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

The real shift in our time isn’t only that we’ve stopped worrying about surveillance, exhibitionism and a lack of privacy, but that we’ve embraced these things–demanded them, even. There must have been something lacking in our lives, something gone unfulfilled. But is this intimacy with technology and the sense of connection and friendship and relationship that attends it–often merely a likeness of love–an evolutionary correction or merely a desperate swipe in the wrong direction?

The opening of Brian Christian’s New Yorker piece about Spike Jonze’s Her, a film about love in the time of simulacra, in which a near-future man is wowed by a “woman” who seems to him like more than just another pretty interface:

“In 1966, Joseph Weizenbaum, a professor of computer science at M.I.T., wrote a computer program called Eliza, which was designed to engage in casual conversation with anybody who sat down to type with it. Eliza worked by latching on to keywords in the user’s dialogue and then, in a kind of automated Mad Libs, slotted them into open-ended responses, in the manner of a so-called non-directive therapist. (Weizenbaum wrote that Eliza’s script, which he called Doctor, was a parody of the method of the psychologist Carl Rogers.) ‘I’m depressed,’ a user might type. ‘I’m sorry to hear you are depressed,’ Eliza would respond.

Eliza was a milestone in computer understanding of natural language. Yet Weizenbaum was more concerned with how users seemed to form an emotional relationship with the program, which consisted of nothing more than a few hundred lines of code. ‘I was startled to see how quickly and how very deeply people conversing with DOCTOR became emotionally involved with the computer and how unequivocally they anthropomorphized it,’ he wrote. ‘Once my secretary, who had watched me work on the program for many months and therefore surely knew it to be merely a computer program, started conversing with it. After only a few interchanges with it, she asked me to leave the room.’ He continued, ‘What I had not realized is that extremely short exposures to a relatively simple computer program could induce powerful delusional thinking in quite normal people.’

The idea that people might be unable to distinguish a conversation with a person from a conversation with a machine is rooted in the earliest days of artificial-intelligence research.”

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“Other Agricultural Biologicals Include Fungi That Parasitically Kills Pests And Bacteria That Promotes Root Growth”

January 9, 2014 in Excerpts, Science/Tech | Permalink

Looking to reconfigure nature to organically do the job of man-made chemicals–and do it better–Monsanto, that worrisome Big Agra entity, has entered in earnest the field of microbials. From Sam Brasch at Modern Farmer:

“Monsanto’s partner in the new BioAg Alliance is Novozymes, a Danish company which knows a thing or two about putting microbes to work. They already offer farmers products like JumpStart, a strain of bacteria that grows along crop roots to help the plants take full advantage of phosphorus in the soil. Other agricultural biologicals – the umbrella terms for all living things that could protect plant health and productivity — include fungi that parasitically kills pests and bacteria that promotes root growth.

Each company has something to offer the other when it comes to making biologicals. Nozozymes has the experience and facilities to mass produces single microbes; Monsanto has the infrastructure to field test those products, which is crucial. Many microbes work great in the sterile conditions of the laboratory only to fail in the complex soils of real farms. Novozymes also gets a nice $300 million dollar bonus for opening a joint pipeline with Monsanto.

Such living pesticides and crop enhancers hold enormous promise for worldwide agriculture. A report from the American Academy of Microbiologists (A.A.M.) estimates that engaging the living world in and around plants could increase yields 20 percent in the next 20 years while at the same time reducing pesticide use by 20 percent. Right now, biopesticides only make up a 2.3 billion dollar industry — only 5 percent of the 44 billion dollars supporting chemical pesticides.”

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“We Face A Catastrophe In Future Years Unless We Act Now”

January 9, 2014 in Excerpts, Science/Tech | Permalink

If you’re fascinated by all things bees, including Colony Collapse Disorder, Russ Roberts conducted a recent interview on EconTalk with Wally Thurman on the subject. Many questions are answered, though I’m still not sure how much I should be worried about the great bee die-off interrupting the food supply in the U.S., where wild bees aren’t a factor. A Guardian article by Damian Carrington states its a paramount concern in the UK. The opening:

“The UK faces a food security catastrophe because of its very low numbers of honeybee colonies, which provide an essential service in pollinating many crops, scientists warned on Wednesday.

New research reveals that honeybees provide just a quarter of the pollination needed in the UK, the second lowest level among 41 European countries. Furthermore, the controversial rise of biofuels in Europe is driving up the need for pollination five times faster than the rise in honeybee numbers. The research suggests an increasing reliance on wild pollinators, such as bumblebees and hoverflies, whose diversity is in decline.

‘We face a catastrophe in future years unless we act now,’ said Professor Simon Potts, at the University of Reading, who led the research.”

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“[It] Was Found To Be ‘Surprisingly Effective’ In Determining How Popular A Book Would Be”

January 9, 2014 in Books, Excerpts, Science/Tech | Permalink

The wonderful 3 Quarks Daily pointed me to a Telegraph article by Matthew Sparkes about an algorithm which is said to have better than 80% success predicting which books will be bestsellers. In short: Use conjunctions, avoid cliches and favor nouns and adjectives over verbs. The opening:

“Scientists have developed an algorithm which can analyse a book and predict with 84 per cent accuracy whether or not it will be a commercial success.

A technique called statistical stylometry, which mathematically examines the use of words and grammar, was found to be ‘surprisingly effective’ in determining how popular a book would be.

The group of computer scientists from Stony Brook University in New York said that a range of factors determine whether or not a book will enjoy success, including ‘interestingness,’ novelty, style of writing, and how engaging the storyline is, but admit that external factors such as luck can also play a role.”

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“If You Could Bring Just One Animal Back From Extinction, What Would It Be?”

January 9, 2014 in Excerpts, Science/Tech | Permalink

Depiction of Quetzalcoatlus by Mark Witton and Darren Naish.

Depiction of Quetzalcoatlus by Mark Witton and Darren Naish.

In promoting his new film, naturalist Sir David Attenborough conducted an Ask Me Anything at Reddit. A few exchanges follow.

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Question:

What are your views on the thought that we are currently entering a “sixth mass extinction”? Do you think it is possible humans can reverse some of the damage that has already been done? Thank-you so much for everything!

David Attenborough:

Yes, I’m afraid we are. It’s not possible to reverse the damage we’ve done. We are undoubtedly exterminating species at a speed which has never been known before.

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Question:

Do you belieive it is ok to keep animals in captivity? Are there circumstances when animals should be taken from their natural habitat? I ask because I have morally struggled with the concept of zoo’s for most of my life.

David Attenborough:

There are some animals which have been kept happily in captivity, most of them are very small with small requirements. Big animals, unfortunately can’t be kept in captivity satisfactorily- predators most of all.

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Question:

Other than The Origin of Species which book do you think changed the scientific world most?

David Attenborough:

Probably in recent times, Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring.

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Question:

What’s one natural phenomenon that you still cannot believe is real, despite you knowing the science behind it?

David Attenborough:

The way a venus flower basket sponge puts together its skeleton.

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Question:

If you could bring just one animal back from extinction, what would it be and why?

David Attenborough:

Quetzal Coatlus – a giant pterosaur.

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Question:

I wanted to ask what course you think all life on this planet will take eventually? Do you see us surviving long?

David Attenborough:

We have many millions of years to go if we are to match the longevity of many species. Yes, I think we will get there, but perhaps our civilisation may actually become impoverished.″•

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“It Hit Me Like The Assassinations Of The Sixties”

January 8, 2014 in Books, Excerpts | Permalink

In Ian Thomson’s Financial Times piece about Claudia Roth Pierpoint’s new Philip Roth book, he includes a brief passage about the Roth-Primo Levi relationship. That segment mentions a 1986 New York Times article Roth write about Levi. A passage from each follows.

From Thomson:

“Roth met Levi in the spring of 1986. If Levi was unprepared for Roth’s engagingly gentle presence, Roth found Levi surprisingly sociable. (‘With some people you just unlock,’ Roth recalled.) As they said goodbye outside the Italian Cultural Institute in London, Levi told Roth: ‘You know, this has all come too late.’ The encounter nevertheless proved to be one the most important in 20th-century literature. Roth afterwards interviewed Levi for the New York Times and helped to consolidate Levi’s reputation across the Atlantic. Accompanied by Bloom, Roth had called on Levi in September 1986 at the paint and varnish factory outside Turin where he had worked as an industrial chemist. The staff were warned not to mention Portnoy’s Complaint, as Roth was apparently no longer so fond of his ‘masturbation novel.’

Seven months later, Levi was dead. The effect on Roth of Levi’s suicide in 1987 was ‘staggering.’ Roth told Pierpont, adding: ‘It hit me like the assassinations of the sixties.’ Although Roth had cultivated friendships with other European writers, notably Ivan Klíma and Milan Kundera, his friendship with Levi, Pierpoint says, had gone ‘remarkably deep.'”

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From “A Man Saved By His Skills,” by Roth:

“ON the September Friday that I arrived in Turin – to renew a conversation with Primo Levi that we had begun one afternoon in London the spring before – I asked to be shown around the paint factory where he’d been employed as a research chemist and, afterwards, until retirement, as factory manager. Altogether the company employs 50 people, mainly chemists who work in the laboratories and skilled laborers on the floor of the plant. The production machinery, the row of storage tanks, the laboratory building, the finished product in man-sized containers ready to be shipped, the reprocessing facility that purifies the wastes – all of it is encompassed in four or five acres a seven-mile drive from Turin. The machines that are drying resin and blending varnish and pumping off pollutants are never really distressingly loud, the yard’s acrid odor – the smell, Levi told me, that clung to his clothing for two years after his retirement – is by no means disgusting, and the skip loaded with the black sludgy residue of the antipolluting process isn’t particularly unsightly. It is hardly the world’s ugliest industrial environment, but a very long way, nonetheless, from those sentences suffused with mind that are the hallmark of Levi’s autobiographical narratives. On the other hand, however far from the prose, it is clearly a place close to his heart; taking in what I could of the noise, the stench, the mosaic of pipes and vats and tanks and dials, I remembered Faussone, the skilled rigger in The Monkey’s Wrench, saying to Levi – who calls Faussone ‘my alter ego’ – ‘I have to tell you, being around a work site is something I enjoy.’

On our way to the section of the laboratory where raw materials are scrutinized before moving on to production, I asked Levi if he could iden-tify the particular chemical aroma faintly permeating the corridor: I thought it smelled a little like a hospital corridor. Just fractionally he raised his head and exposed his nostrils to the air. With a smile he told me, ‘I understand and can analyze it like a dog.’

He seemed to me inwardly animated more in the manner of some little quicksilver woodland creature empowered by the forest’s most astute intelligence. Levi is small and slight, though not quite so delicately built as his unassuming demeanor makes him at first appear, and still seemingly as nimble as he must have been at 10. In his body, as in his face, you see – as you don’t in most men – the face and the body of the boy that he was. His alertness is nearly palpable, keenness trembling within him like his pilot light.”

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“He Was A Hero In Certain Circles Well Before The Assassination Of President Kennedy”

January 8, 2014 in Books, Excerpts, Politics, Urban Studies | Permalink

I think you know my feelings about JFK conspiracists, but Mark Lane, author of 1966’s Rush to Judgement, a broadside directed at the Warren Commission, has lived a colorful existence even beyond that explosive chapter in American history. A lawyer for anti-war factions and civil-rights groups in the 1960s, Lane later became a legal representative for Jim Jones and his Jonestown settlement in Guyana, which in 1978 descended into madness and mass death. He was on the scene when the cult members prepared to follow their mad leader’s orders–to drink his Kool-Aid–and survived by escaping and hiding somewhere safer–the jungle.

Here’s Lane, in 1966, discussing the Warren Commission with William F. Buckley.

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“Personalization Is Not As Exciting As Many Once Believed”

January 8, 2014 in Excerpts, Film, Science/Tech | Permalink

Personalization, not a great thing for a democracy, was always for me one of the least-interesting aspects of Web 1.0. I don’t want to learn what I already know but what’s unfamiliar. 

Netflix abandoned its drive to improve personalization for a couple of reasons: 1) Streaming made it less of a priority since a customer could easily switch from unpleasing programming, and 2) Perhaps some others agree with me about desiring novelty instead of familiarity. From Ben Kunz at ThoughtGadgets:

“The deeper issue is that personalization is not as exciting as many once believed. In the 1990s, Don Peppers built a consulting business on the concept of “1to1 marketing,” where new computer systems would learn individual preferences and businesses would respond with customized offers. Don’s concept was that personalization would create an unbreakable competitive advantage — because once a consumer trained a company to anticipate her needs, she would be reluctant to go through the same process with a competitor. Don was observant enough to note that such customization wouldn’t be a fit for every business model — but companies that had customers with a wide range of needs (such as Netflix movie watchers) or a wide range in value (say, financial advisors courting investors) would benefit by deploying 1to1 personalization.

Despite the noble dream of giving customers more utility and companies more brand loyalty, personalization never took off. Amazon was really the best case study … but it struggles still to offer truly relevant personal recommendations on its website (the core challenges being it cannot easily recognize multiple users on the same Amazon account, or differentiate between your modality as you shop for your spouse one day and yourself the next). Twitter has a personalization engine behind its “Discovery” tab to push news or links to you based on your observed Twitter profile. That site section has so little utility, most Twitter users don’t use it. And Facebook, which arguably has the greatest trove of data on human personal interests, is really at the mercy of the advertisers who wish to target you; this is why you, guys, get ads for men’s underwear whether you really want them or not.

Why is personalization so difficult? Why is it so hard to anticipate what people want, and use that for business advantage? The challenge is personalization is at odds with a core driver of consumer purchase behavior — novelty. Consumers are constantly hungry for something new, something improved, something that will stimulate their endorphins in a manner unseen before.”

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“Stanford Wants Its Future Brins And Pages To Know Not Just How To Code But Also How To Decode Mozart Symphonies”

January 7, 2014 in Excerpts, Science/Tech | Permalink

Even Stanford’s new passion for the arts has to do with hatching better products and apps. From an Economist article about the university/tech incubator attempting to create Hewletts and Packards who are also Hockneys and Picassos:

“California’s famous innovation factory, which counts Sergey Brin and Larry Page of Google, Reed Hastings of Netflix, Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger of Instagram, and Peter Thiel of PayPal among its alumni, has discovered that arts are the future. ‘Stanford is aware that it’s educating leaders,’ explains Stephen Hinton, a professor of music and the director of the Stanford Arts Initiative. ‘And leadership isn’t just about having technical skills and economic savvy, but about having a broad range of skills.’

In other words, Stanford wants its future Brins and Pages to know not just how to code but also how to decode Mozart symphonies. From last September, all undergraduates have had to take a compulsory class in ‘Creative Expression’. Among the 161 courses they can choose from are Laptop Orchestra and Shakespeare in Performance.

The Palo Alto-based university is trying to help answer one of the questions that haunts our ‘knowledge society’: where will new ideas come from?”

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“I’m Tired, My Feet Hurt, My Shoes Got Holes In Them”

January 7, 2014 in Excerpts, Urban Studies | Permalink

The opening of Zack Crockett’s Priceonomics blog post about one homeless veteran in San Francisco, how he fell into that mean existence and the intractability of such a predicament:

“Nathaniel only trusts two people: ‘Jesus, and a MUNI driver named Curtis.’ In the heart of the city, off homeless-dense Market Street, he bumbles along the brick wall of an alleyway, watching his shadow shuffle one step ahead. He has trouble making eye contact. As if bearing some great weight, he hunches, hiding his face beneath the brim of a colorful Rolling Stones cap. He’s 57 with poor eyesight. A new pair of reading glasses — his only Christmas gift this year —dangles from the loose neck of his t-shirt, and he occasionally pauses to make sure they’re still safe.

One of 7,000-10,000 homeless residents of San Francisco, Nathaniel, or ‘Nate the Great,’ as his mother once called him, is particularly worn down tonight, and at the end of his wits.

‘I’m tired, my feet hurt, my shoes got holes in them,’ he says without an iota of self-pity. ‘Thankfully, the holidays are over. It ain’t bad you know, but another year, and the same old thing. You haven’t moved along.’

He’s been roaming Market Street for 15 years. Like most homeless who are not sheltered in the city (about 50%), Nate subsists on what he makes panhandling throughout the day — usually $10-15 over the course of 15 hours, from 9 am to 12 am. There’s the occasional rare day where he’ll pull in $50. And then there was that one time he woke up with a coffee tin full of $300 in quarters. But he hasn’t seen a day like that for a long time. Today, he ‘retires early’ at 5 pm with four dollars and nineteen cents in his pocket.”

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“He needs your help desperately…we just don’t do that here”:

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“The Power Of Intelligent Machines Is Growing As Their Cost Collapses”

January 7, 2014 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

The opening of “The Robots Are Coming,” Gavin Kelly’s smart and sober-minded Guardian piece about the rise of the machines and what that will mean for job markets in automated societies:

“Whether it’s our humdrum reliance on supermarket self-service tills, Siri on our iPhones, the emergence of the drone as a weapon of choice or the impending arrival of the driverless car, intelligent machines are woven into our lives as never before.  

It’s increasingly common, a cliche even, for us to read about the inexorable rise of the robot as the fundamental shift in advanced economies that will transform the nature of work and opportunity within society. The robot is supposedly the spectre threatening the economic security not just of the working poor but also the middle class across mature societies. ‘Be afraid’ is the message: the march of the machine is eating into our jobs, pay rises and children’s prospects. And, according to many experts, we haven’t seen anything yet. 

This is because the power of intelligent machines is growing as their cost collapses. They are doing things reliably now that would have sounded implausible only a few years ago. By the end of the decade, Nissan pledges the driverless car, Amazon promises that electric drones will deliver us packages, Rolls-Royce says that unmanned robo-ships will sail our seas. The expected use of machines for everyday purposes is already giving rise to angst about the nascent problem of ‘robot smog‘ as other people’s machines invade ever more aspects of our personal space.“

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“The Obesity Epidemic Is More About Irresponsible Business Practices Than Irresponsible People”

January 6, 2014 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

If the lithe Wendy’s Girl actually ate at Wendy’s with any frequency, she would be overweight and unhealthy. There are very large corporations determined to sell us as much cheap, lousy food as possible, strategizing how to best trigger our impulsive behaviors and undermine sound diets. On this topic, Deborah Cohen, RAND Corporation scientist and author of A Big Fat Crisis, conducted an Ask Me Anything at Reddit. A few excerpts.

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Question:

Do you think that “big is beautiful” and “plus size models” encourage obesity rather than discourage?

Deborah Cohen:

No, I don’t think this encourages obesity. It is a way to cope with the current situation of high rates of obesity, but it fails to point out the true causes of the epidemic. What we need to do is the shatter the myth that body size has anything to do with moral character. The fact is that the obesity epidemic is more about irresponsible business practices than irresponsible people.

Question:

You state that the “obesity epidemic is more about irresponsible business practices than irresponsible people”, and I agree that many businesses promote unhealthy attitudes. However, at the end of the day, what about personal responsibility? Shouldn’t we focus on strengthening the will power versus removing the temptation?

Deborah Cohen:

Over the past few decades many people have tried to strengthen their willpower and have invested billion is the diet industry. Yet few are successful. That’s because willpower is limited and fatigues like a muscle. Willpower is also a genetic trait and most people cannot improve their capacity for self-control. Some studies have followed people over 40 years and they found that the children who lacked self-control at age 4 still had low levels of self control compared to their peers at age 44. That’s why most New Year’s resolutions fail. We want to improve, yet the biggest barrier to controlling food intake is the environment. We can’t change people’s genes, but we can change business practices.

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Question:

Your book recommends that the government limit “the amount and choice of food items supermarkets would be allowed to sell to individual customers,” according to the Boston Globe. Americans would march in the streets if that law was implemented (at least until we got winded). How do you see ideas like yours not ending the careers of any politician who proposes them?

Deborah Cohen:

The Boston Globe reviewer misunderstood. What I recommend are limits on impulse marketing strategies, by which I mean not placing candy at the cash register or chips and sodas on the end-of-aisle displays. I recommend putting items that increase the risk of chronic diseases in places like the middle of an aisle on the bottom shelf, so those who want to buy them can still do so, and people who want to avoid them will be able to. Lots of people want candy-free check out aisles, but most supermarkets prefer to tempt people and manufacturers pay them for this shelf space.

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Question:

Do you think anything needs to be done about the relentless airings of fast food commercials on television? The only ones that don’t make me hungry are the Hardee’s commercials where scantily clad super models pretend to eat burgers larger than their heads.

 Deborah Cohen:

Yes, I think that instead of banning these commercials we should have counter-advertising that points out how these commercials are duping us. It worked for tobacco control and I believe it would be successful to control obesity. Under the Fairness Doctrine, TV stations were mandated to provide free air time for anti-tobacco ads if the stations were airing pro-tobacco ads. The tobacco companies wised up and stopped showing tobacco ads so there was no more free air time for counter ads.

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Question:

I have personally never been sold on the “fat gene” idea. We almost never saw fat people until the second half of the 20th century when it became common; previously it was only the very wealthy that could even get fat. Nowadays with cheap fatty food available for all it just makes sense that people can get big fast. Now obviously some people have better metabolism than others, but the idea that someone can claim they’re fat because of their genes always seems like a cop out for someone that loves fast food and no working out.

Not having read your book, can you reinforce our counter my claim that genetics does not play a large role in weight gain/health?

Deborah Cohen:

You are right! Obesity rates doubled between 1980 and 2000, a time period too short for genetics to play a role. The increase in obesity, I believe, is solely due to the change in the food environment. As I argue in my book, our country has been turned into a food swamp, inundating us with too much food, too much food advertising, and easy, convenient access to calories 24/7.

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Question:

What do you think of a South Beach-type diet for long-term weight control?

Deborah Cohen:

Most diets work if you can follow them. The problem is that most people cannot stay on a diet because they are continually undermined by all the cues that tempt people to eat more than they need. People are wired to feel hungry when they see or smell tempting food. If humans were like cars, and could only fill up a limited tank when it was empty, we would not have survived over the millenia. Dieting in and of itself can backfire for some people and lead them to gain more weight than if they hadn’t been on a diet in the first place. That’s because once we try to forget about food, that’s all we can think of. We become even more sensitive to food cues and if we are stressed, we can find ourselves binging. Willpower fatigues like a muscle, and most of us face limits in our capacity for self-control.•

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“Men Will Already Have Begun An Orgy Of Machinification”

January 6, 2014 in Excerpts, Science/Tech | Permalink

Moore’s Law won’t apply to anything–even integrated circuits–forever. And it doesn’t apply to many things at all. Growth has its spurts, but other things get in the way: entropy, priorities, politics, etc. So I think the near-term questions regarding machines aren’t about transhumanism and other such lofty ones but rather more practical considerations. You know, like a highly automated society creating new jobs and 3-D printers making the manufacturing of firearms uncontrollable and undetectable. In a Commentary broadside, David Gelernter, that brilliant and perplexing thinker, takes aim at the approach of today’s technologists and what he sees as their lack of commitment to humanism. An excerpt about Ray Kurzweil:

“The voice most strongly associated with what I’ve termed roboticism is that of Ray Kurzweil, a leading technologist and inventor. The Kurzweil Cult teaches that, given the strong and ever-increasing pace of technological progress and change, a fateful crossover point is approaching. He calls this point the ‘singularity.’ After the year 2045 (mark your calendars!), machine intelligence will dominate human intelligence to the extent that men will no longer understand machines any more than potato chips understand mathematical topology. Men will already have begun an orgy of machinification—implanting chips in their bodies and brains, and fine-tuning their own and their children’s genetic material. Kurzweil believes in ‘transhumanism,’ the merging of men and machines. He believes human immortality is just around the corner. He works for Google.

Whether he knows it or not, Kurzweil believes in and longs for the death of mankind. Because if things work out as he predicts, there will still be life on Earth, but no human life. To predict that a man who lives forever and is built mainly of semiconductors is still a man is like predicting that a man with stainless steel skin, a small nuclear reactor for a stomach, and an IQ of 10,000 would still be a man. In fact we have no idea what he would be.

Each change in him might be defended as an improvement, but man as we know him is the top growth on a tall tree in a large forest: His kinship with his parents and ancestors and mankind at large, the experience of seeing his own reflection in human history and his fellow man—those things are the crucial part of who he is. If you make him grossly different, he is lost, with no reflection anywhere he looks. If you make lots of people grossly different, they are all lost together—cut adrift from their forebears, from human history and human experience. Of course we do know that whatever these creatures are, untransformed men will be unable to keep up with them. Their superhuman intelligence and strength will extinguish mankind as we know it, or reduce men to slaves or dogs. To wish for such a development is to play dice with the universe.” (Thanks Browser.)

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“Yet For All The Blood Spilled — Of 4,488 Military Men And Women To Be Precise — There’s No Good Reason Why”

January 6, 2014 in Excerpts, Politics | Permalink

I recall during the greatest heat of the war in Iraq seeing TV interviews with one parent after another of a dead American soldier, saying that they didn’t want the U.S. to pull out of Iraq because that meant their child would have died for no reason. It would have been a cruel thing to tell them that their loved one was lost for no reason regardless, that a surge wasn’t going to mean anything in Iraq in the long run, that it was just meant to help the White House save face. Perhaps because more weren’t willing to say the truth aloud–or maybe because not too many would listen anyhow–the same thing kept happening to other soldiers and their parents. And, of course, we hardly ever heard from the family of the perhaps 100,000 Iraqi dead. 

From “Tell Me Again, Why Did My Friends Die In Iraq?” a pained, exasperated Business Insider piece by USMC veteran Paul Szoldra:

“The invasion of Iraq was predicated on the notion of ridding the Hussein regime of ‘weapons of mass destruction’ of course. But in 2004, the game was changed to counterinsurgency — ridding the world of “the terrorists.”

And we sure were successful. Until the U.S. pulled out, American soldiers and Marines certainly killed their fair share of terrorists, insurgents, bad guys, and the like. They in turn, killed plenty of us.

Yet for all the blood spilled — of 4,488 military men and women to be precise — there’s no good reason why.

The proof of how pointless the entire endeavour was — if you even needed more — came Friday morning, with a report from Liz Sly in the Washington Post.

‘At the moment, there is no presence of the Iraqi state in Fallujah,’ a local journalist who asked not to be named because he fears for his safety told Sly. ‘The police and the army have abandoned the city, al-Qaeda has taken down all the Iraqi flags and burned them, and it has raised its own flag on all the buildings.’

Fallujah has fallen, and the same scenario is about to happen in the even-larger city of Ramadi.

It shouldn’t be such a surprise the place my friends fought for is falling back into civil war. I shouldn’t be surprised when the same thing happens in Afghanistan. But it still is, because I don’t want it to happen.”

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