Excerpts

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“A Technology Subculture Could Grow Around DNA Just As One Did For Silicon And Software”

August 20, 2012 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

When I mentioned bio-hacking in the Stewart Brand post, it made me think of a very early article on the topic, Michael Schrage’s 1988 Washington Post piece “Playing God in Your Basement.” At the time, many experts thought that the genome might move rapidly into the mainstream in the way of the personal computer, which took about three decades to go from Homebrew Club to free wi-fi at Starbucks. But biopunk has remained a subculture rather than morphing into culture. So far, at least. An excerpt from Schrage’s writing:

“Personal computing began as a ‘homebrew’ hobby phenomenon with aspiring computerniks wiring up chips, toggle-switches and teletypes to produce desktop machines. Skeptics sneered that personal computers were a solution in search of a problem.

Now, several million unit sales later, the typewriter has become the do-do bird of word-processing, pimply-faced hackers can break into corporate data networks and yesterday’s cutting-edge computer is today’s paperweight.

‘The parallels to the microprocessor industry are there,’ says Lynn Klotz, formerly on the faculty of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at Harvard and a director of BioTechnica International, a Cambridge, Mass., recombinant DNA firm. ‘Both are characterized by general ease and use of declining costs.’

‘As a body, the biotechnology industry is not unlike where the computer industry was in 1975,’ says sociologist Everett Rogers, a University of Southern California professor who has conducted extensive research into the diffusion of innovation. ‘There’s a lot of uncertainty, a lot of rapid innovation and no single main consumer product.’

Rogers points out that hackers–a technology subculture he studied while at Stanford–were attracted to computers as a medium ‘where they could express themselves in an artistic way.’ A number of computer hackers did indeed win science fairs either with hardware or software they created. With the insistent diffusion of biotechnology, Rogers believes, a technology subculture could grow around DNA just as one did for silicon and software.

He wryly notes that when the news media discovered computer hackers, ‘people went into a state of alarm. There were movies about hackers. Perhaps in a few years there will be movies about (bio-hackers) creating Frankensteinian monsters.'”

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“It Made Me Perpetually Impatient”

August 19, 2012 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Videos | Permalink

I know a good deal about the tech legend Stewart Brand–creator of the Whole Earth Catalog and author of the seminal piece of tech journalism “Spacewar,” etc.–but I didn’t realize that he was present in 1968 at Doug Engelbart’s “Mother of All Demos.” In a new Wired interview with Kevin Kelly, in which he acknowledges bio-hackers and calls for the de-extinction of bygone life forms, Brand remembers the effect Englebart’s demo had on him:

“Kevin Kelly: There was an event in San Francisco in 1968 that has come to be called ‘the mother of all demos’—when Stanford’s Doug Engelbart showed off a computer with a mouse and graphical interface. You were there. What significance did that event have for you?

Stewart Brand: It made me perpetually impatient. I saw a bunch of things demonstrated that clearly worked, and I wanted some right now, please! That demo gave a really accurate look at what was coming and made it seem so easy. But decades would go by, and it just kept not coming.

Kelly: Does that give you pause that maybe all kinds of things that look to be around the corner today—drones, magic glasses, self-driving cars—are just premature promises?

Brand: The lesson was that this is exponential technology. I don’t mean that just in terms of power or capacity—driven by Moore’s law—but also in that it starts out slow as consumers find ways to put it to use.”

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“The Mother of All Demos”:

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“A Revolutionary New Car That Can Actually Fold Up”

August 19, 2012 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

I don’t think the folding car is the wave of the future unless the Chinese government insists (by fiat) that it will be. But the Hiriko Fold is upon us regardless. From the Daily Mail:

“City dwellers know the most difficult part of urban driving isn’t the mental minicab drivers or suicidal cyclists, but finding a space to park the car once you have safely arrived at your destination.

But now a solution is at hand in the form of a revolutionary new car that can actually fold up to fit itself into the tiniest of gaps.

Researchers from MIT’s Changing Places group, working in collaboration with the Spanish Basque region’s development agency DENOKINN have developed the Hiriko Fold, a convenient, eco-friendly car for city commuting.”

“Nothing Can Be Made Absolutely Safe”

August 19, 2012 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

Horrible deaths bother us more than the mundane kind. It doesn’t make sense since dead is dead, but the narratives around a demise have meaning for us. We try to separate deaths into those that are “needless” and those that “understandable.” Some just upset us or excite us more in a lurid way than others.

When a helicopter crashes and two or three people die in NYC, the tragedy gets nonstop news coverage. A car accident the same day that results in four deaths gets a couple of minutes at most. It’s the greater lack of control that bothers us, the plunging from the sky. A truck accident in Texas that happened soon after the Aurora shooting tragedy killed nearly as many people but received only scant national attention. The families of those lost in the highway accident are just as devastated, but an automobile accident is something we can process, while a movie theater being shot up intentionally for no reason is not. It’s just more terrible. 

These feelings of dread and horror don’t only affect us in a visceral way but can shape policy. In a WSJ piece, Richard Muller, who recently quit his stance as a climate-change denier, argues that our fear of nuclear-power accidents, even in wake of Fukushima, is overstated. That may be true, though it doesn’t seem like nukes should be the focus of our sustainable-energy quest going forward. From his article:

“The tsunami that hit Japan in March 2011 was horrendous. Over 15,000 people were killed by the giant wave itself. The economic consequences of the reactor destruction were massive. The human consequences, in terms of death and evacuation, were also large. But the radiation deaths will likely be a number so small, compared with the tsunami deaths, that they should not be a central consideration in policy decisions.

The reactor at Fukushima wasn’t designed to withstand a 9.0 earthquake or a 50-foot tsunami. Surrounding land was contaminated, and it will take years to recover. But it is remarkable how small the nuclear damage is compared with that of the earthquake and tsunami. The backup systems of the nuclear reactors in Japan (and in the U.S.) should be bolstered to make sure this never happens again. We should always learn from tragedy. But should the Fukushima accident be used as a reason for putting an end to nuclear power?

Nothing can be made absolutely safe. Must we design nuclear reactors to withstand everything imaginable? What about an asteroid or comet impact? Or a nuclear war? No, of course not; the damage from the asteroid or the war would far exceed the tiny added damage from the radioactivity released by a damaged nuclear power plant.”

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“With These Machines, We Can Make Any Consumer Device In The World”

August 19, 2012 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

Robots can handle driving and assembly-line work better than we can, with far less error and far more accuracy, no doubt. The question, beyond the loss of manufacturing jobs, is whether these  tasks, once roboticized, can be hacked to cause mass mishaps. Will 10,000 drivers simultaneously be forced to turn left instead of right? Can terrorists cause a defect in plane parts so that they’ll be prone to crash? I would guess there’s enough quality control to avoid the latter, but the former seems plausible. From “Skilled Work, Without the Worker,” by John Markhoff in the New York Times:

“This is the future. A new wave of robots, far more adept than those now commonly used by automakers and other heavy manufacturers, are replacing workers around the world in both manufacturing and distribution. Factories like the one here in the Netherlands are a striking counterpoint to those used by Apple and other consumer electronics giants, which employ hundreds of thousands of low-skilled workers.

‘With these machines, we can make any consumer device in the world,’ said Binne Visser, an electrical engineer who manages the Philips assembly line in Drachten.”

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“The Astronauts Will Leave All The Driving To Robots”

August 17, 2012 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

The rise of the machines is, unsurprisingly, extending further and further into space. From “The Astronaut Question,” by James R. Chiles in Air & Space magazine, a section drawing a parallel between driverless cars and automated space flight:

“When comparing spacecraft-driving to car-driving, one more analogy is needed: the automated, driverless car. During the 2010 VisLab Intercontinental Autonomous Challenge, four electric automatic automobiles got themselves from Italy to China. After more than a quarter-million miles on the road, Google’s Self-Driving Car now has a license to roam Nevada, albeit with an engineer behind the wheel, who, says Google, hardly ever needs to take control.

The next wave of manned orbital craft now being built promise to be equally automated when flown. Like the H-2, the Dragon spacecraft from SpaceX will park within arm’s length of the station. On a routine, no-glitches mission in which Boeing’s CST-100 flies to the ISS, the astronauts will leave all the driving to robots, which will use a navigation system evolved from Orbital Express, its unmanned satellite-rendezvous mission for the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. In that 2007 experiment, one satellite intelligently chased down another, latched on, and exchanged fuel and components, all without human control.”

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“It Was Clearly A Huge Deal”

August 17, 2012 in Books, Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

Having met some venture capitalists over the years, I can tell you their success rate isn’t that high. That’s not because they’re not talented or intelligent. On the contrary. It’s just that most things in life don’t pan out. When they occasionally do, venturers make their mark and live to invest another day. Some get fabulously wealthy–but even they have a pretty high fail rate.

Since being named Mitt Romney’s VP pick, Paul Ryan has attacked President Obama’s stimulus plan in particular and government investments in general. But from lithium-ion battery factories in Michigan to the auto industry to the many alternative energy initiatives througout the country, this administration has largely invested shockingly well, made bold attempts to transform our future and created well-paying jobs that are many grades above Staples cashier. 

David Plotz, who quietly does an excellent job at Slate, examines that other silent success, Obama’s stimulus, in an interview with Michael Grunwald, author of The New New Deal. The opening:

“Slate:

What possessed you to write this book?

Michael Grunwald:

I fled Washington for the public policy paradise of South Beach while writing my last book, about the Everglades and Florida, so in 2010 I was only vaguely aware of the Beltway consensus that President Obama’s stimulus was an $800 billion joke. But because I write a lot about the environment, I was very aware that the stimulus included about $90 billion for clean energy, which was astonishing, because the feds were only spending a few billion dollars a year before. The stimulus was pouring unprecedented funding into wind, solar, and other renewables; energy efficiency in every form; advanced biofuels; electric vehicles; a smarter grid; cleaner coal; and factories to make all that green stuff in the U.S.

It was clearly a huge deal. And it got me curious about what else was in the stimulus. I remember doing some dogged investigative reporting—OK, a Google search—and learning that the stimulus also launched Race to the Top, which was a real a-ha moment. I knew Race to the Top was a huge deal in the education reform world, but I had no idea it was a stimulus program. It quickly became obvious that the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (the formal name of the stimulus) was also a huge deal for health care, transportation, scientific research, and the safety net as well as the flailing economy. It was about Reinvestment as well as Recovery, and it was hidden in plain view.”

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“To Say That Andy Warhol Is A Famous Artist Is To Utter The Merest Commonplace”

August 17, 2012 in Excerpts, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

Andy Warhol had far more lasting cultural import than the recently deceased critic Robert Hughes allowed. He sold low on the Pop Artist in a 1982 New York Review of Books piece. The opening:

“To say that Andy Warhol is a famous artist is to utter the merest commonplace. But what kind of fame does he enjoy? If the most famous artist in America is Andrew Wyeth, and the second most famous is LeRoy Neiman (Hugh Hefner’s court painter, inventor of the Playboy femlin, and drawer of football stars for CBS), then Warhol is the third. Wyeth, because his work suggests a frugal, bare-bones rectitude, glazed by nostalgia but incarnated in real objects, which millions of people look back upon as the lost marrow of American history. Neiman, because millions of people watch sports programs, read Playboy, and will take any amount of glib abstract-expressionist slather as long as it adorns a recognizable and pert pair of jugs. But Warhol? What size of public likes his work, or even knows it at first hand? Not as big as Wyeth’s or Neiman’s.

To most of the people who have heard of him, he is a name handed down from a distant museum-culture, stuck to a memorable face: a cashiered Latin teacher in a pale fiber wig, the guy who paints soup cans and knows all the movie stars. To a smaller but international public, he is the last of the truly successful social portraitists, climbing from face to face in a silent delirium of snobbery, a man so interested in elites that he has his own society magazine. But Warhol has never been a popular artist in the sense that Andrew Wyeth is or Sir Edwin Landseer was. That kind of popularity entails being seen as a normal (and hence, exemplary) person from whom extraordinary things emerge.

Warhol’s public character for the last twenty years has been the opposite: an abnormal figure (silent, withdrawn, eminently visible but opaque, and a bit malevolent) who praises banality. He fulfills Stuart Davis’s definition of the new American artist, ‘a cool Spectator-Reporter at an Arena of Hot Events.’ But no mass public has ever felt at ease with Warhol’s work. Surely, people feel, there must be something empty about a man who expresses no strong leanings, who greets everything with the same ‘uh, gee, great. Art’s other Andy, the Wyeth, would not do that. Nor would the midcult heroes of The Agony and the Ecstasyand Lust for Life. They would discriminate between experiences, which is what artists are meant to do for us.”

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“First thing I would do is put carpets in the streets”:

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“It’s Part Of A Surprisingly Rich History Of Applying Algorithms Inspired By Nature To Traffic Light Timing”

August 16, 2012 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

Lessons learned from bacterial life forms may be used to unsnarl China’s horrible traffic. From Christopher Mims at the BBC:

“Two Chinese researchers have proved, at least theoretically, that insights borrowed from the lowly bacterium E. coli could markedly increase the throughput of a real-world traffic light in Guangzhou. No one knows what effect this could have if it were applied to an entire city, but it’s fitting that a solution from a class of algorithms that seek to mimic the collective behaviour of organisms should be applied to the teeming masses of Guangzhou’s trucks and automobiles.

Traffic lights around the world, from Guangzhou to Geneva, are managed by computerised systems housed in a metal cabinet at the side of the road, which regulate the cycle of changes from red to green to red either through fixed time periods, or through sensors in the road that can detect when a car is stationary. Both options work well when traffic is low, less so during rush hour, as any driver will tell you.

The solution Qin Liu and Jianmin Xu have proposed for improving flow during high traffic periods is what’s known as a Bacterial Foraging Optimisation (BFO) algorithm. The algorithm varies when and for how long a given light is red or green. So, for example, the algorithm has an almost traffic cop-like sense for which road at an intersection has a higher volume of traffic, and when to strategically deprioritise traffic that may be waiting on a less-used road. Simulations of a Guangzhou intersection showed that BFO-regulated lights reduce the average delay of vehicles by over 28% compared with those regulated by a fixed time cycle.

It’s part of a surprisingly rich history of applying algorithms inspired by nature to traffic light timing – researchers have applied everything from genetic algorithms to models of ant behaviour to the problem. And it’s not just traffic lights – BFO can be used on just about any engineering problem, from tuning the behaviour of simple automated control systems, such as those used to regulate the level of water in water towers, to determining the lightest and strongest configuration of structural elements in a building.”

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Godardian traffic jam, 1967:

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“We Should Actively Give Parents The Choice To Screen Out Personality Flaws In Their Children”

August 16, 2012 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

An Oxford professor wants us to genetically engineer “ethically enhanced” babies. This will not go over well. From Richard Alleyne in the Telegraph:

“Professor Julian Savulescu said that creating so-called designer babies could be considered a ‘moral obligation'” as it makes them grow up into ‘ethically better children.’

The expert in practical ethics said that we should actively give parents the choice to screen out personality flaws in their children as it meant they were then less likely to ‘harm themselves and others.’

The academic, who is also editor-in-chief of the Journal of Medical Ethics, made his comments in an article in the latest edition of Reader’s Digest.

He explained that we are now in the middle of a genetic revolution and that although screening, for all but a few conditions, remained illegal it should be welcomed.”

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“A Part Failed, Causing It To Plummet Into The Pacific Ocean”

August 16, 2012 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

In case you missed it, the hypersonic test flight happening over the Pacific–the trial that scientists hoped would lead to cross-country trips in less than an hour–ended in complete failure. Most first steps into the future are missteps, but it’s still important to keep trying to move forward. From W.J. Hennigan in the Los Angeles Times:

“A closely watched test flight of an experimental aircraft designed to travel up to 3,600 mph ended in disappointment when a part failed, causing it to plummet into the Pacific Ocean, the Air Force revealed. 

The unmanned X-51A WaveRider was launched over the Pacific Tuesday from above the Point Mugu Naval Air Test Range in a key test to fine-tune its hypersonic scramjet engine.

The aircraft was designed to hit mach 6, or six times the speed of sound, and fly for five minutes. But that didn’t happen. The engine never even lit.

About 15 seconds into the flight, a fault was identified in one of the WaveRider’s control fins, and the aircraft was not able to maintain control and was lost.”

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“Billionaire Peter Thiel Would Like To Introduce You To The Other, Other White Meat”

August 16, 2012 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

Peter Thiel, Libertarian and contrarian, has invested in research for 3-D printed meat. I’m a vegetarian, but I hope it works out (despite thinking it’s not so close to happening). Most studies estimate that meat production is responsible for close to 20% of our carbon footprint. From Clay Dillow at Popsci:

“Billionaire Peter Thiel would like to introduce you to the other, other white meat. The investor’s philanthropic Thiel Foundation’s Breakout Labs is offering up a six-figure grant (between $250,00 and $350,000, though representatives wouldn’t say exactly) to a Missouri-based startup called Modern Meadow that is flipping 3-D bio-printing technology originally aimed at the regenerative medicine market into a means to produce 3-D printed meat.”

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“A Dynamic Experience That Inspires Consumers To Change Their Physical Future”

August 16, 2012 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Sports, Videos | Permalink

Nike touts its forthcoming eyeD technology with a futuristic promo created by Tron Legacy director, Joseph Kosinski (no relation to Jerzy). It’s a virtual athletic experience that’s supposed to translate into actual physical exercise. Well, perhaps. But way more people exercise than when Nike was founded in 1964, and way more people are obese. So we’re clearly not primarily talking about an exercise problem but one more of diet.

From the eyeD marketing materials: “Imagine being able to see what it is like to run 100m in under 10 seconds, or leap over a small forward and throw down a game-changing dunk… With Nike eyeD fans can experience more than just 2D high definition video. They can see, feel and monitor their favorites athletes through streaming Nike eyeD video (play on 2D/3D). Stereo haptics allow you feel the heart pounding thrill of elite competition from anywhere. A dynamic experience that inspires consumers to change their physical future.”

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“He Studies ‘How Man Refashions Nature’ By Watching Various Kinds Of Surgery”

August 16, 2012 in Books, Excerpts, Urban Studies | Permalink

A deeply haunted soul capable of brilliance or dreck, novelist Jerzy Kosinski was a world literary figure who, like a lot of people who move to New York City to remake themselves, was a confusing blend of fact and fiction. He was such an inveterate observer–voyeur, really–that even he must have lost track of what was his own real experience and what was not. A 1979 People magazine piece by Andrea Chambers profiled the writer while he was still a formidable public figure, a dozen years before he committed suicide. An excerpt:

“His current novel, Passion Play, his seventh, is about a middle-aged loner who, like Kosinski, is a polo fanatic. ‘The character, Fabian, is at the mercy of his aging and his sexual obsession,’ he says. ‘It’s my calling card. I’m 46. I’m like Fabian.’

Fabian is not likely to win the hearts of critics. They routinely attack Kosinski’s work as dirty and violent, and Passion Play has scenes of suicide, sadism and transsexualism. ‘The violence is never gratuitous,’ he says. ‘I write about what I see in society.’

To enlarge that vision, Kosinski collects bizarre experiences as methodically as more timorous authors do library research. At night he prowls the streets of Manhattan. ‘I have always been fascinated by sexual experiences,’ he says. ‘I stop women on the street, introduce myself and say, ‘I like you. I want to photograph you.” Usually they assent. At other moments he studies ‘how man refashions nature’ by watching various kinds of surgery (though an operation turning a man into a woman frightened him: ‘There’s no return’). He also stops at hospitals to read to patients suffering from terminal illnesses. 

Sometimes Kosinski takes odd jobs like selling used cars or driving a limousine under the name José. ‘Short of murder, I have an intimate knowledge of everything I write about,’ he says. To know, he is quick to point out, does not necessarily mean to practice.’I have no chains under my bed,’ he smiles. ‘Only writing paper.’

It is actually a roll of adding machine paper he carries on his ramblings and uses for first drafts. A gypsy by nature, Kosinski shuttles between apartments in New York and Switzerland, with frequent detours to polo fields. Wherever he is, Kosinski has access to lethal chemicals. ‘I’m not a suicide freak, but I want to be free,’ he says. ‘If I ever have an accident or a terminal disease that would affect my mind or my body, I will end it.'”

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“People Are Particular Computations That Currently Run In Human Wetware”

August 15, 2012 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

A couple of segments from a new Ask Me Anything on Reddit that was conducted by Singularity Institute CEO Luke Muehlhauser.

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Question:

Given the rate of technological development, what age do you believe people that are young (20 and under) today will live to?

Luke Muehlhauser:

That one is too hard to predict for me to bother trying.

I will note that it’s possible that the post-rock band Tortoise was right that “millions now living will never die” (awesome album, btw). If we invest in the research required to make AI do good things for humanity rather than accidentally catastrophic things, one thing that superhuman AI (and thus a rapid acceleration of scientific progress) could produce is the capacity for radical life extension, and then later the capacity for whole brain emulation, which would enable people to make backups of themselves and live for millions of years. (As it turns out, the things we call “people” are particular computations that currently run in human wetware but don’t need to be running on such a fragile substrate. 

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Question:

I’ve had one major question/concern since I heard about the singularity.

At the point when computers outstrip human intelligence in all or most areas, won’t computers then take over doing most of the interesting and meaningful work? All decisions that take any sort of thinking will then be done by computers, since they will make better decisions. Politics, economics, business, teaching. They’ll even make better art, as they can better understand how to create emotionally moving objects/films/etc.

While we will have unprecedented levels of material wealth, won’t we have a severe crisis of meaning, since all major projects (personal and public) will be run by our smarter silicon counterparts? Will humans be reduced to manual labor, as that’s the only role that makes economic sense?

Will the singularity foment an existential crisis for humanity?

Luke Muehlhauser:

At the point when computers outstrip human intelligence in all or most areas, won’t computers then take over doing most of the interesting and meaningful work?

Yes.

Will humans be reduced to manual labor, as that’s the only role that makes economic sense?

No, robots will be better than humans at manual labor, too.

While we will have unprecedented levels of material wealth, won’t we have a severe crisis of meaning… Will the singularity foment an existential crisis for humanity?

Its a good question. The major worry is that the singularity causes an “existential crisis” in the sense that it causes a human extinction event. If we manage to do the math research required to get superhuman AIs to be working in our favor, and we “merely” have to deal with an emotional/philosophical crisis, I’ll be quite relieved.

One exploration of what we could do and care about when most projects are handled by machines is (rather cheekily) called “fun theory.” I’ll let you read up on it.

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“Stores Won’t Stock Any Merchandise”

August 15, 2012 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

New technologies are bound to soon remake the retail experience greatly. Jon Swartz of USA Today tries to tell the future: 

“The convergence of smartphone technology, social-media data and futuristic technology such as 3-D printers is changing the face of retail in a way that experts across the industry say will upend the bricks-and-mortar model in a matter of a few years.

‘The next five years will bring more change to retail than the last 100 years,’ says Cyriac Roeding, CEO of Shopkick, a location-based shopping app available at Macy’s, Target and other top retailers.

Within 10 years, retail as we know it will be unrecognizable, says Kevin Sterneckert, a Gartner analyst who follows retail technology. Big-box stores such as Office Depot, Old Navy and Best Buy will shrink to become test centers for online purchases. Retail stores will be there for a ‘touch and feel’ experience only, with no actual sales. Stores won’t stock any merchandise; it’ll be shipped to you. This will help them stay competitive with online-only retailers, Sterneckert says.” (Thanks Browser.)

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“Geologists Predict Those Same Forces Will Reassemble The Pieces Into A New Supercontinent”

August 14, 2012 in Excerpts, Science/Tech | Permalink

Wernher von Braun, that Nazi, wanted us to vault deep into space because he believed the Earth would be inhabitable for only 100 to 150 million more years, even though the planet will go on for billions before the sun dies. But how will our continents, the remnants of Pangaea’s division, be formed at that late date? Yale geologist Ross Mitchell thinks he has the answer and it involves the formation of a new supercontinent. From Discover:

“Earth’s modern continents are the fragments of a single, 300-million-year-old supercontinent called Pangaea. This vast landmass once rested on the equator, near where Africa is today. During the age of dinosaurs, tectonic forces slowly tore Pangaea apart. Now geologists predict those same forces will reassemble the pieces into a new supercontinent, named Amasia, about 100 million years in the future.

Ancient rocks and mountain ranges show that the constant movement of Earth’s crust has assembled and ripped apart supercontinents several times before, in a roughly half-billion-year cycle. But pinpointing where the past ones formed has proven difficult, which in turn clouded attempts to forecast the next great smashup.”

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“His Family Didn’t Have Enough Money To Bring His Body Back Home To Saskatoon, And The Circus Wasn’t Going To Pay It”

August 14, 2012 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

From “Giant Size,” Tom Breihan’s article at the Classical about a very select group of people–the 70 or so Americans between the ages of twenty and forty who are at least seven feet tall:

“Edouard Beaupré was the giantest giant in pro wrestling history. At eight feet and three inches, Beaupré was the fifth-tallest human being in recorded history, and he wrestled at a time when wrestling was pretty much just big strong guys fighting each other at carnivals. Before Beaupré’s pituitary gland really started acting up, he’d wanted to be a cowboy, but his size kept him from riding horses. So instead, he lifted them, squatting down and lugging around 800-pounders at circus sideshows across North America. And on at least one occasion, he wrestled fellow strongman Louis Cyr and, by most accounts, got his ass resoundingly beat.

Beaupré was 23 and still growing when he died of tuberculosis in St. Louis, though the gigantism that kept him growing probably didn’t help. His family didn’t have enough money to bring his body back home to Saskatoon, and the circus wasn’t going to pay it. Instead of burying him, the kind circus folk embalmed Beaupré and used his body as an attraction. Even in death, Beaupré lived as a freak.” (Thanks Browser.)

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“He Was A London Taxi Driver Who Back In 1956 Had A Strange Experience”

August 14, 2012 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

From a recent post on Adam Curtis’ BBC blog, a recollection of a British man who convinced many in the 1950s that he had a special connection to the good people of Mars:

“To celebrate today’s successful landing on Mars I thought I would show a film of a man who claimed to have got to Mars a long time ago. He did this back in the late 1950s by communicating telepathically with the beings who inhabited the Red Planet. He also claimed that his mother went there on a UFO. And what’s more the BBC took him very seriously.

He was called George King. He was a London taxi driver who back in 1956 had a strange experience.

He was washing the dishes when he heard a voice which said

“Prepare yourself. You are about to become the voice of Interplanetary Parliament.“

  • At the 10:50 mark. King “contacts” our planetary neighbors:

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“Advanced Medical Robots Are Rapidly Evolving To Keep Up With An Aging Global Population”

August 14, 2012 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

From “Jobs of the Future,” by Parag Khanna and Aaron Smith at Foreign Policy, a segment about one occupation about to shift:

“Hospital orderly —> Medical roboticist 

In this summer’s sci-fi blockbuster Prometheus, an astronaut climbs into a fully robotic surgical pod to have an alien baby removed by cesarean section. Although extraterrestrial cross-breeding is a ways off (let’s hope), advanced medical robots are rapidly evolving to keep up with an aging global population. Japan leads the way in robot innovation to care for its growing elderly population, including rehabilitative and therapeutic robots from Honda and Toyota. Medical roboticists will be needed to design, build, and operate these intelligent devices, which will increasingly replace humans — and provide more precise care — in doctors’ offices and hospitals.”

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“Almost Every American…Has Said That It’s Too Bad The Country Didn’t Just Split When We Had The Chance”

August 14, 2012 in Books, Excerpts, Politics, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

It would be a disaster if America’s Northern and Southern states separated into seas of blue and red, forming discrete nations–and it won’t happen. But it’s an interesting thought-experiment to work out in your head. What would the future hold for each if the national divide led to a mutually agreed upon division?

Chuck Thompson, author of Better Off Without ‘Em: A Northern Manifesto for Southern Secession, has considered the separation–with the North being proactive about it–not as mere mental exercise but in earnest. Salon has an interview between Joshua Holland and the author. An excerpt follows.

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Joshua Holland:

So we know we have an overtly religious political culture down South, and a culture today that is pretty hostile toward organized labor. What is it in your travels or in your research that prompted you to call for Southern secession?

Chuck Thompson:

I get tired of everybody bitching about the problem. It’s like what Mark Twain said about the weather. Everybody complains about it, but nobody does anything about it. People have been having this problem with the South for my entire lifetime, and as my research pointed out to me, since even before there was a United States of America. Even in the Continental Congress, before the Declaration of Independence was signed, there were a lot of Southerners from South Carolina – particularly a family called the Rutledge family – sort of running the show back then and didn’t want any part of the United States. So a lot of the problems that have arisen between North and South have been around for a long time.

So, as I’ve said, I’ve spent a lot of my life hearing from everybody from Seattle to Savannah. Almost every American, at one time or another, has said that it’s too bad the country didn’t just split when we had the chance. We didn’t let the South go when we had the chance. We would have avoided a lot of problems. We – meaning this group in the north as we might identify ourselves – could take the country we want into a direction that we think is befitting of America without this push and pull that comes from the Southern states. At the same time the South could do the same thing.

What really led to this call for secession was understanding that a lot of people from the South are just as sick and tired of people like Barack Obama and Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid having an impact on their country as I am sick of people like Newt Gingrich and Jeff Sessions, Eric Cantor, and Haley Barbour having an impact on my country.

So why shouldn’t each of these societies that are really very different from each other in the way they approach the fundamental building blocks of society – education, religion, commerce, politics … both sides of the country really approach their problems in the way they want to put their societies together in very diametrically opposed ways. Why shouldn’t people be allowed to live in a pseudo-theocracy if they want to? If the majority of the people in a very large part of the country wants to have the Ten Commandments emblazoned in front of their legislative houses, why shouldn’t they be allowed to do so?

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If the South had won the Civil War:

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“A Passenger Aircraft Traveling At That Speed Could Fly From Los Angeles To New York In 46 Minutes”

August 13, 2012 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

An unmanned flight above the Pacific Ocean may eventually influence the way all humans fly. From W.J. Hennigan in the Los Angeles Times:

“Since test pilot Chuck Yeager broke the sound barrier in 1947, engineers and scientists have dreamed of ever-faster aircraft. Now, they face one of their toughest challenges yet: sustaining hypersonic flight — going five times the speed of sound or more — for more than a few minutes.

In a nondescript hangar at Edwards Air Force Base in the Mojave Desert, a team of aerospace engineers has been putting the finishing touches on a lightning-quick experimental aircraft designed to fly above the Pacific Ocean at 3,600 mph. A passenger aircraft traveling at that speed could fly from Los Angeles to New York in 46 minutes.

On Tuesday a key test is set for the unmanned experimental aircraft X-51A WaveRider.”

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“We’re Building A Giant Walking Robot That You Can Ride”

August 13, 2012 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

From a Kickstarter campaign for “Stompy,” which could be incredibly helpful in cleaning up disaster areas: “First of all, we’re building a giant walking robot that you can ride, and if all goes according to plan, we’ll be showing it off at a festival or fair near you. Depending on your level of support, you may even get to ride it or drive it – how about that?

Beyond that, though, your support for Project Hexapod will drive a personal robotics revolution (if we have anything to say about it). The past twenty years have seen an explosion of productivity in hobbyist robotics made possible by cheap, easy to use microcontrollers and RC servos. The hobbyist community has built a wealth of knowledge and infrastructure around these components, but RC servos severely limit the size of robot you can build.

Project Hexapod wants to make large-scale robots easier to build, and inspire people to build them.

Stompy is 6 giant steps towards that dream. Once we finish this robot, we’re releasing our plans, our CAD, our diagrams, the presentations from all the lectures we gave in class, our lists of materials and parts, everything. The construction and control techniques we’re using will drop the cost of controlled hydraulics by an order of magnitude or two from where they are now, and will make giant robots affordable to small groups of enthusiasts everywhere.

The robot isn’t just being built for fun, though – it has incredibly practical purposes, as well. With 6 force-sensitive legs and a ground clearance of 6 feet, the robot will be able to walk over broken terrain that varies from mountainous areas, to rubble piles, to water up to 7 or 8 feet deep – everywhere existing ground vehicles can’t go. Not only that, but while navigating such terrain, Stompy could carry 1,000 pounds at 2-3 mph, and up to 4,000 pounds at 1 mph. This is important because in disaster areas like Haiti’s Port Au Prince, it’s taken more than three years to clear the rubble out of some areas – meaning that throughout that entire time, people have had to be rescued or resupplied by helicopter, because no ground vehicle could reach them. Stompy (and the technology it represents) could easily reach people who can’t be reached by any other means in a natural disaster.” (Thanks Kurzweil)

“I Am Not Advocating A Romantic Regression Behind Technology”

August 12, 2012 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

Philosopher Herbert Marcuse imagined technology untangled from capitalism, but it’s difficult to see how that’s possible in the foreseeable future. Not if we want cheap tools delivered to masses of people. Though perhaps we’ll all end up doing genetic engineering. From “The End of Utopia“:

“In the form of a social productive force, these new vital needs would make possible a total technical reorganization of the concrete world of human life, and I believe that new human relations, new relations between men, would be possible only in such a reorganized world. When I say technical reorganization I again speak with reference to the capitalist countries that are most highly developed, where such a restructuring would mean the abolition of the terrors of capitalist industrialization and commercialization, the total reconstruction of the cities and the restoration of nature after the horror of capitalist industrialization have been done away with. I hope that when I speak of doing away with the horrors of capitalist industrialization it is clear I am not advocating a romantic regression behind technology. On the contrary, I believe that the potential liberating blessings of technology and industrialization will not even begin to be real and visible until capitalist industrialization and capitalist technology have been done away with.”

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“Selling Your Life And Selling A House Have More In Common Than You’d Think”

August 12, 2012 in Excerpts, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

Selling your life–or your life insurance policy, at least–to someone who’s betting on your quick demise seems as ghoulish as peddling a kidney. But are very unpleasant and very wrong necessarily the same thing? From James Vlahos’ New York Times Magazine article on the sensitive topic:

“Selling your life and selling a house have more in common than you’d think. The seller puts a listing on the market. Prospective buyers do research and get inspections; there are offers and counteroffers until the seller accepts a bid. The seller doesn’t literally peddle his own life, of course, but his life-insurance policy. The distinction is in many ways moot, however, as the sales value is inextricably linked to a cold-eyed estimation of how much longer the seller has to live. In the case of [Ruben] Robles’s policy, a life-settlement company in Georgia, Habersham Funding, expressed interest. Escobar shipped off six boxes’ worth of Robles’s medical records, thousands of pages in all, to Habersham. The firm, in turn, analyzed the records and also had them scrutinized by an external company specializing in life-expectancy analysis. Fiedler’s recollection is that the reports confirmed the grim prognosis and that Robles had less than two years left to live.”

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Animated life-settlement discussion:

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