Excerpts

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“Absent An Idea That Can Be Sold At Disney World, He Has Tended To Lose Interest”

August 1, 2012 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

In a 1995 New York Review of Books analysis of then-Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, Joan Didion reveals, unsurprisngly, a petty man with grandiose notions. It’s not that he never argues for interesting ideas but that he instantly cheapens them with a crassness and a lack of intelligence. An excerpt:

Even Mr. Gingrich’s most unexceptionable arguments can take these unpredictable detours. The “Third Wave Information Age” offers “potential for enormous improvement in the lifestyle choices of most Americans,” opportunities for “continuous, lifelong learning” that can enable the displaced or downsized to operate “outside corporate structures and hierarchies in the nooks and crannies that the Information Revolution creates” (so far so good), but here is the particular cranny of the Information Revolution into which Mr. Gingrich skids:

Say you want to learn batik because a new craft shop has opened at the mall and the owner has told you she will sell some of your work. First, you check in at the ‘batik station’ on the Internet, which gives you a list of recommendations. … You may get a list of recommended video or audio tapes that can be delivered to your door the next day by Federal Express. You may prefer a more personal learning system and seek an apprenticeship with the nearest batik master. … In less than twenty-four hours, you have launched yourself on a new profession.

Similarly, what begins in To Renew America as a rational if predictable discussion of “New Frontiers in Science, Space, and the Oceans” takes this sudden turn: ‘Why not aspire to build a real Jurassic Park? … Wouldn’t that be one of the most spectacular accomplishments of human history? What if we could bring back extinct species?’ A few pages further into “New Frontiers in Science, Space, and the Oceans,” we are careering into ‘honeymoons in space’ (“imagine weightlessness and its effects and you will understand some of the attractions”), a notion first floated in Window of Opportunity, in that instance as an illustration of how entrepreneurial enterprise could lead to job creation in one’s own district: “One reason I am convinced space travel will be a growth industry is because I represent the Atlanta airport, which provides 35,000 aviation-related jobs in the Atlanta area.”

The packaging of space honeymoons and recycled two-liter Coca-Cola bottles is the kind of specific that actually engages Mr. Gingrich: absent an idea that can be sold at Disney World, he has tended to lose interest.•

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“I Am Planning On Creating Ant-Like Robots Who Will Build And Do Stuff For Me”

August 1, 2012 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

I will control the ants.

A hobo did an Ask Me Anything on Reddit. His dream is to create an army of tiny creatures to do his bidding. (And he’s not the only one). An excerpt:

“QUESTION:

Is this what you envisioned for yourself when you were 8 years old?

ANSWER:

When i was 8 years old i was thinking about living in a jungle, but after learning about malaria and other terrible sickness i kinda decided not to, but i still plan to go to pacific tropical islands to build laboratory and do stuff.

QUESTION:

What do you want to do in this laboratory?

ANSWER:

I am planning on creating ant like robots who will build and do stuff for me, i am going to use ant brain (more like nerve bundle) as a model, i am fascinated how effective ants are at getting stuff done with very little resources.

I think using this effect could be applyed to melt steel and plastics in ‘mouth’ of roboant and this way it could build amazing stuff. i am just in theoretical phase now, first need to set up a ‘tribe’ as i found that soloing is kinda unantural, thus i write on internetz and plan on making some impressive vids.”

“They Grew Strips Of Muscle Tissue Using Stem Cells Taken From Cows”

July 31, 2012 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

Meat production is troubling: It’s responsible for almost 20% of our carbon footprint, animals are treated unethically, the food is largely unhealthy and demand for it from a growing world population may make it scarcer and more expensive. Will we eventually be forced to take the “live” out of livestock? From “Future Foods,” Denise Winterman’s new BBC article, a segment about lab-grown meat:

“Earlier this year, Dutch scientists successfully produced in-vitro meat, also known as cultured meat. They grew strips of muscle tissue using stem cells taken from cows, which were said to resemble calamari in appearance. They hope to create the world’s first ‘test-tube burger’ by the end of the year.

The first scientific paper on lab-grown meat was funded by NASA, says social scientist Dr Neil Stephens, based at Cardiff University’s ESRC Cesagen research centre. It investigated in-vitro meat to see if it was a food astronauts could eat in space.Ten years on and scientists in the field are now promoting it as a more efficient and environmentally friendly way of putting meat on our plates.

A recent study by Oxford University found growing meat in a lab rather than slaughtering animals would significantly reduce greenhouse gases, along with energy and water use. Production also requires a fraction of the land needed to raise cattle. In addition it could be customized to cut the fat content and add nutrients.

Prof Mark Post, who led the Dutch team of scientists at Maastricht University, says he wants to make lab meat ‘indistinguishable’ from the real stuff, but it could potentially look very different. Stephens, who is studying the debate over in-vitro meat, says there are on-going discussions in the field about what it should look like.

He says the idea of such a product is hard for people to take on board because nothing like it currently exists.

‘We simply don’t have a category for this type of stuff in our world, we don’t know what to make of it,’ he says. ‘It is radically different in terms of provenance and product.'” (Thanks Browser.)

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“That’s a big chicken”:

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“Oh Well, That’s A Jive Deal”

July 31, 2012 in Excerpts, Film, Sports, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

It’s difficult to think of another American who had a life just like Lincoln Theodore Monroe Andrew Perry, better known as polarizing comedian Stepin Fetchit. Born in 1902, Perry used a stereotypical lazy-man persona to become the first black actor to reach millionaire status. History hasn’t been kind to his screen character, as blacks and whites alike came in time to see it as degrading. But Perry felt otherwise; he believed it was a means to an end. He thought that his on-screen buffoonery, stereotypical as it was, transformed the popular perception of a black man in America from one of a fearsome or predatory figure to that of a lovable clown. And he felt he paved the way for other people of color to become screen stars who didn’t have to play the fool. Perhaps he’s right, though it’s still incredibly painful to watch. Perry became a lightning rod for criticism during the Black Power movement of the 1960s but never backed away from his beliefs.

A tangent: When he was young, Perry was friends with embattled boxer Jack Johnson. (They must have been quite the pair–the fighter who enjoyed making whites nervous and the entertainer who wanted to reassure them.) After he joined the Nation of Islam during the 1960s, Perry supposedly taught Johnson’s “anchor punch” to another controversial African-American heavyweight, Muhammad Ali. The Greatest used the maneuver to defeat Sonny Liston in their second fight. At the 8:00 mark of this passage from the 1970 documentary A.K.A. Cassius Clay, Perry and Ali ham it up for reporters.

Another Perry tangent, this one horribly tragic: His disturbed son, Donald Lambright, who used his stepfather’s name, committed what appeared to be a number of racially motivated murders. From the April 7, 1969 Pittsburgh Post-Gazette:

Johnson said Lambright slept with a .30-caliber rifle in his bed.

‘Donald said he needed protection from whites,’ Johnson said. ‘He was paranoiac at the time.’

Johnson said Lambright was friendly with many black militant leaders and was a member of the Republic of New Africa, a black separatist organization.

‘Donald thought he had the answers to a lot of problems. And he felt the only way some of them could be resolved would be through violent action.’

At 9:14 a.m. yesterday, state police said, Lambright and his wife entered the Pennsylvania Turnpike where it crosses the Delaware River from New Jersey.

About 45 minutes later, Lambright began shooting.

Witnesses said most of the firing was done as he drove along, slowly weaving from lane to lane. They said he fired into eastbound traffic. Now and then he pulled over and fired from the roadside.•

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“All Of The Water Will Then Be Drained From His Brain And Spinal Cord, Replaced By Pure Plastic Resin”

July 30, 2012 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

A couple of weeks ago, I posted a piece from Evan R. Goldstein’s Chronicle article about “offshoring” human brains into robot receptacles, effectively immortalizing not only human intelligence but individual personalities as well. It’s a process far beyond cryonics. Ray Kurzweil illuminates the topic further in his blog post “The Strange Neuroscience Of Immortality.” An excerpt about neuroscientist Kenneth Hayworth:

“Before becoming ‘very sick or very old,’ he’ll opt for an ‘early ‘retirement’ to the future,’ he writes. There will be a send-off party with friends and family, followed by a trip to the hospital. After Hayworth is placed under anesthesia, a cocktail of toxic chemicals will be perfused through his still-functioning vascular system, fixing every protein and lipid in his brain into place, preventing decay, and killing him instantly.

Then he will be injected with heavy-metal staining solutions to make his cell membranes visible under a microscope. All of the water will then be drained from his brain and spinal cord, replaced by pure plastic resin.

Every neuron and synapse in his central nervous system will be protected down to the nanometer level, Hayworth says, ‘the most perfectly preserved fossil imaginable.’

Using a ultramicrotome (like one developed by Hayworth, with a grant by the McKnight Endowment Fund for Neuroscience), his plastic-embedded preserved brain will eventually be cut into strips, and then imaged in an electron microscope. The physical brain will be destroyed, but in its place will be a precise map of his connectome.

In 100 years or so, Hayworth says, scientists will be able to determine the function of each neuron and synapse and build a computer simulation of the mind. And because the plastination process will have preserved his spinal nerves, the computer-generated mind can be connected to a robot body.”

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Howard Stern investigates cryonics and the fate of Ted Williams’ frozen head:

Fuh-fuh-frozen.

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“Some Futurists See The Germ Of The 21st Century In Today’s Nascent ‘On-Line’ Services”

July 30, 2012 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

From a 1994 Wilson Quarterly article about Americans settling the virtual Wild West, which shows just how far we’ve come, at least technologically:

“Some futurists see the germ of the 21st century in today’s nascent ‘on-line’ services, such as America Online, Prodigy, and CompuServe. Pay a membership fee and dial up one of these services using a modem attached to your personal computer, and you can catch up on the news, check your mutual fund investments, and chat with like-minded folks on bulletin boards devoted to such specialized topics as your hometown hockey team, office etiquette, opera, or nuclear proliferation. But so far the services have attracted only a specialized clientele of affluent, highly educated, gadget-oriented users. The total subscriber base of these three top on-line services stands at less than three million, smaller than the subscriber base of Newsweek. At America Online, the hottest of the services, the largest number of pioneers actually traveling in cyberspace at any one time is only about 8,000.”

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A decade earlier, AT&T wondered about the Information Superhighway:

“Technology Will Soon Make Any Legislation That Limits The Availability Of Any Kinds Of Guns Ineffective”

July 29, 2012 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

With 3D printers in the offing, guns aren’t likely going anywhere and far more dangerous things are probably upon us. From Mark Gibbs at Forbes:

“Given the recent appalling events in Aurora, Colorado, there’s been a renewed call for greater gun control and a ban on assault weapons.

I’m in favor of tighter gun control and a ban on weapons that are unnecessarily powerful but I’m afraid that technology will soon make any legislation that limits the availability of any kinds of guns ineffective.

To understand why this might happen, you need to understand a technology called 3D printing.

3D printing allows you to build things that are, as the name implies, three dimensional. A few years ago 3D printers were very rare, hugely expensive, and hard to use. But as with anything that can be driven by computers, 3D printers has become cheaper and cheaper to the point where, today, you can buy a 3D printer, off the shelf, for as little $500.

Using either free or low cost computer aided drafting software you can create digital 3D models of pretty much anything you can think of and, with hardly any fuss, your 3D printer will render them as physical objects.” 

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“It Is Easier For Us To Harm Each Other Than To Benefit Each Other”

July 27, 2012 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

The opening of an argument by Julian Savulescu and Ingmar Persson at Philosophy Now in favor of using bioenhancement to develop human morality:

“For the vast majority of our 150,000 years or so on the planet, we lived in small, close-knit groups, working hard with primitive tools to scratch sufficient food and shelter from the land. Sometimes we competed with other small groups for limited resources. Thanks to evolution, we are supremely well adapted to that world, not only physically, but psychologically, socially and through our moral dispositions.

But this is no longer the world in which we live. The rapid advances of science and technology have radically altered our circumstances over just a few centuries. The population has increased a thousand times since the agricultural revolution eight thousand years ago. Human societies consist of millions of people. Where our ancestors’ tools shaped the few acres on which they lived, the technologies we use today have effects across the world, and across time, with the hangovers of climate change and nuclear disaster stretching far into the future. The pace of scientific change is exponential. But has our moral psychology kept up?

With great power comes great responsibility. However, evolutionary pressures have not developed for us a psychology that enables us to cope with the moral problems our new power creates. Our political and economic systems only exacerbate this. Industrialisation and mechanisation have enabled us to exploit natural resources so efficiently that we have over-stressed two-thirds of the most important eco-systems.

A basic fact about the human condition is that it is easier for us to harm each other than to benefit each other.” (Thanks Browser.)

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“We Remember The Past, We Don’t Remember The Future”

July 27, 2012 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Videos | Permalink

From the 1964 Messenger Lecture Series at Cornell, Richard Feynman delivers a speech called “The Character of Physical Law: The Distinction Between Past and Future.”

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“Humans Losing Control Of Their Own Vehicles Is A Distant Memory In The Dreams Of Transport Planners”

July 27, 2012 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

Our phones are smarter than us now, and soon our cars will be as well. From an explanation of intelligent mobility by Jamie Carter at Tech Radar:

“Intelligent mobility describes any technology that increases transport network capacity while also reducing accidents and pollution. It’s largely about collaboration, about creating both cars and cities that can communicate with each other, and react accordingly.

It starts with a car dashboard that knows about upcoming traffic jams in advance and automatically re-plots a route to avoid it, perhaps taking into account congestion zone charges.

And it reaches its zenith when cars automatically change speed to avoid each other, with the idea of ‘platooning’ when the lead car at traffic lights literally sets the exact pace of all cars behind – all networked and communicating in real-time – in an effort to get more cars through junctions as quickly as possible.

Humans losing control of their own vehicles is a distant memory in the dreams of transport planners, and while no world city is anywhere near that point, some are distinctly ‘smarter’ than others.”

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“Was It Obvious To You That Bruce Willis Was Dead The Whole Time?”

July 27, 2012 in Excerpts, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

A few exchanges from an Ask Me Anything on Reddit with 21-year-old female sexton, or gravedigger, from Norway.

“Question (aresef):

Do you tend to get buried in your work?

Answer (Asexton): 

To be dead serious, no, not really.”

“Question (contraband82): 

So, I’m not sure if I’m missing something, but is embalming not practiced in Norway?

Answer (Asexton): 

No, I don’t think it’s legal. At least I have never heard about it being practiced here.”

“Question (gr9yfox):

I don’t know if such a job exists there, but at least here in Portugal there are some ladies who are hired specifically to cry at funerals. Maybe because the person was hated but they don’t want the funeral to be empty of because people can’t make it there. Have you met any of these ladies? I bet they have a whole new perspective on this subject.

Answer (Asexton): 

I have never heard about anything like that. If few people show up the funeral planners and myself attend the ceremony, help carry the coffin outside etc. We are always there, so nobody will ever have to sit alone at a funeral. It would be nice to meet these ladies though.”

“Question (gr9yfox):

Was it obvious to you that Bruce Willis was dead the whole time?

Answer (Asexton): 

As a professional, yes. I always know a dead man when I see one.”

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“Then his sons hired three professional mourners”:

“Venues With No Obvious Long-Term Future…Were Designed To Be Dismantled Entirely”

July 27, 2012 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Sports, Urban Studies | Permalink

Dempsey-Carpentier, Jersey City, 1921.

Hugh Pearman’s Wall Street Journal piece, “These Knock-Down, Shrinkable Games,” looks at the transient structures that are making the London Games fiscally sensible. It reminded me that wooden insta-stadia capable of seating 50,000 to 100,000 were routinely built in a couple of months nearly a century ago for major prizefights. They were razed soon after the bout. Tex Rickard built just such a momentary edifice for Jack Dempsey’s defense of the heavyweight title against Georges Carpentier on July 2, 1921. Two excerpts follow, one from Pearman and one about the ’21 Dempsey fight stadium:

From Pearman’s WSJ piece: “Some hankered after a flashier stadium to rival Beijing’s, but a firm policy was established once the bid was won in 2005: Mindful of the legacy of neglect common among many earlier Olympic-host cities, no white-elephant buildings were allowed for London. This was to be the knock-down Games: Venues with no obvious long-term future—such as the Olympic Stadium—were designed to be dismantled entirely, while others were to be shrinkable once the huge audiences for the Games dispersed.”

From the April 26, 1921 New York Times: “Although the plot embraces thirty-four acres the particular land Rickard has contracted for includes only about six-and-one-half acres. Upon this stretch of ground the promoter will erect his giant arena with its proposed seating capacity of over 50,000. The start will be made on the arena just as soon as the ground is levelled. Rickard expects that the arena will be completed within fifty days, without rushing the workmen or necessitating overtime. It is estimated that 100 carloads of lumber will be used in its construction.”

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Great footage of the stadium at the outset of this video:

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“When He Designed The Khalsa Heritage Centre, In The Indian Holy City Of Anandpur Sahib, He Studied The Sikh Religion For Two Years”

July 26, 2012 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

Architect Moshe Safdie became a sensation while in his twenties when his Habitats tiny-box buildings wowed the world at Expo ’67 in Montreal. He landed on the cover of Newsweek just a few years later. John Heilpern recently interviewed Safdie for a Vanity Fair piece, revealing him to be something of a Method architect. An excerpt:

“While his own work can be spectacular, Mr. Safdie’s school of architecture amounts to an artless art when compared with the showy geometry of the fashionable starchitect. He’s constantly asking what the purpose of a building actually is—as his early mentor, Louis I. Kahn, once asked, ‘What does a building want to be?’

‘We live in a complicated, oppressive world with enormous cities and vast populations, and I try to contribute by making it more light and open and calm,’ Mr. Safdie said. ‘I try firstly to make buildings humane. Countries and places have a history, a story, and a culture. I want my buildings to take root and look as if they’ve always been there.’

It’s why, when he designed the Khalsa Heritage Centre, in the Indian holy city of Anandpur Sahib, he studied the Sikh religion for two years and wanted the contemporary museum to look as if it had been built 300 years ago.

‘It isn’t about pastiche or adapting what’s already there,’ he added. ‘It’s about trying to blend the future and the past.’

He has seen the future and it doesn’t always work. Soulless malls masquerading as new village squares, glass-box skylines, Trump taste, postmodern froufrou, and the Bilbao effect are all anathema to him.”

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“The Worse We Think It Is To Sell A Kidney, The More Repugnant Should We Find Any Objectively Worse Alternative”

July 26, 2012 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

I would guess bio-printers will eventually make organ scarcity a problem of the past, but until that occurs should people be allowed to sell their organs? Moral philosopher Janet Radcliffe Richards has long argued that the trade, while unsettling, should be permitted. An excerpt from her reasoning:

I find trade in organs as intuitively repugnant as does everyone else but strong feelings of a moral kind, by themselves, cannot form reliable guides for action. Remember the traditional reactions to inter-racial marriage, unfeminine women and homosexuality – themselves now widely regarded as repugnant? If we find the trade repugnant because of the harm it does to vendors, we must find the idea of making their situation worse by stopping the trade more repugnant. The worse we think it is to sell a kidney, the more repugnant should we find any objectively worse alternative. We should find it much more repugnant that the Turkish father should be forced to keep his kidney and watch his daughter die than that he should sell it and save her. We should also find our repugnance proportionately lessened if we could assure high standards of care that would make the harm minimal.

This does not prove conclusively that organ sales should be allowed; good arguments for prohibition may still be found. The fact that so many bad arguments are used, however, shows that good ones must be hard to come by, and it also suggests that our strong feelings of repugnance are systematically distorting our arguments. We are in effect treating the removal of our own feelings of disgust as more important than the real interests of the people on whose behalf we claim to be concerned. It is therefore morally essential to understand the power of these feelings so that we can think impartially about the problem.

In the meantime, until someone produces a far better argument than has yet appeared, there seems to be no escaping the provisional conclusion that the prohibition of the sale of organs does substantial harm of various sorts, that these have not been shown to be justified and therefore that we should not be trying to prevent the selling of organs but rather to lessen whatever harms are now involved and to increase the benefits to both vendors and purchasers by getting the trade properly regulated.•

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“Adding Human-Like Eyes And Facial Expressions To Robots Conveys Emotion Where Viewers Do Not Expect Emotion”

July 26, 2012 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

From the Economist, an explanation of the Uncanny Valley Effect, which tries to explain human unease with examples of AI that seem real and unreal at once:

“ARTIFICIALLY created beings, whether they be drawn or sculpted, are warmly accepted by viewers when they are distinctively inhuman. As their appearances are made more real, however, acceptance turns to discomfort until the point where the similarity is almost perfect, when comfort returns. This effect, called ‘the uncanny valley’ because of the dip in acceptance between clearly inhuman and clearly human forms, is well known, particularly to animators, but why it happens is a mystery. Some suggest it is all about outward appearance, but a study just published in Cognition by Kurt Gray at the University of North Carolina and Daniel Wegner at Harvard argues that there can be something else involved as well: the apparent presence of a mind where it ought not to be.

According to some philosophers the mind is made up of two parts, agency (the capacity to plan and do things) and experience (the capacity to feel and sense things). Both set people apart from robots, but Dr Gray and Dr Wegner speculated that experience in particular was playing a crucial role in generating the uncanny-valley effect. They theorised that adding human-like eyes and facial expressions to robots conveys emotion where viewers do not expect emotion to be present. The resulting clash of expectations, they thought, might be where the unease was coming from.”

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Facial motion test of AI baby:

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“This Certainly Has To Be The Most Historic Telephone Call Ever Made”

July 25, 2012 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech, Videos | Permalink

history_speeches_1068_nixon_calls_apollo_11_astronauts_sf_still_624x352

President Richard Nixon phoned the Apollo 11 astronauts while they were on the moon. Unsurprisingly, the call was taped.

McCandless: …We’d like to get both of you in the field-of-view of the camera for a minute. (Pause) Neil and Buzz, the President of the United States is in his office now and would like to say a few words to you. Over.

Armstrong: That would be an honor.

McCandless: Go ahead Mr. President. This is Houston out.

Nixon: Hello, Neil and Buzz. I’m talking to you by telephone from the Oval Room at the White House. And this certainly has to be the most historic telephone call ever made. I just can’t tell you how proud we all are of what you’ve done. For every American, this has to be the proudest day of our lives. And for people all over the world, I am sure they too join with Americans in recognizing what an immense feat this is. Because of what you have done, the heavens have become a part of man’s world. And as you talk to us from the Sea of Tranquility, it inspires us to redouble our efforts to bring peace and tranquility to Earth. For one priceless moment in the whole history of man, all the people on this Earth are truly one: one in their pride in what you have done, and one in our prayers that you will return safely to Earth.

Armstrong: Thank you Mr. President. It’s a great honor and privilege for us to be here, representing not only the United States, but men of peace of all nations, and with interest and curiosity, and men with a vision for the future. It’s an honor for us to be able to participate here today.

Nixon: And thank you very much and I look forward – all of us look forward – to seeing you on the Hornet on Thursday.

Armstrong: Thank you.

Aldrin: I look forward to that very much, sir.•

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“Some Of Them Are Using That Information To Improve Their Health And Live More Productively”

July 25, 2012 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

The opening of Esther Dyson’s new Project Syndicate essay, which suggests we should apply the self-quant movement to communities:

“I have written previously about the Quantified Self movement – individuals equipped with the tools (monitoring devices and software) needed to measure their own health and behavior (and, by doing so, to improve them). This movement is not quite sweeping the world, but it is making a difference. So-called Quantified Selfers are monitoring their blood pressure, sleep cycles, and body mass. At least some of them are using that information to improve their health and live more productively.

In the same way, I predict (and am trying to foster) the emergence of a Quantified Community movement, with communities measuring the state, health, and activities of their people and institutions, thereby improving them. Just consider: each town has its own schools, library, police, roads and bridges, businesses, and, of course, people. All of them potentially generate a lot of data, most of it uncollected and unanalyzed. That is about to change.” (Thanks Browser.)

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Early quantified community, 1977:

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“Living Standards Have Led To Humans Evolving Into A Race Of Giants”

July 24, 2012 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

From the “3000 A.D.” section of FutureTimeline.net, which predicts the far-flung:

“Purely biological humans are typically 7ft tall now, with lifespans of 120+

For centuries now, the technological singularity has produced enormous wealth and prosperity throughout the solar system. Across-the-board improvements in healthcare, education and living standards have led to humans evolving into a race of giants – 7ft tall, muscular and highly athletic, with lifespans of 120+. Note that this lifespan refers to purely biological (non-cyborg) humans, who comprise a small minority by now. The vast majority of citizens have opted for genetic engineering and biotechnology upgrades which offer practical immortality”

“It Turns Out That We Are…Creating Highways For Disaster Spreading”

July 24, 2012 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

From Swiss sociologist Dirk Helbing’s Edge essay,”A New Kind Of Socio-Inspired Technology,” a passage about our stunning level of connectivity:

“Our future information society will be characterized by computers that behave like humans in many respects. In ten years from now, we will have computers as powerful as our brain, and that will really fundamentally change society. Many professional jobs will be done much better by computers. How will that change society? How will that change business? What impacts does that have for science, actually?

There are two big global trends. One is big data. That means in the next ten years we’ll produce as many data, or even more data than in the past 1,000 years. The other trend is hyperconnectivity. That means we have networking our world going on at a rapid pace; we’re creating an Internet of things. So everyone is talking to everyone else, and everything becomes interdependent. What are the implications of that? Well, first of all, of course, we have wonderful new gadgets like Facebook, for example, so we can network with each other. We have new services, new opportunities, and that is just fantastic.

But on the other hand, it turns out that we are, at the same time, creating highways for disaster spreading. We see many extreme events, we see problems such as the flash crash, or also the financial crisis. That is related to the fact that we have interconnected everything. In some sense, we have created unstable systems. We can show that many of the global trends that we are seeing at the moment, like increasing connectivity, increase in the speed, increase in complexity, are very good in the beginning, but (and this is kind of surprising) there is a turning point and that turning point can turn into a tipping point that makes the systems shift in an unknown way.”

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“It Is A Girl, As Expected”

July 24, 2012 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

From the BBC: “Five million ‘test tube babies’ have now been born around the world, according to research presented at a conference of fertility experts. Delegates hailed it as a ‘remarkable milestone’ for fertility treatments. The first test tube baby, Louise Brown, was born in the UK in July 1978. Her mother Leslie Brown died last month.”

The birth of the first test-tube baby:

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“It Has Been Hailed Since Conception As The Experimental Prototype Community Of Tomorrow”

July 24, 2012 in Books, Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

Northeast Asia Trade Tower, New Songdo. (Image by Wikipedia.)

The result of Greg Lindsay’s collaboration with John D. Kasarda, Aerotropolis: The Way We’ll Live Next, grew from a 2010 article the journalist wrote for Fast Company about New Songdo City, South Korea’s ambitious airport-centric, insta-city. The opening:

“Stan Gale is exultant. The chairman of Gale International yanks off his tie, hitches up his pants, and mops the sweat and floppy hair from his brow. He’s beaming like a proud new papa, sprung from the waiting room and handing out cigars to whoever happens by. Beckoning me to follow, he saunters across eight lanes of traffic toward his baby, delivered prematurely days before.

Ten years ago, Gale was a builder and flipper of office parks who would eventually become known for knocking down the Boston landmark Filene’s Basement and replacing it with a hole in the ground. But Gale’s fate began to change in 2001 with a phone call from South Korea. The Korean government had found his firm on the Internet and made an offer everyone else had refused. The brief: Gale would borrow $35 billion from Korea’s banks and its biggest steel company, and use the money to build from scratch a city the size of downtown Boston, only taller and denser, on a muddy man-made island in the Yellow Sea. When Gale arrived to see the site, it was miles of open water. He signed anyway.

New Songdo City won’t be finished until 2015 at least, but in August, Gale cut the ribbon on the 100-acre ‘Central Park’ modeled, like so much of the city, on Manhattan’s. Climbing on all sides will be a mix of low-rises and sleek spires — condos, offices, even South Korea’s tallest building, the 1,001-foot Northeast Asia Trade Tower. Strolling along the park’s canal, we hear cicadas buzzing, saws whining, and pile drivers pounding down to bedrock. I ask whether he’s stocked the canal with fish yet. ‘It’s four days old!’ he splutters, forgetting he isn’t supposed to rest until the seventh.

As far as playing God (or SimCity) goes, New Songdo is the most ambitious instant city since Brasília 50 years ago. Brasília, of course, was an instant disaster: grandiose, monstrously overscale, and immediately encircled by slums. New Songdo has to be better because there’s a lot more riding on it than whether Gale can repay his loans. It has been hailed since conception as the experimental prototype community of tomorrow. A green city, it was LEED-certified from the get-go, designed to emit a third of the greenhouse gases of a typical metropolis its size (about 300,000 people during the day). It’s an ‘international business district’ and an ‘aerotropolis’ — a Western-oriented city more focused on the airport and China beyond than on Seoul. And it’s supposed to be a ‘smart city,’ studded with chips talking to one another, designated as such years before IBM found its ‘Smarter Planet’ religion.”

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A Cisco video about Songdo:

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“Money Is A Much More Fluid Medium Than Class, And Much More Measurable, Too”

July 24, 2012 in Excerpts, Politics, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

People currently living under tyrants in the Middle East want political freedom and empowerment. But in free countries in the West, we want designer stuff. What we wouldn’t trade for it. We’re citizens acting as if we’re merely consumers. From David Wallace-Wells’ smart interview with Martin Amis in New York, a section about the London riots of 2011:

“Were you in London for the riots?
I wasn’t. As I recall, it was, as these things usually are, set off by a bit of heavy-handed policing. It’s interesting that there’s such a contrast between the police in America and there, in how they’re viewed by the working class, or whatever you want to call them—the proletariat, the many. In America, the policeman is a working-class hero. In England, the policeman is a working-class traitor. Lionel propounds this view himself—the police undertake to protect the rich man’s shilling. As if everyone’s raring to have a redistribution of wealth. That’s why there’s such violent names for the police in criminal England—they call them not only the filth, the filth, but also the puss. They’re the lowest of the low. When policemen go to prison in England, they have as bad a time as a pedophile.

The police in America are, to my senses, quite fascistic—you know, immediate end to all humor, end of all human contact; it’s a real assertion of authority in a way that’s very rare in England. In England, police are, softly softly, “Now, sir, come on, sir.” It’s a humoring voice, not an authoritarian one. I don’t understand the sparking incident. But, then, as the phrase is, it’s all off, then. When a riot starts, it’s all off—meaning, the law suspended. It’s also interesting they used social networking to get people around to certain malls where the police presence was small.

Also that they were gravitating towards malls at all.
Yeah. It was very sort of un-left-wing, in the sense that they all flooded into these sports-equipment shops and tried on all these trainers. A rioter doesn’t usually try things on. Or a looter—it was looting, really, rather than rioting.

But, I mean, what conclusions are people trying to draw from that? It’s just the sort of thing that happens every now and then. Very hard to see any kind of social protest in it. It was opportunistic, and cynical, I think. And I was horrified to learn some of the sentences that were being handed down, for people with no record, first-time offenders, deterrent sentences, exemplary sentences. So, you know, incoherent social spasm rather than anything one could draw conclusions from.

But I guess an expression of class frustration, too.
It’s not class anymore. It’s money. And for very good reason. Money is a much more fluid medium than class, and much more measurable, too, than class. It was a protest, if it was that, to any extent, against privation. It is the sort of society where—it’s not very rational—people look at fame and feel deprived if they haven’t got it, feeling that this is a basic, almost a human right, a civil right.”

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Amis interviews Norman Mailer, 1991:

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“The Internet Didn’t Get Invented On Its Own”

July 23, 2012 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

I wholly disagree with L. Gordon Crovitz’s Wall Street Journal editorial “Who Really Invented the Internet?” The piece attempts to discredit the important role that government played in the nurturing of our dominant medium, trying to shift all the credit to the free market. That’s ideology masquerading as history. An excerpt:

“A telling moment in the presidential race came recently when Barack Obama said: ‘If you’ve got a business, you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen.’ He justified elevating bureaucrats over entrepreneurs by referring to bridges and roads, adding: ‘The Internet didn’t get invented on its own. Government research created the Internet so that all companies could make money off the Internet.’

It’s an urban legend that the government launched the Internet. The myth is that the Pentagon created the Internet to keep its communications lines up even in a nuclear strike. The truth is a more interesting story about how innovation happens—and about how hard it is to build successful technology companies even once the government gets out of the way.”

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“His Caretakers Got Drunk On The Alcohol Used In Embalming Lenin’s Corpse”

July 22, 2012 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

Like Albert Einstein’s brain, Vladimir Lenin’s corpse has done its fair share of traveling. Embalmed in 1924 at the behest of Joseph Stalin, Lenin’s leftovers have been considered differently during the many shifts in his homeland’s tortuous politics. Christopher Buckley, more than most, has had a close relationship with the remains. From his New York Times Op-Ed piece, “What’s a Body to Do?“:

“The saga of Lenin’s remains is a uniquely Russian story. His caretakers got drunk on the alcohol used in embalming Lenin’s corpse, and in one instance, one was caught groping the other’s daughter. There are group photos of them striking jaunty poses, as if they’ve gathered for a picnic.

And here was Khrushchev in 1956, growling, ‘The mausoleum stinks of Stalin’s corpse.’ Stalin was embalmed and laid out beside Lenin between 1953 to 1961, until Khrushchev said enough and ordered him buried beneath the Kremlin wall.

Lenin remains — Sleeping Beauty From Hell. Perhaps when his heir, President Vladimir V. Putin, is finished shipping combat helicopters to shore up his friend Bashar al-Assad of Syria he will have time to consider his minister of culture’s modest proposal.

Footnote: In 1991, when I was editing a publication for Forbes, I engaged in a hoax and briefly persuaded the world that the Russian government was preparing to auction off the body.

The story garnered quite a lot of play. A none-too-happy Russian interior minister denounced me for my ‘impudent lie’ and called it ‘an unpardonable provocation.’ (Which sort of made my day.)

But a number of readers of the magazine apparently didn’t get the memo that it was all a hoax. The Kremlin was deluged with offers.”

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“Comment Is Free, But Facts Are Sacred”

July 20, 2012 in Excerpts, Politics, Urban Studies | Permalink

Speaking of journalist C.P. Scott, here’s a passage from his famous 1921 essay, “A Hundred Years“:

“Character is a subtle affair, and has many shades and sides to it. It is not a thing to be much talked about, but rather to be felt. It is the slow deposit of past actions and ideals. It is for each man his most precious possession, and so it is for that latest growth of time, the newspaper. Fundamentally it implies honesty, cleanness, courage, fairness, a sense of duty to the reader and the community. A newspaper is of necessity something of a monopoly, and its first duty is to shun the temptations of monopoly. Its primary office is the gathering of news. At the peril of its soul it must see that the supply is not tainted. Neither in what it gives, nor in what it does not give, nor in the mode of presentation must the unclouded face of truth suffer wrong. Comment is free, but facts are sacred. ‘Propaganda,’ so called, by this means is hateful. The voice of opponents no less than that of friends has a right to be heard. Comment also is justly subject to a self-imposed restraint. It is well to be frank; it is even better to be fair. This is an ideal.”

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