“New Is The New Old”

August 12, 2015 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

The contemporary Western attitude toward architecture is to protect the jewels, preserve them. Not so in Japan, a nation of people Pico Iyer refers to in a striking T Magazine essay as “pragmatic romantics.” Iyer writes of ancient buildings being regularly replaced by replicas in the same manner that some citizens hire elderly actors to portray deceased grandparents at family functions. It’s just a different mindset. The opening:

EVERY 20 YEARS, the most sacred Shinto site in Japan — the Grand Shrine at Ise — is completely torn down and replaced with a replica, constructed to look as weathered and authentic as the original structure built by an emperor in the seventh century. To many of us in the West, this sounds as sacrilegious as rebuilding the Western Wall tomorrow or hiring a Roman laborer to repaint the Sistine Chapel once a generation. But Japan has a different sense of what’s genuine and what’s not — of the relation of old to new — than we do; if the historic could benefit from a little help from art, or humanity, the reasoning goes, then wouldn’t it be unnatural not to provide it?

The motto guiding Japan’s way of being might be: New is the new old. For proof, you need only look at three recent high-profile and much-debated demolition jobs in Tokyo. The Hotel Okura, an icon of Japanese Modernism built in 1962 to commemorate the country’s arrival in the major leagues of nations as the host of the 1964 Olympics and cherished for its unique and atmospheric lobby, is currently being reduced to rubble in favor of two no doubt anonymous glass towers, meant to announce Japan’s continuing position in the big leagues, as the host of the 2020 Olympics. The once state-of-the-art National Olympic Stadium, designed by Mitsuo Katayama for the 1964 event, is being replaced by tomorrow’s idea of futurism: a new structure that was, until recently, set to be designed by Zaha Hadid. Even Tsukiji, the world’s largest fish market and the mainstay of jet-lagged sightseers for decades — is being mostly moved to a shopping mall, with the assurance that a copy of a place can sometimes look more authentic than the place itself. These erasures — most notably of the Okura, which became the personal cause of Tomas Maier, the creative director of Bottega Veneta — have elicited protests from devoted aesthetes the world over: What could the Japanese be thinking?

The answer is simple: The Japanese are different from you and me. They don’t confuse books with their covers.•

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Old Print Article: Robots Enter The U.S. Military, Brooklyn Daily Eagle (1928)

August 11, 2015 in Old Print Articles, Politics, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

Televox was the 1920s robot that reportedly fetched your car from the garage or a bottle of wine the cellar. While these feats, along with many others, were said to have been ably performed, the cost of such a machine made it unmarketable.

Televox was also the star attraction of a very early insinuation of robotics into the American military when, in 1928, he barked out orders to the grunts. It was a bit of a publicity stunt but also the beginnings of robotizing war, which some then thought implausible, though nobody does now. An article follows from the June 11, 1928 Brooklyn Daily Eagle.

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“Buckley And Mailer Did Not Make History”

August 11, 2015 in Books, Excerpts, Politics | Permalink

At least outwardly, William F. Buckley was approving in the 1990s of Rush Limbaugh replacing him as the voice of Conservatism, believing he was to be succeeded by a more populist talker. Neither pundit, however, was really a driving force in American society. They were just well-positioned observers as responsible for political movements as alarm clocks are for the sun’s rise. Both were simply the noise accompanying the moment, as commentators almost always are.

Buckley and Gore Vidal and Norman Mailer and Germaine Greer were figures we used to call “public intellectuals,” although quite often they behaved like adult babies hurling balls of ego at one another. I don’t know we’re worse for their absence (though I grant that when Mailer wrote of technology, he was quite insightful).

As Garry Wills states in a NYRB piece, a single episode of The Daily Show or The Colbert Report did more to elucidate than every last insult and threat of fisticuffs from these supposed heavyweights.

From Wills:

A more ambitious project is Kevin M. Schultz’s Buckley and Mailer. He argues that the 1950s was a placid time narcotized by Eisenhower. But two radical voices, Buckley from the right and Mailer from the left, called out across the dreary middle ground, shaking things up—deep calling to deep, in Schultz’s telling. When chaos broke out in the 1960s, the two men pulled back from the violence they had created.

But had they created it? The upsetting of the old order was accomplished mainly by the civil rights movement, the feminist movement, and the anti-war movement. Those three things, and the vehement opposition to them, did the real churning of the waters; and Buckley and Mailer were only briefly and peripherally involved in them. The real troublemakers were people like Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X, and James Baldwin, opposed by the likes of Strom Thurmond and George Wallace. Feminists like Gloria Steinem and Kate Millett were opposed to the pious legions of Phyllis Schlafly and Beverly LaHaye. On Vietnam, Benjamin Spock and Tom Hayden faced down Nixon’s hardhats and Edgar Hoover’s COINTELPRO. These deeply committed people with real followings had little time for the filigreed warblings of Buckley or Mailer. Deep to deep? Rather, flamboyant shallow to flamboyant shallow. Buckley and Mailer did not make history. They made good copy.•

 

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“Information Technology Has Reduced The Need For Work”

August 11, 2015 in Books, Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech | Permalink

According to Paul Mason, author of PostCapitalism, technology has reduced the economic system to obsolescence or soon will. While I don’t agree that capitalism is going away, I do believe the modern version of it is headed for a serious revision.

The extent to which technology disrupts capitalism–the biggest disruption of them all–depends to some degree on how quickly the new normal arrives. If driverless cars are perfected in the next few years, tens of millions of positions will vanish in America alone. Even if the future makes itself known more slowly, employment will probably grow more scarce as automation and robotics insinuate themselves. 

The very idea of work is currently undergoing a reinvention. In exchange for the utility of communicating with others, Facebook users don’t pay a small monthly fee but instead do “volunteer” labor for the company, producing mountains of content each day. That would make Mark Zuckerberg’s company something like the biggest sweatshop in history, except even those dodgy outfits pay some minimal fee. It’s a quiet transition.

Gillian Tett of the Financial Times reviews Mason’s new book, which argues that work will become largely voluntary in the manner of Wikipedia and Facebook, and that governments will provide basic income and services. That’s his Utopian vision at least. Tett finds it an imperfect but important volume. An excerpt:

His starting point is an assertion that the current technological revolution has at least three big implications for modern economies. First, “information technology has reduced the need for work” — or, more accurately, for all humans to be workers. For automation is now replacing jobs at a startling speed; indeed, a 2013 report by the Oxford Martin school estimated that half the jobs in the US are at high risk of vanishing within a decade or two.

The second key point about the IT revolution, Mason argues, is that “information goods are corroding the market’s ability to form prices correctly.” For the key point about cyber-information is that it can be replicated endlessly, for free; there is no constraint on how many times we can copy and paste a Wikipedia page. “Until we had shareable information goods, the basic law of economics was that everything is scarce. Supply and demand assumes scarcity. Now certain goods are not scarce, they are abundant.”

But third, “goods, services and organisations are appearing that no longer respond to the dictates of the market and the managerial hierarchy.” More specifically, people are collaborating in a manner that does not always make sense to traditional economists, who are used to assuming that humans act in self-interest and price things according to supply and demand.•

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“The Unsticking Of The Urban Roads Is One Of The Side Effects Of Autonomous Cars”

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

The perfecting of autonomous cars would do many good things (fight pollution, reduce highway deaths) and some bad (threaten job security for millions, be a scary target for hackers). Like most technologies, the size of the victories will be determined by how we manage the losses.

One thing that almost assuredly happens during a robocar age will be a decrease in traffic, due in large part to the end of the maddening search for parking spots.

From Peter Wayner at the Atlantic:

There’s plenty of research showing that a surprisingly large number of people are driving, trying to find a place to leave their car. A group called Transportation Alternatives studied the flow of cars around one Brooklyn neighborhood, Park Slope, and found that 64 percent of the local cars were searching for a place to park. It’s not just the inner core of cities either. Many cars in suburban downtowns and shopping-mall parking lots do the same thing.

Robot cars could change all that. The unsticking of the urban roads is one of the side effects of autonomous cars that will, in turn, change the landscape of cities— essentially eliminating one of the enduring symbols of urban life, the traffic jam full of honking cars and fuming passengers. It will also redefine how we use land in the city, unleashing trillions of dollars of real estate to be used for more than storing cars. Autonomous cars are poised to save us uncountable hours of time, not just by letting us sleep as the car drives, but by unblocking the roads so they flow faster.•

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“None Of The Disasters Their Party Predicted Have Actually Come To Pass”

August 11, 2015 in Excerpts, Politics | Permalink

Rand Paul’s Weimar-like hyper-inflation hasn’t quite come to pass

—UPDATED msnbc

Paul Krugman was eviscerated for a Rolling Stone cover he wrote in 2014 about the accomplishments of the Obama Administration. It was mostly Liberals who were enraged, feeling the President had betrayed his promise. But the progress in the country in many areas was real, and since then environmentalism and diplomacy and science and civil rights have advanced in a number of ways. Gerrymandering and Citizens United are still among very real problems, but I never let political purity get in the way of important victories.

In Krugman’s most recent column, he states something obvious but very necessary in these times of attention deficits: Many of the candidates running for the GOP nomination promised the President’s policies, from the Affordable Care Act to investing borrowed money in the economy, would lead to financial calamity. They’ve been saying such things from early in his first term. Donald Trump predicted “massive inflation” and Rand Paul went so far as to raise the specter of America as a Weimar Republic. The Republican race may currently revolve around Trump’s Reality TV campaign, but sooner or later and certainly in the general-election, these terrible prognostications will be fodder.

Krugman’s opening:

What did the men who would be president talk about during last week’s prime-time Republican debate? Well, there were 19 references to God, while the economy rated only 10 mentions. Republicans in Congress have voted dozens of times to repeal all or part of Obamacare, but the candidates only named President Obama’s signature policy nine times over the course of two hours. And energy, another erstwhile G.O.P. favorite, came up only four times.

Strange, isn’t it? The shared premise of everyone on the Republican side is that the Obama years have been a time of policy disaster on every front. Yet the candidates on that stage had almost nothing to say about any of the supposed disaster areas.

And there was a good reason they seemed so tongue-tied: Out there in the real world, none of the disasters their party predicted have actually come to pass. President Obama just keeps failing to fail. And that’s a big problem for the G.O.P. — even bigger than Donald Trump.•

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“The Answer Is Anything But Obvious”

August 10, 2015 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

In Andrew Schrank’s Pacific·Standard essay about Labor in the Digital Age, which imagines possible enlightened and benighted outcomes, he says the truest thing anyone can say on the topic: “The future of work and workers will not be dictated by technology alone.” No, it won’t.

An excerpt in which he looks at the Google Glass as half-full:

Is a jobless future inevitable? Do automation, computerization, and globalization necessarily conspire to undercut employment and living standards? Or might they be harnessed to benign ends by farsighted leaders? The answer is anything but obvious, for the relationship between automation and job loss is at best indeterminate, both within and across countries, and the relationship between automation and compensation is similarly opaque. For instance, Germany and Japan boast more robots per capita and less unemployment than the United States, and the stock of industrial robots and the average manufacturing wage have been growing in tandem—at double digit rates, no less—in China.

What excites me about the future of work and workers, therefore, is the possibility that the technological determinists are wrong, and that we will subordinate machinery to our needs and desires rather than vice versa. In this rosy scenario, machines take over the monotonous jobs and allow humans to pursue more leisurely or creative pursuits. Working hours fall and wages rise across the board. And productivity gains are distributed (and re-distributed) in accord with the principles of distributive justice and fairness.

While such a scenario may seem not just rosy but unrealistic, it is not entirely implausible.•

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“The First Serious Blueprint For Building Cities In Space Was Drawn Almost On A Whim”

August 10, 2015 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

Gerald O’Neill’s space dreams were bold–and very unrealistic. The astrophysicist believed 40 years ago, right around the time of his popular paper, “The Colonization of Space,” that Earthlings would be able to make round-trip voyages to other planets for about $3000 before the end of the century. Not quite. 

O’Neill died, however, inspire the famous 1970s space-colonies design, which I’ve used on this site many times. From Brian Merchant at Vice:

The first serious blueprint for building cities in space was drawn almost on a whim. Forty years ago this summer, dozens of scientists gathered in the heart of Silicon Valley for one of NASA’s design studies, which were typically polite, educational affairs. But in 1975, the topic of inquiry was “The Colonization of Space,” a recent paper by the astrophysicist Gerard O’Neill.

“The idea was to review his ideas and to see if they were technically feasible,” said Mark Hopkins, an economist who was there. “Well, they were.” So the scientists had a choice—set about laying the groundwork for real, no-bullshit space colonization, or hold the regularly scheduled series of seminars. “We said, ‘To hell with that,'” Hopkins recalled. The ten-week program became a quest to outline a scientifically possible and economically viable way to build a human habitat in space.

What they came up with—designs for huge, orbital settlements—are still pretty much the basis for all our space digs today, science-fictional or otherwise.•

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“Exley Would Spend His Twenties As The Victim Of His Own Deep Emotional Maladies”

August 10, 2015 in Books, Excerpts, Sports | Permalink

In my teens, I read the books of Fred Exley’s “Fan” fictional-memoir trilogy one after another, and I remember hoping to never be within a million miles of someone as fucked up and frightening as the author’s doppelganger. That Exley is a fascinating character but also the height (and depth) of American male insecurity: violent, self-pitying, alcoholic, furious, a mess. He realizes too intently that he’s on the wrong side of an ugly score. 

The second and third volumes are so-so, but the original, A Fan’s Notes, is a searing, heartbreaking thing, and everyone who’s picked up a copy probably thought of it again this weekend when hearing of Frank Gifford’s death. I know I did.

The USC and Giants great was the “star” to Exley’s “fan,” and the segment about the back running headlong into a Chuck Bednarik guillotine, which put him in the hospital for ten days and on the sidelines for 18 months, is unforgettable. If Gifford, the golden idol, could be felled by life, what chance did Ex have in the bleachers?

At Grantland, Fred Schruers has a beautifully written article about the literary “relationship” which begat a real one. An excerpt:

Ex, as he called himself and answered to among friends, had begun the fixation on Gifford that led to this nostalgia-and-booze-soaked threnody of dysfunction around 1951, when both men were enrolled at USC. Gifford, a converted quarterback and defensive back who became a halfback his senior year and slashed for four touchdowns against Ohio State, was campus royalty; Ex was a legendarily hard-drinking English major. Like Gifford, Exley would head to New York, having been raised upstate in Watertown as the son of a crusty semi-pro footballer. Before he truly discovered his great gift — striving to redeem his own scattered life in long, lapidary sentences touched with wit and pathos — Exley would spend his twenties as the victim of his own deep emotional maladies. He would know a depression that led to electroshock therapy. In his three main works, he would explicate a painful grapple with attempts to capture the love of the kind of unreachable American princesses he longed for.2

Though he never saw Frank play in college, Exley would understand the mythic heft of this transformed oil driller’s son who became an All-American. Exley’s Fitzgeraldian tangle of thoughts about Gifford only deepened as no. 16’s NFL career soared. In one mid-novel excursion, Exley explains his own role as a failing writer among the working stiffs around him in the $1 bleacher seats:

It was very simple really. Where I could not, with syntax, give shape to my fantasies, Gifford could, with his superb timing, his great hands, his uncanny faking, give shape to his … he became my alter ego, that part of me had its being in the competitive world of men …

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“The Need For Unskilled Labor Is Beginning To Diminish”

August 10, 2015 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

You certainly don’t want to be a nation left behind by robotics any more than you’d want to miss out on the Industrial Revolution, but at the same time you need jobs for citizens of all skill levels. What to do?

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s goal of reducing unemployment among the nation’s many unskilled workers is threatened by automation, a sector other countries in the region (particularly Thailand, Vietnam and Malaysia) are investing heavily in. The need for cheap labor is disappearing just when the nation needs it most. From Natalie Obiko Pearson at Bloomberg:

Robots and automation are invigorating once-sleepy Indian factories, boosting productivity by carrying out low-skill tasks more efficiently. While in theory, improved output is good for economic growth, the trend is creating a headache for Prime Minister Narendra Modi: Robots are diminishing roles for unskilled laborers that he wants to put to work as part of his Make in India campaign aimed at creating jobs for the poor.

India’s largely uneducated labor force and broken educational system aren’t ready for the more complex jobs that workers need when their low-skilled roles are taken over by machines. Meanwhile, nations employing robots more quickly, such as China, are becoming even more competitive.

“The need for unskilled labor is beginning to diminish,” Akhilesh Tilotia, head of thematic research at Kotak Institutional Equities in Mumbai and author of a book on India’s demographic impact. “Whatever education we’re putting in and whatever skill development we’re potentially trying to put out – – does it match where the industry will potentially be five to 10 years hence? That linkage is reasonably broken in India.” …

In the race to create factory jobs, Modi isn’t just competing against Asian rivals. Robots are increasingly helping developed economies. In Switzerland, robots make toothbrushes for export; in Spain, they cut and pack lettuce heads — a job previously done by migrants; in Germany, they fill tubs of ice cream, and in the U.K. they assemble yogurt into multipacks at a rate of 80 a minute.•

 

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“Business Has The Most To Gain From A Healthy America, And The Most To Lose By Social Unrest Or Punitive Taxation”

August 10, 2015 in Excerpts, Politics | Permalink

Peter Georgescu, Chairman Emeritus of Young & Rubicam, believes the conscious uncoupling of productivity and worker prosperity, if continued, will eventually lead to social unrest or drastic taxation in America.

That’s hopeful, really. It means citizens won’t forever settle for bread and Kardashians and will demand remedies for a sick system. In a New York Times op-ed about wealth disparity, Georgescu suggests preemptive steps corporations can take to move the haves and have-nots closer to one another, strategies that would require businesses to take a long-term view and unilaterally make concessions–not how things usually are done. He also doesn’t address how increasing automation might impact his prescriptions, but it’s still worth reading. An excerpt:

We business leaders know what to do. But do we have the will to do it? Are we willing to control the excessive greed so prevalent in our culture today and divert resources to better education and the creation of more opportunity?

Business has the most to gain from a healthy America, and the most to lose by social unrest or punitive taxation. Business can start the process in two steps. First, invest in the actual value creators — the employees. Start compensating fairly, by which I mean a wage that enables employees to share amply in productivity increases and creative innovations.

The fact that real wages have been flat for about four decades, while productivity has increased by 80 percent, shows that has not been happening. Before the early 1970s, wages and productivity were both rising. Now most gains from productivity go to shareholders, not employees.

Second, businesses must invest aggressively in their own operations, directing profit into productivity and innovation to boost real business performance. Today, too many corporations reduce investment in research and development and brand building. As a result, we see a general decline in the value of their brands and other assets. To make up for those declines and for anemic revenues, businesses buy back their stock (now at record levels) and thus artificially boost earnings per share.•

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“It Would Be ‘Catastrophic'”

August 10, 2015 in Books, Excerpts, Science/Tech | Permalink

Easily the best article I’ve read about E.L. Doctorow in the wake of his death is Ron Rosenbaum’s expansive Los Angeles Review of Books piece about the late novelist. It glides easily from Charles Darwin to Thomas Nagel to the hard problem of consciousness to the “electrified meat” in our skulls to the “Jor-El warning” in Doctorow’s final fiction, Andrew’s Brain. That clarion call was directed at the Singularity, which the writer feared would end human exceptionalism, and, of course, it would. More a matter of when than if.

An excerpt:

Not to spoil the mood but I feel a kind of responsibility to pass on Doctorow’s Jor-El warning, even if I don’t completely understand it. I would nonetheless contend that — coming from a person as steeped as he is in the contemplation of the Mind and its possibilities, the close reading of consciousness, of that twain of brain and mind and the mysteries of their relationship — attention should be paid. It seemed like a message he wanted me to convey.

I asked him to expand upon the idea voiced in Andrew’s Brain that once a computer was created that could replicate everything in the brain, once machines can think as men, when we’ve achieved true “artificial intelligence” or “ the singularity” as it’s sometimes called, it would be “catastrophic.”

“There is an outfit in Switzerland,” he says. “And this is a fact — they’re building a computer to emulate a brain. The theory is, of course, complex. There are billions of things going on in the brain but they take the position that the number of things is finite and that finally you can reach that point. Of course there’s a lot more work to do in terms of the brain chemistry and so on. So Andrew says to Doc ‘the twain will remain.’

“But later he has this revelation because he’s read, as I had, a very responsible scientist saying that it was possible someday for computers to have consciousness. That was said in a piece by a very respected neuroscientist by the name of Gerald Edelman. So the theory is this: If we do ever figure out how the brain becomes what we understand as consciousness, our feelings, our wishes, our desires, dreams — at that point we will know enough to simulate with a computer the human brain — and the computer will achieve consciousness. That is a great scientific achievement if it ever occurs. But if it does, all the old stories are gone. The Bible, everything.”

“Why?”

“Because the idea of the exceptionalism of the human mind is no longer exceptional. And you’re not even dealing with the primary consciousness of animals, of different degrees of understanding. You’re talking about a machine that could now think, and the dominion of the human mind no longer exists. And that’s disastrous because it’s earth-shaking. I mean, imagine.”•

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“It Might Be Cheapest Just To Have A Robot Follow A Violent Criminal Around All The Time”

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

Transhumanist Presidential candidate Zoltan Istvan penned a Vice article about the influence next-wave technologies may have on violent crime, which he views largely as a form of mental disease. A lot of it is pretty far out there–cranial implants modifying behavior, death-row inmates choosing to be cryogenically frozen, etc. I’ll grant that he’s right on two points:

1) Criminal behavior is modified already in many cases by prescription drugs and psychiatry.

2) Surveillance and tracking, for all the issues they bring, will make it increasingly difficult to stealthily commit traditional crimes.

But debates about cerebral reconditioning and lobotomy? Yikes. Sounds almost criminal.

From Istvan:

One other method that could be considered for death row criminals is cryonics. The movie Minority Report, which features precogs who can see crime activity in the future, show other ways violent criminals are dealt with: namely a form of suspended animation where criminals dream out their lives. So the concept isn’t unheard of. With this in mind, maybe violent criminals even today should legally be given the option for cryonics, to be returned to a living state in the future where the reconditioning of the brain and new preventative technology—such as ubiquitous surveillance—means they could no longer commit violent acts.

Speaking of extreme surveillance—that rapidly growing field of technology also presents near-term alternatives for criminals on death row that might be considered sufficient punishment. We could permanently track and monitor death row criminals. And we could have an ankle brace (or implant) that releases a powerful tranquilizer if violent behavior is reported or attempted.

Surveillance and tracking of criminals would be expensive to monitor, but perhaps in five to 10 years time basic computer recognition programs in charge of drones might be able to do the surveillance affordably. In fact, it might be cheapest just to have a robot follow a violent criminal around all the time, another technology that also should be here in less than a decade’s time. Violent criminals could, for example, only travel in driverless cars approved and monitored by local police, and they’d always be accompanied by some drone or robot caretaker.•

 

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“If Donald Trump’s Comments About Fox News Anchor Megyn Kelly Are Hurting His Standing…It’s Not Showing In The Numbers”

August 9, 2015 in Excerpts, Politics | Permalink

Thinking Donald Trump ruined his campaign in the aftermath of the GOP debates with his gross and stupid comments about Megyn Kelly of Fox News is missing the point for two reasons:

1) A campaign based on bluster, bigotry, insult and ego cannot be undone by bluster, bigotry, insult and ego.

2) What Trump continues to do is speak brazenly to the underlying reality of the modern Republican Party, saying aloud the racist, sexist things that are its driving force. No coded language for him.

The GOP and Fox News have long cultivated bigotry–Kelly herself has made some gross and stupid comments–blaming black and brown people and women for encroaching on white, male privilege. Erick Erickson can feign outrage at Trump all he wants, but he’s at least as much of a sexist toolbox. Conservatives can pretend they’re repulsed by attacks on John McCain’s military service, but John Kerry and Tammy Duckworth were broadly given the same treatment. They can make believe that Trump calling Mexicans “rapists” is beyond the pale, but he’s just echoing what elected Republicans have said.

Trump is the GOP’s private dream and also its public nightmare. At long last, he’s the party’s reckoning.

Of course, someone at some point might actually ask him a detailed policy question instead of playing into his hand. But the ugliness beneath the surface isn’t going away.

From a NBC News report about its post-debate poll:

If Donald Trump’s comments about Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly are hurting his standing in the Republican primary, it’s not showing in the numbers.

According to the latest NBC News Online Poll conducted by SurveyMonkey, Trump is at the top of the list of GOP candidates that Republican primary voters would cast a ballot for if the primary were being held right now.

The overnight poll was conducted for 24 hours from Friday evening into Saturday. During that period, Donald Trump stayed in the headlines due to his negative comments about Kelly and was dis-invited from a major conservative gathering in Atlanta.

None of that stopped Trump from coming in at the top of the poll with 23 percent. Sen. Ted Cruz was next on the list with 13 percent.

During the Fox News debate Thursday evening, Trump was the only Republican candidate to say he would not rule out a run as an independent candidate. According to this poll, that’s just fine with over half of his supporters. 54% of Trump supporters said they would vote for him for president, even if he didn’t win the GOP nomination. About one in five Trump supporters said they would switch and support the eventual Republican candidate.

 

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“[It’s] A Critical Part Of NASA’s Journey To Mars”

August 9, 2015 in Excerpts, Science/Tech | Permalink

We’ll need to learn how to grow food in space if we’re to inhabit other planets, but such otherworldly experiments will be helpful down here on the home base since we’ll need to produce more food with less impact on the environment. 

For the first time, astronauts are supplementing their menus with vegetables they’ve grown in microgravity environments. From a NASA press release:

Fresh food grown in the microgravity environment of space officially is on the menu for the first time for NASA astronauts on the International Space Station. Expedition 44 crew members, including NASA’s one-year astronaut Scott Kelly, are ready to sample the fruits of their labor after harvesting a crop of “Outredgeous” red romaine lettuce Monday, Aug. 10, from the Veggie plant growth system on the nation’s orbiting laboratory.

The astronauts will clean the leafy greens with citric acid-based, food safe sanitizing wipes before consuming them. They will eat half of the space bounty, setting aside the other half to be packaged and frozen on the station until it can be returned to Earth for scientific analysis.

NASA’s plant experiment, called Veg-01, is being used to study the in-orbit function and performance of the plant growth facility and its rooting “pillows,” which contain the seeds.

NASA is maturing Veggie technology aboard the space station to provide future pioneers with a sustainable food supplement – a critical part of NASA’s Journey to Mars. As NASA moves toward long-duration exploration missions farther into the solar system, Veggie will be a resource for crew food growth and consumption. It also could be used by astronauts for recreational gardening activities during deep space missions.•

 

A Brief Note From 1857 About An Overdose

August 9, 2015 in Old Print Articles, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

From the June 6, 1857 Brooklyn Daily Eagle:

leeches5

 

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“Autonomous Weapons Could Also Initiate Or Escalate Armed Conflicts Automatically”

August 9, 2015 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech | Permalink

It would be great to ban autonomous-weapons systems, but you don’t really get to govern too far into the future from the present. Our realities won’t be tomorrow’s, and I fear that sooner or later the possible becomes the plausible. Hopefully, we can at least kick that can far enough down the road so that everyone will be awakened to the significant risks before they’ve been realized. As Peter Asaro makes clear in a Scientific American essay, there will be grave consequences should warfare be robotized. An excerpt:

Autonomous weapons pose serious threats that, taken together, make a ban necessary. There are concerns whether AI algorithms could effectively distinguish civilians from combatants, especially in complex conflict environments. Even advanced AI algorithms would lack the situational understanding or the ability to determine whether the use of violent force was appropriate in a given circumstance or whether the use of that force was proportionate. Discrimination and proportionality are requirements of international law for humans who target and fire weapons but autonomous weapons would open up an accountability gap. Because humans would no longer know what targets an autonomous weapon might select, and because the effects of a weapon may be unpredictable, there would be no one to hold responsible for the killing and destruction that results from activating such a weapon.

Then, as the Future of Life Institute letter points out, there are threats to regional and global stability as well as humanity. The development of autonomous weapons could very quickly and easily lead to arms races between rivals. Autonomous weapons would reduce the risks to combatants, and could thus reduce the political risks of going to war, resulting in more armed conflicts. Autonomous weapons could be hacked, spoofed and hijacked, and directed against their owners, civilians or a third party. Autonomous weapons could also initiate or escalate armed conflicts automatically, without human decision-making. In a future where autonomous weapons fight autonomous weapons the results would be intrinsically unpredictable, and much more likely lead to the mass destruction of civilians and the environment than to the bloodless wars that some envision. Creating highly efficient automated violence is likely to lead to more violence, not less.

There is also a profound moral question at stake.•

 

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This Week’s Afflictor Keyphrase Searches

August 9, 2015 in Misc. | Permalink


10 search-engine keyphrases bringing traffic to Afflictor this week:

  1. buzz bissinger s&m
  2. is karlheinz stockhausen crazy?
  3. margaret and kate fox spiritual rappers
  4. oliver sacks reading list
  5. glenn gould predictions
  6. westworld and robotics
  7. father yod los angeles cult leader
  8. attack on the pieta by laszlo toth
  9. genetic supermarket
  10. william s. burroughs and scientology

Highlights From Yet Another Week Of Afflictor

August 8, 2015 in Misc. | Permalink

This week, President Trump, who suggested Megyn Kelly was menstruating during the GOP debate, tried to win back women voters with a new campaign poster featuring female supporters.

 

  • It might not end for Nikki Finke the way it did for Gaddafi. Time will tell.
  • Louis Hyman says we shouldn’t fight tech progress, but prepare for it.
  • Jerry Kaplan believes women will fare better in an automated world. Perhaps.
  • Smithsonian spacesuit curator Cathleen Lewis did an AMA.
  • It is rumored the New Yorker is profiling TMZ. Sounds fun.

“The Occasional Unexpected Weirdness Of Machine Thought Might Also Be A Teaching Moment”

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

When Garry Kasparov was defeated by Deep Blue, a key breaking point was his mistaking a glitch in his computer opponent for a human level of understanding. These strange behaviors can throw us off our game, but perhaps they can also shed light. In “Artificial Intelligence Is Already Weirdly Human,” David Berreby’s Nautilus article, the author believes that neural-network oddities, something akin to AI meeting ET, might be useful. An excerpt:

Neural nets sometimes make mistakes, which people can understand. (Yes, those desks look quite real; it’s hard for me, too, to see they are a reflection.) But some hard problems make neural nets respond in ways that aren’t understandable. Neural nets execute algorithms—a set of instructions for completing a task. Algorithms, of course, are written by human beings. Yet neural nets sometimes come out with answers that are downright weird: not right, but also not wrong in a way that people can grasp. Instead, the answers sound like something an extraterrestrial might come up with.

These oddball results are rare. But they aren’t just random glitches. Researchers have recently devised reliable ways to make neural nets produce such eerily inhuman judgments. That suggests humanity shouldn’t assume our machines think as we do. Neural nets sometimes think differently. And we don’t really know how or why.

That can be a troubling thought, even if you aren’t yet depending on neural nets to run your home and drive you around. After all, the more we rely on artificial intelligence, the more we need it to be predictable, especially in failure. Not knowing how or why a machine did something strange leaves us unable to make sure it doesn’t happen again.

But the occasional unexpected weirdness of machine “thought” might also be a teaching moment for humanity. Until we make contact with extraterrestrial intelligence, neural nets are probably the ablest non-human thinkers we know.•

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“The Fact That Data Itself Is Biased May Be Shocking To Some”

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

Humans are so terribly at hiring other humans for jobs that it seems plausible software couldn’t do much worse. I think that will certainly be true eventually, if it isn’t already, though algorithms won’t likely be much better at identifying non-traditional candidates with deeply embedded talents. Perhaps a human-machine hybrid à la freestyle chess would work best for the foreseeable future?

In arguing that journalists aren’t being rigorous enough when reporting on HR software systems, Andrew Gelman and Kaiser Fung of the Daily Beast point out that data doesn’t necessarily mitigate bias. An excerpt:

Software is said to be “free of human biases.” This is a false statement. Every statistical model is a composite of data and assumptions; and both data and assumptions carry biases.

The fact that data itself is biased may be shocking to some. Occasionally, the bias is so potent that it could invalidate entire projects. Consider those startups that are building models to predict who should be hired. The data to build such machines typically come from recruiting databases, including the characteristics of past applicants, and indicators of which applicants were successful. But this historical database is tainted by past hiring practices, which reflected a lack of diversity. If these employers never had diverse applicants, or never made many minority hires, there is scant data available to create a predictive model that can increase diversity! Ironically, to accomplish this goal, the scientists should code human bias into the software.•

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“Countless Pit Stops Along Well-Worn Trucking Routes Could Become Ghost Towns”

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

The passage below from Rachel Nuwer’s BBC report about technological unemployment speaks to why I largely disagree with Jerry Kaplan that robotics will be far worse for male workers than female. There probably will be a difference, but if the machines come en masse in a compressed period of time, they come for most of us.

Oxford’s Carl Frey tells Nuwer that “overall, people should be happy that a lot of these jobs have actually disappeared,” when speaking of drudgery that’s heretofore been vanished by electrical gadgets, but the new reality may mean a tremendous aggregate improvement enjoyed by relatively few. In the long-term, that may all work itself out, but we better be ready with solutions in the short- and medium-term.

The excerpt:

Self-driving trucks wouldn’t be good news for everyone, however. Critics point out that, should this breakthrough be realised, there will be a significant knock-on effect for employment. In the US, up to 3.5 million drivers and 5.2 million additional personnel who work directly within the industry would be out of a job. Additionally, countless pit stops along well-worn trucking routes could become ghost towns. Self-driving trucks, in other words, might wreck millions of lives and bring disaster to a significant sector of the economy.

Dire warnings such as these are frequently issued, not only for the trucking industry, but for the world’s workforce at large. As machines, software and robots become more sophisticated, some fear that we stand to lose millions of jobs. According to one unpublished study, the coming wave of technological breakthroughs endangers up to 47% of total employment in the US.

But is there any truth to such projections, and if so, how concerned should we be? Will the robots take over, rendering us all professional couch potatoes, as imagined in the film Wall-E, or will technological innovation give us the freedom to pursue more creative, rewarding endeavours?•

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“At Several Points In The Two-Hour Debate, He Was Booed”

August 7, 2015 in Excerpts, Politics | Permalink

Donald Trump, a colostomy bag stuffed with ill-considered opinions, face-planted at the first GOP Presidential debate, but how far can you really fall when you live in the gutter? Some thought Trump would be surprisingly good in the forum since he has plenty of TV experience, but if you think about it, he only seems potent in those venues when he goes unchallenged, when he’s the boss. Like most bullies, he grows flustered when having to ward off a return blow.

Far more than any other venue, including reliably Lefty outlets like MSNBC, Fox News led Republicans to a horrifying national defeat in 2012, reassuring the faithful with dodgy poll readings that Barack Hussein couldn’t possibly gain a second term. That led to complacency during campaign season and shocked disbelief on Election Day. Reince Priebus and the party called for a full check-up, with the patient to begin a new course in the immediate future.

But not much has changed. Immigrants, women, LGBT people, universal health care and a sane foreign policy are still anathema to almost all the candidates. Perhaps the Fox moderators’ contentiousness was an attempt to awaken the contenders to another November nightmare, but it was most likely just another Reality TV show, with the hosts pushing buttons to gain ratings. For Trump, of course, it was a different kind of program from the one he’s used to–it was one where he could get fired.

The opening of Edward Luce’s predictably astute Financial Times analysis of the debate:

If clarity and geniality count for anything, Donald Trump was the loser of the Republican Party’s first 2016 debate.

With star billing in the biggest reality TV show of all, the property magnate struggled for rapport with the audience. At several points in the two-hour debate, he was booed.

In the post-debate autopsy, Fox News Channel’s focus groups found Mr Trump to be rude, lacking in specific answers and unpresidential. It is hard to believe the average television viewer would have come away feeling radically different.

Yet it is also hard to believe they did not already know all this about him before the show began. Mr Trump has held a double digit poll lead for several weeks. Might the debate have arrested his rise?

We will have to await the polls. But it is worth bearing in mind that at every point in Mr Trump’s steep ascent since mid-June, the political classes have called his peak — and been wrong. The Fox News debate may be no exception.•

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“There’s A Dangerous Logic In That”

August 6, 2015 in Excerpts, Politics | Permalink

America was not a particularly militarized country until we were forced to enter WWII, and we haven’t been anything else ever since. Thanks, Germany.

In a Spiegel Q&A conducted by Joachim Mohr and Matthias Schepp, Pizza Hut salesman Mikhail Gorbachev doesn’t believe the world has any hope of being nuclear-free until the U.S. changes its mindset about defense. I could see the country conceding on nukes and reducing spending overall, but Gorbachev’s desire to see America stop creating new weapons systems seems unrealistic. DARPA is going to push robotics and AI as far as they can go. Gorbachev also allows that President Reagan was convinced that there could be no “winner” of a nuclear war, no matter his cowboy-ish bluster.

An excerpt:

Spiegel:

Can the goal of a nuclear free world still be achieved today?

Mikhail Gorbachev:

It is the correct goal in any case. Nuclear weapons are unacceptable. The fact that they can wipe out the entirety of civilization makes them particularly inhumane. Weapons like this have never existed before in history and they cannot be allowed to exist. If we do not get rid of them, sooner or later they will be used.

Spiegel:

In recent years, a number of new nuclear powers have emerged.

Mikhail Gorbachev:

That’s why we should not forget that the elimination of nuclear weapons is the obligation of every country that signed the Non-Proliferation Treaty. Though America and Russia have by far the largest arsenals at their disposal.

Spiegel:

What do you think of the oft-cited theory that mutually assured destruction prevents nuclear wars?

Mikhail Gorbachev:

There’s a dangerous logic in that. Here’s another question: If five or 10 countries are allowed to have nuclear weapons, then why can’t 20 or 30? Today, a few dozen countries have the technical prerequisites to build nuclear weapons. The alternative is clear: Either we move toward a nuclear-free world or we have to accept that nuclear weapons will continue to spread, step by step, across the globe. And can we really imagine a world without nuclear weapons if a single country amasses so many conventional weapons that its military budget nearly tops that of all other countries combined? This country would enjoy total military supremacy if nuclear weapons were abolished.

Spiegel:

You’re talking about the US?

Mikhail Gorbachev:

You said it. It is an insurmountable obstacle on the road to a nuclear-free world. That’s why we have to put demilitarization back on the agenda of international politics. This includes a reduction of military budgets, a moratorium on the development of new types of weapons and a prohibition on militarizing space. Otherwise, talks toward a nuclear-free world will be little more than empty words. The world would then become less safe, more unstable and unpredictable. Everyone will lose, including those now seeking to dominate the world.•

 

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“My Brother — The Anti-Tebow”

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

One positive outcome of our newly decentralized media is that all of society is now a long tail, with room for far more categories of beliefs and lifestyles, whether someone is Transgender or Libertarian or Atheist.

Case in point: Houston Texans star Arian Foster. Religion goes with football the way it does with war, perhaps because they’re two activities where you might want to pray you don’t get killed, but Foster, who’s played in the heart of the Bible Belt his entire college and pro career, doesn’t believe anyone is watching over him except for the replay assistant in the NFL booth. The former Muslim is now a devout atheist who offers a respectful Namaste bow after a TD but does not pray in a huddle. In an ESPN Magazine article, Tim Keown profiles the running back as he publicly discusses his lack of religion for the first time. An excerpt:

THE HOUSE IS a churn of activity. Arian’s mother, Bernadette, and sister, Christina, are cooking what they proudly call “authentic New Mexican food.” His older brother, Abdul, is splayed out on a room-sized sectional, watching basketball and fielding requests from the five little kids — three of them Arian’s — who are bouncing from the living room to the large playhouse, complete with slide, in the front room. I tell Abdul why I’m here and he says, “My brother — the anti-Tebow,” with a comic eye roll.

Arian Foster, 28, has spent his entire public football career — in college at Tennessee, in the NFL with the Texans — in the Bible Belt. Playing in the sport that most closely aligns itself with religion, in which God and country are both industry and packaging, in which the pregame flyover blends with the postgame prayer, Foster does not believe in God.

“Everybody always says the same thing: You have to have faith,” he says. “That’s my whole thing: Faith isn’t enough for me. For people who are struggling with that, they’re nervous about telling their families or afraid of the backlash … man, don’t be afraid to be you. I was, for years.”

He has tossed out sly hints in the past, just enough to give himself wink-and-a-nod deniability, but he recently decided to become a public face of the nonreligious.•

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