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“The Distinction Between Knowledge And Information Is A Thing Of The Past”

January 11, 2015 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

Not that they give a damn, but I can never fully forgive the so-called good liberals in the media who supported the invasion of Iraq. It doesn’t mean I disqualify them on all fronts–that would be juvenile–but I still froth over the utter wrong-mindedness. Leon Wieseltier, the longtime witty editor and wonderful writer at the New Republic until that publication’s recent implosion, is one of the many Lefty thinkers who suddenly found a gun in his pants in the run-up to the Bush-Cheney bullshit war. Oy gevalt, Leon!

But he makes many good points in his just-published New York Times piece “Among the Disrupted,” which looks at the sacrifice of thought at the altar of data; humans moving, perhaps, into our post- period; and the modern attempt to measure quality only via quantification. Thinking, free of numbers, gave us, yes, the Iraq War, but also democracy, suffrage, the civil right’s movement, etc. We live in a far richer world than ever before because of interconnected computers which can reside snugly inside shirt pockets, but the new machinery of distribution knows casualties and philosophy and other things of non-numerical value shouldn’t be among them. “The character of our society cannot be determined by engineers,” as Wieseltier writes. His opening:

Amid the bacchanal of disruption, let us pause to honor the disrupted. The streets of American cities are haunted by the ghosts of bookstores and record stores, which have been destroyed by the greatest thugs in the history of the culture industry. Writers hover between a decent poverty and an indecent one; they are expected to render the fruits of their labors for little and even for nothing, and all the miracles of electronic dissemination somehow do not suffice for compensation, either of the fiscal or the spiritual kind. Everybody talks frantically about media, a second-order subject if ever there was one, as content disappears into “content.” What does the understanding of media contribute to the understanding of life? Journalistic institutions slowly transform themselves into silent sweatshops in which words cannot wait for thoughts, and first responses are promoted into best responses, and patience is a professional liability. As the frequency of expression grows, the force of expression diminishes: Digital expectations of alacrity and terseness confer the highest prestige upon the twittering cacophony of one-liners and promotional announcements. It was always the case that all things must pass, but this is ridiculous.

Meanwhile the discussion of culture is being steadily absorbed into the discussion of business. There are “metrics” for phenomena that cannot be metrically measured. Numerical values are assigned to things that cannot be captured by numbers. Economic concepts go rampaging through noneconomic realms: Economists are our experts on happiness! Where wisdom once was, quantification will now be. Quantification is the most overwhelming influence upon the contemporary American understanding of, well, everything. It is enabled by the idolatry of data, which has itself been enabled by the almost unimaginable data-generating capabilities of the new technology. The distinction between knowledge and information is a thing of the past, and there is no greater disgrace than to be a thing of the past. Beyond its impact upon culture, the new technology penetrates even deeper levels of identity and experience, to cognition and to consciousness.•

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“Lines, In All Their Forms, Are Being Subverted By Markets”

January 11, 2015 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

In Henry Grabar’s Salon article “The Uberization of Everything,” the author looks at how the egalitarianism of the queue is being undone for good by the Internet and dynamic pricing. An excerpt:

The line’s advantage is more basic. Beyond early risers and people with good shoes, the line has a natural constituency: those whose time isn’t worth much. If you’re a well-paid lawyer, working long days for a high hourly fee, two hours in line has a huge opportunity cost. For two hours of work, you could pay market price and have cash left over for dinner. If you’re unemployed, on the other hand, sitting in Central Park all day to see Twelfth Night for free might well be worth your while.

In that sense, the line is a very egalitarian concept, demanding the only thing we’re all given in equal measure: time.

It may also be growing obsolete. Paying to skip has become common, from Six Flags’ Flash Pass to the TSA’s PreCheck system. Real-time markets, where price can be instantaneously aligned with demand, have been implemented to dispel throngs of diners and highway traffic. Where lines endure, they’re infiltrated by professional “waiters,” standing in for clients whose time is worth more.

Lines, in all their forms, are being subverted by markets.

The most well-known example of a real-time market system is Uber’s surge-pricing algorithm. When cab demand is high (like on New Year’s Eve, or during a terrorist attack), the price of a ride goes up. This brings more cars into the streets and shortens the wait time for those who can afford them. It’s a pretty neat demonstration of supply and demand at work, an economist’s fantasy realized by the mobile Internet.

It’s easy to see who wins from surge pricing: drivers, Uber and customers willing to pay to get someplace quickly. Riders willing to share might also stand to benefit.

It’s harder to see who loses, because the old way of getting a cab (sans smartphone) was so irritating. In the biggest cities, where cabs are hailed on the street, demand pricing displaces a complex hierarchy of street knowledge, aggressive behavior and luck. But in most places — airports, train stations, cities with phone-order cab distribution — fixed pricing and a supply shortage rewarded travelers who had waited the longest.

Lines still dominate the urban experience. Roller coasters, movie theaters, airports, restaurants, clubs, government offices, sample sales, traffic: all these places operate on some kind of first-come, first-served basis.

But that system is changing.

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“Your Florida Doctor Prescribed You This?”

January 11, 2015 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

I always wonder how so many Americans got hooked on Oxycodone, the polite way to be a heroin addict. In his latest Financial Times column, our Canadian friend Douglas Coupland explains part of the problem: He developed bronchitis while touring the Southern United States and walked right into a medico on the make, readying a hook for him. An excerpt:

By Day Nine the bronchitis was morphing into pneumonia, and pretty much 50 per cent of my cognitive output was based around analysing my bodily sensations and trying to figure out if they were real or psychosomatic but, either way, the only way to unclasp The Hand at the back of my skull was to take another pill, except by then it wasn’t fun any more. Every moment of the day felt like I was about to step into a too-hot bathtub and, concomitantly, much of my cognitive function was by then being deployed to monitor my outward behaviour so as to not look like I was hiding The Hand on the back of my skull.

So I stopped. And I returned to Canada, where my doctor looked at my prescriptions, puzzled. First, my antibiotic: “Your Florida doctor prescribed you this? [Name drug; get lawsuit.] We used to give this to two-year-olds and, even then, for your body weight, this ought to have been at least three times a day at quadruple strength.”

“OK, but what about oxycodone? You have to admit, it did stop me from coughing.”

“Yes, but you also almost became addicted to a $900-a-pop drug.”

“True.”

“And just to be clear, you were deliberately underprescribed antibiotics to keep you from getting well so as to ensure that you’d keep going back for more visits and repeat oxy prescriptions. And your doctor was obviously in on some kind of racket with the pharmacist — all that coupon nonsense.”

“All true.”

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“The Moon Is A Key Point In Future Trade Routes With The Planets”

January 11, 2015 in Excerpts, Science/Tech | Permalink

In a 1946 issue of Collier’s Weekly, journalist, publicist and space-travel enthusiast G. Edward Pendray penned “Next Stop the Moon,” a piece about establishing lunar settlements not to build some Gingrich-ian theme park but for permanent settlements and trade routes, using Columbus, not Disney, as his lodestar. An excerpt about financial considerations:

What Profit in Lunar Conquest?

Perhaps the foremost question now is: Why attempt a trip to the moon? What will the explorers be looking for?

When Columbus approached Queen Isabella about supporting his voyage to the New World, he had some rather tangible inducements to offer. There were the much-talked-of new trade routes for the spices and other products of the East. There was, of course, the possibility of new knowledge, prized by scholars. More appealing to sovereigns both then and now, there was also the promise of wealth and power.

The same inducements, though on a larger, more modern scale, beckon to the sponsors of a pioneering voyage across space’s vast unknowns. There may be no spices on the moon, but as we shall see, the moon is a key point in future trade routes with the planets. Who knows what 21st century equivalents of rare spices will ultimately be discovered on them?

For the scholars, there will certainly be much new knowledge in the special venture. In fact, discovery of new knowledge must begin even before the journey starts. Lots of it will be required to build a vehicle to take explorers across the void.

Wealth? Gold isn’t as much prized in these times as formerly, but uranium is now an even more precious metal and there are good—or at least interesting—arguments for the possibility of large deposits of uranium ind other radioactive metals on the moon.

Power? Our satellite, by its position, size and other advantages, is the natural watchman of the crossroads of space. Its gravitational attraction is so small that rockets only a little faster than the German V-2s could bombard the earth from the moon. With the aid of suitable guiding devices, such rockets could hit any city on the globe with devastating effect. A return attack from the earth would require rockets many times more powerful to carry the same pay load of destruction; and they would, moreover, have to be launched under much more adverse conditions for hitting a small target, such as the moon colony.

So far as sovereign power is concerned, therefore, control of the moon in the interplanetary world of the atomic future could mean military control of our whole portion of the solar system. Its dominance could include not only the earth but also Mars and Venus, the two other possibly habitable planets.

Whether permanent colonies could be founded on the moon might depend on whether uranium or other practical sources of atomic energy are discovered. On the earth, uranium seems to be concentrated mostly in the outer crust. The moon, some astronomers believe, was once a part of that crust, having been thrown into space out of the pit where the Pacific Ocean now rolls, during a violent paroxysm in the earlier history of our globe.

It is possible, therefore, that our satellite, being composed entirely of earth’s crustal materials, may be relatively rich in uranium. Should this turn out to be a fact, it would be simple to construct reacting atomic “piles” on the moon like those of the Manhattan Project, only bigger. These could produce heat for melting lunar sand into thick glass slabs, which would be employed for constructing an airtight roof over a crevice or one of the small craters. Atomic piles could furnish power to heat, light and aircondition a small city in such a sheltered place. The power might even enable chemists to extract oxygen, hydrogen and nitrogen from lunar minerals to create a water supply and an adequate atmosphere in the domed city.

Obviously establishing a moon colony will take some doing. It will not be accomplished by the first rocket ship to visit the premises. There will have to be at least four stages to the process of conquering the moon—each step probably consisting of several abortive trials before attaining success. Assuming rockets capable of shooting away from the earth, the four stages may be these:

1. The Target Shots. Unmanned instrument-carrying rockets will be sent first, to test out flight calculations and controls. They will carry self-operating radio-equipped instruments to provide preliminary information about the range of temperatures, radiation, gravitational influences and other conditions to be encountered on the journey and on the lunar surface. These instrument-carrying rockets will not be equipped to return. They will land on the moon and transmit continuous automatic messages back to earth as long as their power supply lasts.

2. The Pilot Expedition will be the first manned space rocket. It will carry a crew of perhaps five, with all necessary equipment. Its mission: to spend a lunar day and night—28 earth days—on the moon, gathering all data possible in the allowed period, then returning to the earth. The crew probably will consist of a pilot-navigator, a copilot and mechanic engineer, a medical man, a physicist-chemist who is also a radio and radiation expert, and a geologist-mineralogist. These five will be selected not only for unusual skill and proficiency in their several technical fields, but also for resourcefulness, physical hardiness, courage and ability to observe.

3. The Moonhead Expedition will be the first small group of pioneers assigned to a settlement on the moon. Its size, make-up and equipment will depend on what is learned by the Pilot Expedition, but may consist of perhaps ten men, supplied at regular intervals by additional cargo rockets, either unmanned and robot-controlled, or staffed with small crews. Regular two-way communication and supply connections may be started in this way between the earth and moon.

4. Full Colonization, the final phase. It will begin after the Moonhead Expedition has established a firm foothold. The original small settlement will be increased in size and conditions established for fairly normal life, considering the natural difficulties. A few especially courageous women may join their men in this phase, though it is not to be expected that anybody will remain on the moon for protracted periods. Colonists will probably take regular turns of service, alternating with periods of rest and recuperation at home on earth.•

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“Does It Seem Strange? Unbelievable?”

January 11, 2015 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

Driverless cars have been a goal of some for at least 85 years, but as recently as 2007 they seemed a pipe dream to most. John Tierney of the New York Times, though, noted in that year the astounding progress the sector had made in short shrift, and assumed that autonomous cars wouldn’t remain futuristic frustrations like the flying kind. From Tierney’s prescient 2007 Times article:

As the baby boomers cruise into their golden years, I have good news for them — and for everyone else in danger of being run over by these aging drivers. The boomers will not be driving like Mr. Magoo. An electronic chauffeur will conduct them on expressways, drop them at the mall entrance and then go park their cars.

If you doubt this prediction, I don’t blame you. The self-driving car ranks right up there with the personal hovercraft as the futurist vision that never comes true. In 1969, Disney unveiled Herbie the Love Bug; in 1940, Popular Mechanics promised a car that would chauffeur you across America in a single day to visit Aunt Lillian.

At the 1939 World’s Fair, the crowds at the General Motors Futurama exhibit saw traffic speeding 100 miles per hour thanks to electronic help. ‘Safe distance between cars is maintained by automatic radio control,’ a voice explained as visitors looked down on the vast diorama of the World of Tomorrow, complete with hangars for dirigibles and landing decks for autogyros.

‘Does it seem strange? Unbelievable?’ the announcer intoned. ‘Remember, this is the world of 1960!’

O.K., so they were a little off on the date. But today, finally, those electronically spaced cars are on the highway. You can buy cars with ‘adaptive cruise-control’ that automatically slow down if the radar or laser detects you tailgating. Your car can warn you when you stray across lane markings, and these kinds of sensors are already being used experimentally in cars that drive themselves.

These smart cars still have their bugs, but engineers have made amazing progress the past several years. In 2004, when the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency held its first Grand Challenge for driverless cars, none made it more than seven miles. At Darpa’s next Grand Challenge, in 2005, five cars made it 132 miles to the finish. And then, last month, six cars completed a 60-mile course that was the grandest challenge yet because they had to deal with traffic along the way.

These empty cars drove themselves around an Air Force base in Southern California, finding parking spots, obeying stop signs, idling in traffic, yielding to other cars at intersections and merging into traffic at 30 m.p.h. There was one accident and a few near misses, but the cars’ engineers are so buoyed by the results that they’re hoping the next competition will be a high-speed race on a Grand Prix course.

‘Within five years, it’s totally feasible to build an autonomous car that will work reliably in several limited domains,’ says Sebastian Thrun, a computer scientist at Stanford and head of its racing team, which won the 2005 Darpa competition and finished second in last month’s. In five years he expects a car that could take over simple chores like breezing along an expressway, inching along in stop-and-go traffic, or parking in the lot at a mall or airport after dropping off the driver. In 20 years, Dr. Thrun figures half of new cars sold will offer drivers the option of turning over these chores to a computer, but he acknowledges that’s just an educated guess. While he doesn’t doubt cars will be able to drive themselves, he’s not sure how many humans will let them.•

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“The Biggest Problem Has Been In America—By Far McDonald’s Largest Market”

January 9, 2015 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

Ray Kroc, the larger-than-life figure who turned the McDonald’s “hamburger stands” into a megapower after joining the company in the mid-’50s, just couldn’t help but make money. Here’s Kroc discussing his finances with Sports Illustrated in 1974, in an article tied to his purchase of the San Diego Padres: 

“Money is an automatic thing with me,” he said, adjusting his chair. “It’s like turning on a light switch. I take it for granted. What do I need it for? I’ve never desired a harem—anyway, I’m too old for one now. I’ve never wanted to own a racehorse or even a polo pony. What are you gonna do with money? I eat one steak at a time and I buy my clothes off the rack—can’t stand custom-made clothes. All money represents to me is pride of accomplishment.”

McDonald’s isn’t so fortunate these days, though, as the chain, which is terrible for animals, people and the environment, has faced strong market resistance the past two years. A brief downturn, perhaps, though poor management, strong competition and shifting tastes may mean a longer decline. From “When the Chips Are Down,” a new Economist article about the tarnish on the Golden Arches:

The biggest problem has been in America—by far McDonald’s largest market, where it has 14,200 of its 35,000 mostly franchised restaurants. In November its American like-for-like sales were down 4.6% on a year earlier. It had weathered the 2008-09 recession and its aftermath by attracting cash-strapped consumers looking for a cheap bite. But more recently it has been squeezed by competition from Burger King, revitalised under the management of a private-equity firm, from other fast-food joints such as Subway and Starbucks, and from the growing popularity of slightly more upmarket ‘fast casual’ outlets.

In response, McDonald’s has expanded its menu with all manner of wraps, salads and so on. Its American menu now has almost 200 items. This strains kitchen staff and annoys franchisees, who often have to buy new equipment. It may also deter customers. ‘McDonald’s stands for value, consistency and convenience,’ says Darren Tristano at Technomic, a restaurant-industry consultant, and it needs to stay true to this. Most diners want a Big Mac or a Quarter Pounder at a good price, served quickly. And, as company executives now acknowledge, its strategy of reeling in diners with a ‘Dollar Menu’ then trying to tempt them with pricier dishes is not working.

McDonald’s says it has got the message and is experimenting in some parts of America with a simpler menu: one type of Quarter Pounder with cheese rather than four; one Snack Wrap rather than three; and so on. However, this seems to run contrary to the build-your-burger strategy it is trying elsewhere, which expands the number of choices. That in turn is McDonald’s response to the popularity of ‘better burger’ chains, such as Shake Shack, which has just filed for a stockmarket flotation.

Some analysts think that McDonald’s should stop trying to replicate all its rivals’ offerings and go back to basics, offering a limited range of dishes at low prices, served freshly and quickly.•

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“We Don’t Have Anything Like A C-3PO From Star Wars In Our Homes Yet. That Could Start To Change.”

January 9, 2015 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

Two clips from articles about robotics, one from the Guardian about human augmentation in the form of exoskeletons and the other from the WSJ about social robotics.

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From Samuel Gibbs at the Guardian:

The exoskeleton has been designed to help paraplegics gain mobility but also to help stroke victims learn how to walk again. It is controlled by buttons on a set of walking sticks, but also with the weight of the wearer.

Leaning forward in a natural walking stances while rocking side to side triggers the steps in a very human-like non-robotic way. The exoskeleton detects how much power a person is putting in and fills the shortfall to maintain stability, but also to help people build their strength where they have it.

‘Our technology started in the military, carrying heavy loads and with our partners Lockheed Martin we’re still doing that. But we melded technologies from people for athletics and people with paralysis to aid people with stroke to walk again,’ said Harding.

‘Now we’re looking at industrial applications – for construction crews holding heavy tools or working on overhead surfaces. That’s our next stage to attack. In five years you’ll see exoskeletons on the building site and on the medical side, someone with paralysis will be using one to get around a party.•

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From Geoffrey A. Fowler at the WSJ:

Robots with social skills have captured imaginations going back decades. But we don’t have anything like a C-3PO from Star Wars or Rosie from The Jetsons in our homes yet.

That could start to change. At the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas this week, two pioneers in the field of social robotics said they are ready to begin selling personal robots. Their hope is that getting robots with basic capabilities like motion, video and voice recognition into homes will encourage developers to create the software that will make them feel like part of the family.

Aldebaran, founded by renowned roboticist Bruno Maisonnier, plans to begin selling its walking, talking 23-inch robot Nao to consumers in the next one to two years. Jibo, an 11-inch table-top robot with a swiveling body created by Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor Cynthia Breazeal, will begin shipping to developers late this year and to homes in 2016.

‘It is now possible to build a social robot at a mass consumer price point,’ says Breazeal, whose company — also called Jibo — is selling the robot for $600.•

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“The Question Is Not Whether A Map Can Be Made, But What Insights It Will Bring”

January 8, 2015 in Books, Excerpts, Science/Tech | Permalink

In Gareth Cook’s New York Times Magazine profile of Princeton neuroscientist Sebastian Seung, who is trying to map the human brain with the aid of crowdsourcing online games, something akin to academia applied to Angry Birds, the writer makes a fundamental point about all attempts at cartography: charts and pictures are capable of obfuscating as well as elucidating. An excerpt:

“In 1946, the Argentine man of letters Jorge Luis Borges wrote a short story about an empire, unnamed, that set out to construct a perfect map of its territory. A series of maps were drawn, only to be put aside in favor of more ambitious maps. Eventually, Borges wrote, ‘the Cartographers Guilds struck a Map of the Empire whose size was that of the Empire, and which coincided point for point with it. The following Generations, who were not so fond of the Study of Cartography as their Forebears had been, saw that that vast map was Useless, and . . . delivered it up to the Inclemencies of Sun and Winters.’

With time, Borges’s cautionary parable has become even more relevant for the would-be cartographers of the world, Seung among them. Technological progress has always brought novel ways of seeing the natural world and thus new ways of mapping it. The telescope was what allowed Galileo to sketch, in his book The Starry Messenger, a first map of Jupiter’s largest moons. The invention of the microscope, sometime in the late 16th century, led to Robert Hooke’s famous depiction of a flea, its body armored and spiked, as well as the discovery of the cell, an alien world unto itself. Today the pace of invention and the raw power of technology are shocking: A Nobel Prize was awarded last fall for the creation of a microscope with a resolution so extreme that it seems to defy the physical constraints of light itself.

What has made the early 21st century a particularly giddy moment for scientific mapmakers, though, is the precipitous rise of information technology. Advances in computers have provided a cheap means to collect and analyze huge volumes of data, and Moore’s Law, which predicts regular doublings in computing power, has shown little sign of flagging. Just as important is the fact that machines can now do the grunt work of research automatically, handling samples, measuring and recording data. Set up a robotic system, feed the data to the cloud and the map will practically draw itself. It’s easy to forget Borges’s caution: The question is not whether a map can be made, but what insights it will bring. Will future generations cherish a cartographer’s work or shake their heads and deliver it up to the inclemencies?”

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“Those Are Two Of The Most Discussed Proposals For Using Technology To Chill The Planet And Combat Climate Change”

January 8, 2015 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

Terraforming any planet, especially the one we’re standing on, seems fraught with consequences, many unintended, but some scientists maintain sci-fi dreams of geoengineering us out of climate change. From Brian Merchant at Vice:

“The scientists had whipped themselves into a frenzy. Gathered in a stuffy conference room in the bowels of a hotel in Berlin, scores of respected climate researchers, mostly middle-aged, mostly white, and mostly men, were arguing about a one-page document that had tentatively been christened the ‘Berlin Declaration.’ It proposed ground rules for conducting experiments to explore how we might artificially cool the Earth—planet hacking, basically.

It’s most commonly called ​geoengineering. Think Bond-villain-caliber schemes but with better intentions. It’s a highly controversial field that studies ideas like ​launching high-flying jets to dust the skies with sulfur in order to block out a small fraction of the solar rays entering the atmosphere, or sending a fleet of drones across the ocean to spray seawater into clouds to ​make them brighter and thus reflect more sunlight.

Those are two of the most discussed proposals for using technology to chill the planet and combat climate change, and each would ostensibly cost a few billion dollars a year—peanuts in the scheme of the global economy. We’re about to see the dawn of the first real-world experiments designed to test ideas like these, but first, the scientists wanted to agree on a code of ethics—how to move forward without alarming the public or breaking any laws.”

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“Each Seat Is To Be Cooled”

January 8, 2015 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech, Sports, Urban Studies | Permalink

Qatar is the richest state in the world based on per capita wealth, which is the main reason the tiny nation was chosen to host the 2022 World Cup, despite desert climate and dicey politics. When awarding the Cup or the Olympics, organizers can’t be too choosy, as few countries can or will expend the ton of money it takes to stage such a global event. Maik Grossekathöfer and Juan Moreno of Speigel interviewed Albert Speer, the German architect overseeing the building (and, yes, son of), as well as Friedbert Greif, managing partner and urban planner, and other principals. Two exchanges follow.

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Spiegel:

Your office has developed the master plan for the 2022 World Cup in Qatar. The concept calls for 12 stadiums to be built in the desert, some of them within sight of each other. Each seat is to be cooled and the temperature at the center of the field is to be 20 degrees Celsius (68 degrees Fahrenheit), even if outside temperatures rise to 50 degrees Celsius (122 degrees Fahrenheit). And all this is to be built in a country that has as many residents as Augsburg, Germany (population: 276,542) Weren’t we just talking about sustainability?

Albert Speer:

But of course we were. Here, too, sustainability has been a priority from the very beginning.

Spiegel:

The insistence on an ecologically viable World Cup on the Arabian Peninsula doesn’t sound particularly credible. Just look at Abu Dhabi, which has announced its intention to build a new carbon neutral city — right next to a Formula One race track.

Albert Speer:

We intend to do things better and don’t want to be connected to projects like those in Sochi, for example. Qatar is planned so that most of it can be disassembled afterwards and that, in the end, is of a dimension that suits the country. The upper levels are modular and can be removed to make a total of 22 smaller football stadiums, which will then be given to developing countries after the World Cup. Individual modules can also be used for track and field stadiums with room for 5,000 people. And for the cooling, we have developed a concept that is based on solar power.

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Spiegel:

Still, one can wonder if it makes any sense at all for a World Cup to be held in a tiny desert country like Qatar.

Friedbert Greif:

What kind of a question is that? Of course it is legitimate for a country like Qatar, and thus, the Arab world, to get the World Cup. It is arrogant to believe that football belongs to us Europeans. Furthermore, I don’t believe that what the Russians are doing (eds. note: The 2018 World Cup is to be held in Russia) is any more efficient. Venues there are up to 2,400 kilometers (1,491 miles) from each other. The amount of resources and energy that are being wasted to bring spectators from A to B is crazy. Russia, in this regard, is the opposite extreme.

Spiegel:

Qatar isn’t a democracy, there is no labor union for immigrant workers and there have been numerous reports of people dying at the construction sites. In the past, the country was also a safe harbor for leaders of Islamist organizations.

Albert Speer:

I think it is fantastic that, with the help of media reports — and well in advance of the World Cup — people are taking a closer look. And that things are changing. Ahead of each of our projects, we ask: Is it acceptable? For many years we have had good business relations with Saudi Arabia. There is trust there, and people there listen to us as well. We really do have the feeling that we are doing something positive for the country and the people there. That is our benchmark. For Qatar as well.•

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“With Regard To Moral Questions, I Do Have Something I Would Like To Say About It”

January 8, 2015 in Excerpts, Science/Tech | Permalink

In the 1981 documentary The Pleasure of Finding Things Out, Richard Feynman discussed his role as a Ph.D. candidate working, beginning in 1943, for the Manhattan Project, a job he viewed at first as burden, then duty, then fun, then burden all over again. He was a deeply moral man who believed in retrospect that he hadn’t ultimately acted with much depth or morality, very troubled that he continued to work on the mission even after Germany surrendered. Feynman’s words:

It was a completely different kind of a thing. It would mean that I would have to stop the research in what I was doing, which was my life’s desire, to do this, which I felt I should do to protect civilization, if you want, okay? So that was what I had to debate with myself. My first reaction was that I didn’t want to get interrupted from my normal work to do this odd job. There was also the problem–of course, any moral thing involving war I didn’t want much to do about that. It kind of scared me when I realized what the weapon would be, and that since it might be possible, there was nothing that indicated that if we could do it that they couldn’t do it, therefore it was very important to try to cooperate.

With regard to moral questions, I do have something I would like to say about it, because the original reason to start the project, which I had, was that the Germans were a danger, which started me off on a process of action which was to be the first to develop this system at Princeton and then at Los Alamos, to try make the bomb work, all kinds of attempts at redesign to make it a worse bomb or whatever, and so on…and all of us working at this time to see if we could make it go. And so it was a project on which we all worked very, very hard and all cooperating together. With any project like that you continue to work to try to get success, having decided to do it. But what I did immorally, I would say, was not to remember the reason I said I was doing it, so that when the reason changed, which was that Germany was defeated, not the single thought came to my mind at all about that–that that meant that I had to reconsider doing this. I simply didn’t think, okay?

Only reaction I had, maybe I was blinded by my own reaction, was a very considerable elation and excitement. There were parties, and people got drunk, and it would make a tremendously interesting contrast of what was going on in Los Alamos as the same time as what was going on in Hiroshima. I was involved with this happy thing and also drinking, drunk, playing drums sitting on the hood–a bonnet–of a jeep, and playing drums, excitement running all over Los Alamos, at the same time as the people were dying and struggling at Hiroshima. 

I had a very strong reaction after the war of a peculiar nature…it may be just from the bomb itself or it may be from some other psychological reasons, I had just lost my wife or something. But I remember being in New York with my mother in a restaurant right after, immediately after, and thinking about New York, and I knew how big the bomb in Hiroshima was, how big an area it covered, and so on, and I realized from where we were–I don’t know, 59th Street–to drop one at 34th Street, and that would spread all the way out and all these people would be killed and all these things would be killed, and that wasn’t the only one bomb available but it was easy to continue to make them and therefore that things were sort of doomed, because already it appeared to me, earlier than to others who were more optimistic, that international relations and the way people were behaving was no different than it had ever been before, and that it was just going to go out the same way as any other thing, and I was sure it was going to be therefore used very soon. So, I felt very uncomfortable and I thought, really believed, that it was silly…I would see people building a bridge and I would say, “They don’t understand.” I really believed that it was senseless to make anything because it would all be destroyed anyway soon, that they didn’t understand that, and I had this very strange view of any construction I would see. I always thought, How foolish they are to try to make something. So I was really in a kind of depressive condition.•

 

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A Brief Note From 1936 About A Superman

January 7, 2015 in Old Print Articles, Photography, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

From the September 23, 1936 Brooklyn Daily Eagle:

“Vienna — Dr. Serge Voronoff of monkey gland and rejuvenation fame, announced today he was confident he could create a superman if he were permitted to transplant chimpanzee glands to a 10-year-old boy.

‘If any mother would entrust her child to me, she might be the means of establishing a new type of human far superior to the normal man.'”

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“So What Would We Eat After The Sky Goes Dark?”

January 7, 2015 in Excerpts, Science/Tech | Permalink

Via the beautiful Browser, I came across “What to Eat After the Apocalypse,” Yvonne Bang’s Nautilus interview with Adam Pearce, co-author of Feeding Everyone No Matter What, which plans the menu for Armageddon. One exchange:

“Question:

So what would we eat after the sky goes dark?

Adam Pearce:

There are many things that you can eat that we don’t normally consider food, particularly in the west. Leaves are one of them. You can eat leaves. You just have to be careful about how you do it. Leaves are high in fiber and we can’t digest any more than half of it, but if you chew the leaves and spit out the fiber you can draw out nutrients from it. Or you can make teas.

Tea in particular is a relatively easy one to do. Pine needle tea has more than 100 percent of the vitamin C of orange juice. One could actually make pine needle tea from the pine tree in your backyard and get your vitamin C for the day. It’s actually a really good superfood. And in some cultures, like [South] Korea, they even have pop that is flavored with pine. That’s their drink.

The other obvious one is insects. The conversion ratios between biomass and food in insects is much better than say, in cows. Beef production is unbelievably inefficient the way that we do it. In the west, we definitely turn our noses up at eating insects. But there are actually quite a few people throughout the world that eat insects today and, for feeding everyone, it is a very obvious solution. It’s not like you have to eat insects raw. You would never know the difference between say, a sausage patty, a veggie sausage patty, and an insect sausage patty. It’s all the same! It’s just the spices. Let the food scientists go crazy on it.”

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“If Indirect Observation Is All That Is On Offer, Then Astronomers Must Make The Best Of It”

January 7, 2015 in Books, Excerpts, Science/Tech | Permalink

One of the best books I read during 2014 was Lee Billings’ Five Billion Years of Solitude, a volume both extremely heady and deeply moving. It tells the story of the quest for exoplanets which resemble Earth, places which could possibly provide refuge for us when our mother planet finally dies. Even if we never manage to leave our solar system, just the intellectual odyssey itself is fascinating. From “Searching for Pale Blue Dots,” an Economist article about other-Earth discussions at this week’s American Astronomical Society meeting:

“IN 1990 Voyager took a photograph of Earth that was striking precisely because it showed so little. The spacecraft was six billion kilometres away at the time and the image it sent back was memorably described by Carl Sagan as a ‘pale blue dot,’ Imagine, then, how pale such a dot would be if the planet in the picture were 113,000 billion kilometres away. Yet this is the distance to the nearest confirmed exoplanet—a planet orbiting a star other than the sun. That gives some idea of the task faced by those who study these bodies. Only in the most special of circumstances can they actually see their quarry. Mostly, they have to work with indirect measurements, like watching for slight dips in the intensity of a star’s light when a planet passes in front of it, a phenomenon known as a transit.

But if indirect observation is all that is on offer, then astronomers must make the best of it. And, as numerous presentations to a meeting of the American Astronomical Society held in Seattle this week show, they have both done so, and have plans to do better in future.

The most successful planet-hunting mission so far has been Kepler, a satellite launched in 2009 by NASA, America’s space agency, which collected data using the transit method until 2013, when a mechanical failure disabled it. It has since been revived, but has only recently begun transmitting data. However, combing of the data it collected in its first incarnation continues, and Douglas Caldwell of the SETI Institute, in Mountain View, California, who is one of the mission’s chief scientists, announced to the meeting the discovery of eight new planets. Three of these lie in their solar systems’ habitable zones (that is, they are at a distance from their parent stars which makes them warm enough for water on their surfaces to be liquid, but cool enough for it not to be steam). One of these three, known as Kepler 438b, is thought particularly Earthlike. It is a bit bigger and a bit warmer than Earth, but is probably rocky. It is therefore likely to be the subject of intense future scrutiny.”

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“One Is Good. Two Is Enough.”

January 7, 2015 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

Ayatollah Khomeini’s prayers for a massive army of young men to combat Iraq were answered all too well. His urging for fertile females to reproduce with no pregnant pauses spurred Iran’s population to swell to 50 million by 1986. Once the war ended, what was the country to do with all those working-age people who needed jobs, food and clean water? An excerpt follows from Alan Weisman’s Countdown, republished at Matter, which looks at family-planning efforts inside a theocracy.

__________________________________

Secret meetings commenced with the Supreme Leader to discuss the population blessing that was now a population crisis. Years later, demographer and population historian Abbasi-Shavazi would interview the 1987 planning and budget director, and learn that he had met with the president’s cabinet and explained what excessive human numbers portended for the nation’s future. To feed, educate, house, and employ everyone would far outstrip their capacity, as Iran was exhausted and nearly bankrupt. There were so many children that primary schools had to move from double to triple shifts. The planning and budget director and the minister of health presented an initiative to reverse demographic course and institute a nationwide family-planning campaign. It was approved by a single vote.

A month after the August 1988 ceasefire finally ended the war, Iran’s religious leaders, demographers, budget experts, and health minister gathered for a summit conference on population in the eastern city of Mashhad, one of holiest cities for the world’s Shi’ite Muslims, whose name means “place of martyrdom.” The weighty symbolism was clear.

“The report of the demographers and budget officers was given to Khomeini,” Dr. Shamshiri recalls. The economic prognosis for their overpopulated nation must have been very dire, given the Ayatollah’s contempt for economists, whom he often referred to as donkeys.

“After he heard it, he said, ‘Do what is necessary.’ ”

It meant convincing 50 million Iranians of the opposite of what they’d heard for the past eight years: that their patriotic duty was to be forcibly fruitful. Now, a new slogan was strung from banners, repeated on billboards, plastered on walls, broadcast on television, and preached at Friday prayers by the same mullahs who once enjoined them to produce a great Islamic generation by making more babies:

One is good. Two is enough.

The next year, 1989, Imam Khomeini died. The same prime minister who had hailed fertility rates approaching nine children per woman as God-sent now launched a new national family-planning program. Unlike China, the decision of how many was left to the parents. No law forbade them from having ten if they chose. But no one did. Instead, what happened next was the most stunning reversal of population growth in human history. Twelve years later, the Iranian minister of health would accept the United Nations Population Award for the most enlightened and successful approach to family planning the world had ever seen.

If it all was voluntary, how did Iran do it?•

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“All That Tech Recedes Into The Background”

January 7, 2015 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

The future occasionally crash-lands into our lives, but usually it goes far easier on the brakes. The latter, more-prosaic scenario is what Alex Davies of Wired encountered when he took the wheel gave up the wheel of Audi’s highway-ready driverless vehicle. An excerpt:

“If this A7, nicknamed Jack, wasn’t advertising ‘Audi piloted driving’ on its side, you’d never know it wasn’t just another German sedan cruising down the 5. All the gadgetry that keeps it squarely centered in its lane at precisely the speed you select is discretely incorporated into the car. It’s top-end stuff, too: six radars, three cameras, and two light detection and ranging (LIDAR) units. The computers that allow the car to analyze the road, choose the optimal path and stick to it fit neatly in the trunk. It’s remarkably smooth, maintaining a safe following distance, making smooth lane changes, and politely moving to the left to pass slower vehicles controlled by carbon-based life forms. It’s so sophisticated that I never felt anything unusual, and in fact the car is designed to reassure you that you need only grab the wheel or tap the brake to immediately resume control.

And that’s the most remarkable thing about Audi’s robo-car: All that tech recedes into the background. Driving this car is mundane, almost boring.”

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“Our Species Terrorizes The Animal World In Ways That Could Only Offend, If Not Outrage, A God”

January 6, 2015 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

All dogs may go to heaven–even if the supposed Fun Pope promise was apocryphal–but what of cows and pigs and chickens?

I’ve mentioned before that free-range chicken doesn’t sound particularly ethical to me. If I were a chicken, my main objection to the slaughterhouse would not be the accommodations. And almost all those who eat poultry would jail others who organize cockfights, which isn’t sensible; both are done for enjoyment, not necessity. From Robert Pogue Harrison’s NYRB post “Our Animal Hell“:

“Whether or not one believes that the Judeo-Christian God exists, there is much to ponder in what Pope Francis reportedly told a distraught boy whose dog had died. According to The New York Times, Francis assured him that he would be reunited with his pet ‘in the eternity of Christ’ and—in the spirit of his papal namesake—declared that ‘Paradise is open to all of God’s creatures.’ Since we are a society that loves our dogs as much as we love God, the American media focused almost exclusively on the statement’s implications for canine pets; but a broader, far darker import lurks at the heart of the Pope’s words.

The Pope spoke not of dogs but of all of God’s creatures. Where does that leave humankind? To call us a species among others is both correct and misleading, for whether by divine design or nature’s random ways, Homo sapiens has extended its dominion over everything that walks, crawls, swims, or flies. This makes us a singular, unearthly kind of creature. From the extinctions we cause, to the alteration and destruction of animal habitats, to the daily mass slaughters that feed our collective Cerberus-like appetite for meat, poultry, and fish, our species terrorizes the animal world in ways that could only offend, if not outrage, a God who loves his creatures enough to open the prospect of heaven to them.

Whether intentionally or unintentionally, the Pope’s declaration reminds us of something that weighs heavily on humankind. Most of the time, we are adept at blocking out this ‘species guilt,’ as I would call it. Aren’t we more humane than our ancestors? Don’t we love animals? Don’t we have laws against animal cruelty? Yes, we do. But as Nicholas Kristof put it in a recent column in The New York Times: ‘Torture a single chicken and you risk arrest. Abuse hundreds of thousands of chickens for their entire lives? That’s agribusiness.’ I.e., that’s what stocks our supermarkets with happy ‘cage free’ chickens.

We like to think of ourselves as the stewards or even saviors of nature, yet the fact of the matter is, for the animal world at large, the human race represents nothing less than a natural disaster.”

“The Major Automakers Now See A World Of Completely Self-Driving Cars”

January 6, 2015 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

It’s been a high-speed chase for a decade now, from the embarrassment of the 2004 DARPA Grand Challenge to Big Auto seeing a driverless horizon. Unless everyone in the sector has succumbed to a collective delusion, this technology, or at least an impressive portion of it, will be available sooner than later. From a report by Molly Wood of the New York Times on the autonomous dream on display at this week’s Consumer Electronics Show:

“No more dancing around it: The major automakers now see a world of completely self-driving cars.

On Monday at the International Consumer Electronics Show, the huge technology industry event in Las Vegas, Dieter Zetsche, the head of Mercedes-Benz cars and chairman of of Daimler AG, focused most of his keynote address on unveiling a fully autonomous prototype vehicle.

Dr. Zetsche described the autonomous car of the future as a sort of luxury ‘carriage’ that could provide a peaceful, relaxing oasis for riders. It was festooned with touch screens and featured a sort of floating control panel that would let any rider take control of the car.

Raj Nair, the chief technical officer and global product chief at Ford, said at the International CES that he expected some manufacturer to introduce a completely autonomous vehicle — one that requires zero human intervention — within five years.”

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“There Are Now Vast, Automated Networks To Harvest All That Narcissism”

January 6, 2015 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

The more appropriate name for a selfie stick, I think, is “dipstick,” but I am an awful man. The great David Carr of the New York Times has noticed the ubiquity of these collapsible self-admiration apparatuses, realizing that while old media expends great time and effort fashioning fabulous products, many prefer quick-fix ephemera, content to skip the traditional content and instead contribute to the world’s exponentially expanding high school yearbook, our new-age bible. From Carr:

“Selfies are hardly new, but the incremental improvement in technology of putting a phone on a stick — a curiously analog fix that Time magazine listed as one of the best inventions of 2014 along with something called the ‘high-beta fusion reactor’ — suggests that the séance with the self is only going to grow. (Selfie sticks are often used to shoot from above, which any self-respecting selfie auteur will tell you is the most flattering angle.)

There are now vast, automated networks to harvest all that narcissism, along with lots of personal data, creating extensive troves of user-generated content. The tendency to listen to the holy music of the self is reflected in the abundance of messaging and self-publishing services — Vine, WhatsApp, Snapchat, Instagram, Apple’s new voice messaging and the rest — all of which pose a profound challenge for media companies. Most media outfits are in the business of one-to-many, creating single pieces of text, images or audio meant to be shared by the masses.

But most sharing does not involve traditional media companies.”

“The Mars Transport System Will Be A Completely New Architecture”

January 6, 2015 in Excerpts, Science/Tech | Permalink

Industrialist Elon Musk wants to begin colonizing Mars by 2030, while writer Ken Kalfus thinks we should take a more cautious approach, sending unmanned probes to Alpha Centauri, using the time between blast-off and “landing” in 500 years or so to work on Earth’s problems. Only one of these people has billions of dollars and the ability to raise many more billions, which may preclude any in-depth debate on our path forward. Musk discussed his mission to Mars and other subjects in a Reddit AMA, the day before SpaceX scrubbed its Falcon 9 attempt to land a rocket on a barge. A few exchanges follow.

___________________________

Question:

Could you please clarify what the Mars Colonial Transporter actually is? Is it a crew module like Dragon, a launch vehicle like Falcon, or a mix of both? Does it have inflatable components? Is MCT just a codename?

Elon Musk:

The Mars transport system will be a completely new architecture. Am hoping to present that towards the end of this year. Good thing we didn’t do it sooner, as we have learned a huge amount from Falcon and Dragon.

___________________________

Question:

SpaceX’s current strategy revolves mostly around old style Rockets, even if they are now approaching complete reusability (Grasshopper rocks). Has SpaceX looked into Hybrid craft like the SABRE program happening in the UK, or look into the possibility of a space elevator (Even at a thought experiment stage) in the way that Google and NASA have done?

Elon Musk:

If you want to get to orbit or beyond, go with pure rockets. It is not like Von Braun and Korolev didn’t know about airplanes and they were really smart dudes.

___________________________

Question:

How does SpaceX plan to address the limitations and contribute to the advancement of current spacesuit technology to best serve humans enroute and on the surface of Mars? You mentioned in 2013 that there’d be an update to SpaceX’s “spacesuit project” soon – how is it coming along?

Elon Musk:

Our spacesuit design is finally coming together and will also be unveiled later this year. We are putting a lot of effort into design esthetics, not just utility. It needs to both look like a 21st century spacesuit and work well. Really difficult to achieve both.

___________________________

Question:

How will you secure the first stage of the Falcon 9 to the barge when it lands? Gravity or some mechanism?

Elon Musk:

Mostly gravity. The center of gravity is pretty low for the booster, as all the engines and residual propellant is at the bottom. We are going to weld steel shoes over the landing feet as a precautionary measure.

___________________________

Question:

Previously, you’ve stated that you estimate a 50% probability of success with the attempted landing on the automated spaceport drone ship tomorrow. Can you discuss the factors that were considered to make that estimation?

Elon Musk:

I pretty much made that up. I have no idea :)

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“In Technical Parlance, They’re A Mesh Network”

January 5, 2015 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

It still seems a stretch to me to use the words “Hyperloop” and “soon” in the same sentence, but the corporate structure of Hyperloop Transportation Technologies, the start-up intent upon realizing Elon Musk’s design, is at the very least interesting, staffed as it is with largely remote and unpaid (for now) permalancers. Of course, that just makes me more wary. From Steven Kotler at Singularity Hub:

“Musk himself said he was too busy to take on the project, but if other people wanted in on the cause, well, that was just fine with him. As it turns out, other people have taken him up on his offer—about 100 in total.

Meet Hyperloop Transportation Technologies, (HTT) a company that is not quite a company.

Using JumpStartFund, a crowdfunding and crowdsourcing hybrid service/model, wherein the very workers who are going to build the Hyperloop aren’t paid until the train turns a profit.

How is that possible? Simple, the workers don’t actually work for HTT, or not many of them. Most of them work day jobs at companies spread throughout the country—Boeing or SpaceX or NASA or Yahoo! or Salesforce or Airbus, to name but a few. HTT is a company built on quasi-moonlighters, lending their cognitive surplus to supersonic train design. In technical parlance, they’re a mesh network.

Moreover, they’re a mesh network who had to apply for the job. This means that unlike most crowdfunding efforts, where you have to take what you get, this one got to pick and choose. Not only does this give them a much higher level of talent working on the project, it also gives them a pretty healthy reserve pool, should workers involved get sucked into other projects—which, since nobody’s getting paid for a while, is bound to happen.”

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“Before It Appeared In 1900, Cameras Were Distinctly Unwieldy”

January 5, 2015 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

At the BBC, Stephen Dowling argues that the Brownie by Eastman Kodak is the most important camera ever manufactured. Widely affordable (priced originally at just a buck) and easy enough for a child to use, the boxy machine brought photography to the masses, making the art portable and quotidian. The opening:

“Before it appeared in 1900, cameras were distinctly unwieldy, if not downright cumbersome. Early cameras tended to be made of a great deal of brass and mahogany and took pictures on to large glass or metal plates, often requiring exposure times measured in minutes.

To photograph far-flung places, porters and pack animals were often needed to carry the equipment. Photography was an activity involving patience, toxic chemicals, and brute strength. It was not something the ordinary people indulged in.

US inventor George Eastman took an important step forward in the 1880s, when he popularised a flexible film that did away with the need for weighty plates. His first ‘Kodak Camera’ went on sale in 1888, pre-loaded with enough film to take 100 photographs. When the last picture was taken, the entire camera was sent back to Kodak to be developed.

It was an uncomplicated box but it cost $25 – a significant amount of money. It was still a device for the wealthy.

The revolution came 12 years later. The Kodak Brownie, designed by Edward Brownell, looked similar to the original Kodak, but the film could be taken out of the camera after shooting and developed via Kodak stockists, chemists or even at home.

And Kodak sold the camera for the princely sum of $1 – you could buy the camera, a film and have that film processed for just $2. Photography had suddenly become not only portable but affordable, too, and the Brownie was easy to use.”

__________________________________

The Brownie in 1958:

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“The Result, He Says, Is A ‘Wild-West Mentality’ In The Industry”

January 5, 2015 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

The lasting wealth of most gold rushes isn’t found in quick strikes, though those exist, but in the long-term infrastructure built in the race for riches. While the banking scandal that precipitated the economic collapse of 2008 left only pain in its wake, the current AI frenzy in Silicon Valley will probably, sooner or later, bring some good things to life–or some such simulacrum of life–even if there will also be a lot of disappointed investors. From Richard Waters at the Financial Times:

“The latest AI dawn owes much to new programming techniques for approximating ‘intelligence’ in machines. Foremost among these is machine learning, which involves training machines to identify patterns and make predictions by crunching vast amounts of data. But like other promising new ideas that inspire a rash of start-ups, there is a risk that many companies drawn to the field will struggle to find profitable uses for the technology.

‘A lot of these AI platforms are like Swiss army knives,’ says Tim Tuttle, chief executive of Expect Labs, which recently raised $13m. ‘They can do a lot of things, but it’s not clear what the high-value ones will be.’

The result, he says, is a ‘wild-west mentality’ in the industry, as entrepreneurs race to apply AI to every computing problem they can think of.

‘I don’t think machine learning, as a standalone technology, is a valuable business,’ adds [Context Relevant’s Stephen] Purpura. ‘A lot of these things will get acquired.’

Artificial intelligence, machine learning, deep learning, neural networks: building machines that tackle problems that were previously believed to be solvable only by the human brain has given rise to a range of techniques and jargon.

The hope that AI will be more than just another passing tech fad is based on its broader potential. Like ‘big data,’ the phrase refers not just to a single technology or use but an approach that could have wide applications.”

 

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“Will Syria And Iraq Exist In A Few Years As We Know Them Today?”

January 5, 2015 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech | Permalink

Matthias Gebauer and Holger Stark of Spiegel conducted a sit-down about the Islamic State and the future of Iraq and Syria with General John Allen, who for the last four months has answered to the rather cumbersome title of “Special Presidential Envoy for the Global Coalition to Counter the Islamic State.” While the IS is relatively small in numbers and is already buckling under the burden of governance, the task at hand in dealing with the terrorist state is still far from finished. From the Q&A:

“Spiegel:

Who poses a greater threat to US interests — Assad or the IS?

General John Allen:

Assad is a menace to the region. What he has done to Syria has been the motivating factor for the rise of Daesh and Jabhat al-Nusra. So while Daesh carries its own threat to US interests, the political solution in Damascus and ultimately the departure of Assad and his ilk will be an important development for the region. That could help us return to a more stable environment in Syria. Again, if we’ve accomplished our objectives with respect to the political outcome, there will be a government that reflects the will of the Syrian people — and that will have the happy second and third order effect of assisting in the creation of stability more broadly in the region. Solving the political environment in Syria will go a long way towards eliminating or at least addressing some of the underlying causes.

Spiegel:

Assad’s regime seems to be more stable since the military campaign against the Islamic State. Is it possible that the political price you will pay for defeating IS will be a stronger regime?

General John Allen:

I don’t agree with the premise of your question. Assad has experienced significant difficulties in the field in a number of areas. Things are not going well for him in the south, and he continues to suffer under enormous sanctions internationally. And while he does have some support in the international arena, he is not more stable.

Spiegel:

Let’s take a look at the region’s future. Will Syria and Iraq exist in a few years as we know them today?

 

General John Allen:

I think we’ll see a territorially restored Iraq. The early indicators and performance of Prime Minister al-Abadi’s government are very positive. There’s a very interesting and positive trend in the region right now. The prime minister of Iraq was received by the Saudis, and the Saudis have called for the reopening their embassy in Baghdad. Abadi had a very good visit with the King of Jordan. Turkish President Recip Tayyip Erdogan has been to Baghdad and Erbil. And Abadi has very strong relations with the Kuwaitis. The new government just agreed to the final oil deal with Kurdistan. It’s a remarkable development. People have been working on that for 10 years, and Abadi was able to do it since he came into office in September. Syria is more difficult to foresee right now, frankly. Whether we see a secular federalized Syria or something else remains to be determined.”

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“We’re Experiencing The Best Year In Our History”

January 5, 2015 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

You get the feeling sometimes that people with money aren’t necessarily very good at economics, or perhaps their politics are more informed by ego and privilege than reality. The U.S. economy does not have to be a zero-sum game as some seem to think.

From death panels to massive layoffs to runaway inflation, many threats have been leveled at President Obama’s policies, particularly during the 2012 election, by the Romneys, Palins, Trumps, Fiorinas, Wynns and Welchs of the world. From a Hamilton Nolan Gawker post about Westgate Resorts CEO David Siegel, who said he’d be forced to fire all his employees if Obama was reelected:

“Siegel—also known for being the subject of the documentary The Queen of Versailles about his doomed attempt to build himself and his wife America’s largest house—did not end up firing everyone directly after Obama won the election. But what about now, two years later? The pernicious effects of Obama’s socialistic policies have had ample time to take hold. What horrible fate has now been visited upon Siegel’s employees after the Obama administration has see to it that he is thoroughly ‘taxed to death,’ as Siegel warned in his letter?

In October, Siegel raised his company’s minimum pay to $10 an hour. ‘We’re experiencing the best year in our history,’ Siegel said.”

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