Technology « The Ramblings of An Eternal Student of Life

Sunday, July 13, 2008

Brain / Mind ... Current Affairs ... Society ... Technology ...

Two thoughts, both of which aren’t all that pleasant:

FIRST: next month (August 11), al-Qaeda celebrates it’s 20th birthday. Some analysts (such as Bruce Hoffman of Georgetown U. and RAND) think that they might have something big planned. Nine-eleven, then eight-eleven? Let’s hope not.

SECOND: This is a longer-term concern. I’ve been a student of the mind-body issue for several years now, and one of the biggest and most interesting questions on that topic is whether machines can ever become conscious and self-aware. I’ve been pondering that question lately in light of my readings and hazily emerging understanding of “neural networks”, i.e. computer simulations of various forms of brain activity. I think that the best answer comes in two parts. First off, with regard to self-awareness, I do indeed believe that computer systems will eventually achieve that. So yes, the Terminator scenario regarding “Skynet” might indeed be plausible, from what I’ve read regarding the capabilities of neural networks.

But the second part regards “consciousness”, as we humans know it. I honestly don’t think that machines can ever attain a human-like form of consciousness. And that is where the “Skynet” problem comes in. Human consciousness was honed by the forces of nature over billions of years of evolution and natural selection process. Despite the seeming randomness and cruelty of these processes, I believe that as consciousness emerged from them, something of an appreciation for being and natural creation came about. This appreciation manifested itself in our attraction to beauty, to songs and rhythms, and to a deeper appreciation of the senses (the smell of flowers, the taste of fresh food, the warmth of sunshine, the coldness of water, etc.). And once aided by our thinking capacity, it inspired ideas such as justice and morals.

Machines will never go through such processes. They are created by humans, mostly by the human “left brain”, the thinking and rational faculty. Computers are not inspired by and are hardly relevant to the human “right brain”, the poetic side, the side that is tied more closely to nature and our evolutionary heritage. As such, a self-aware computer will not have the “lessons of nature” wired into it, as most people do (to varying extents). Once we let them think on their own, computer thinking will be different from ours. In some ways that will be good; but at bottom, they really won’t understand us. So if we let them start making big decisions, we may not always like what they decide. Yes, just like HAL killing David in the movie 2000, A Space Odyssey.

The other problem is that humans will become more machine-like in the future, especially if we keep letting our machines run more and more of our lives. Over a century or two, humans may well be bred to forget the right brain stuff and get on with living in a strictly rational way. Yes, I know that science fiction stories like that have been around for a long time now. I understand that I’m not saying anything new here. But I never took those stories very seriously — until now.

Because I am becoming aware of what neural-networked computer systems can do, it’s really starting to seem possible that the human race could ‘sleepwalk’ into a situation where the machines eventually remake their creators. By ‘sleepwalking’, I mean letting computers and machines do more and more things and make more and more decisions. It’s already happening — no doubt about that; computers and machines make businesses more profitable, war more winable, and daily life more pleasant for many folk. So why not continue down this road? Pretty soon, even the call centers in India will be out of business, as machines become intelligent enough to answer phones for Dell and Amazon and Sears and your local dentist.

It would take a long time, maybe 200 years, to really change us. Despite our notions of civilization, we humans are still a pretty wild bunch. But if this trend continues, I predict that humankind will eventually go thru some major changes. People will be more rational, more orderly, more robot-like. There may no longer be any crime, any wars, any starvation, and a lot less disease. But there might also then be no more poetry, no more song, no more art, no more sex. It’s amazing what kind of worlds we could sleepwalk into, now that our scientists are unlocking some of the computing secrets of the brain (and our entrepreneurs, generals and political leaders are starting to make daily use of them). Time perhaps to dust off some of those yellow, dog-eared science fiction paperbacks up in the attic.

◊ posted by Jim G @ 12:56 pm Read Comments (2) / Leave a Comment

Saturday, June 14, 2008

◊ Google, Books and Stupidity

Society ... Technology ...

Here’s a quick review of my “interesting article of the week” for the second week of June (the one with Friday the Thirteenth in it). The article is from the July/August 08 Atlantic, titled “Is Google Making Us Stupid”, by Nicholas Carr. Mr. Carr is worried that the Internet is changing things for our youth and for our society, in terms of how they get their information and how they do their thinking. He’s worried that people, especially young folk, are relying too much on Google searches and hyperlinks and video clips. They are getting too accustomed to skimming massive volumes of information, flitting from site to site and subject to subject, instead of sitting back and reading deeply on one topic from one author. Carr thinks that perhaps our brains will be re-wired because of this. Because of the social forces and corresponding biological factor set off by modern information technology and its close cousins, the electronic media and the entertainment industry, there will be no going back to the good old days of reading (and finishing) books and long magazine articles. Except for old timers like myself who grew up in the days of libraries with paper card catalogs, no one will even have the ability to sit back and deeply ponder things such as the effects of racism on the deindustrialization of American cities during the second half of the 20th Century.

Well now, there certainly seems to be a lot of truth to this. Blog sites that provide short information blips every hour on the hour seem to be a lot more popular than those publishing longer essays every week or so (which helps to explain why this blog never made it!). But then again, the book isn’t dead yet. Amazon still sells a lot of them on line. Technology still hasn’t come up with a substitute for that good, comfortable feeling that you get when you sit down with an interesting book. I think it’s much nicer to read from something that comes from other living beings, i.e. paper from trees. It’s just not very cozy and comfortable reading from an electronic screen, no matter how light and portable they have now become. You just can’t curl up to a good flatscreen and while away a rainy afternoon.

So the book is not dead yet; it might be around for decades to come. But still, the statistical trends regarding book sales are somewhat disturbing. I checked out the annual sales estimates from the Association of American Publishers (www.publishers.org) going back thru 1992 (with the help of the “Wayback Machine” on archive.org). Anyway, in 1992, the estimated net sales for the book industry in the US were 9.46 billion dollars. Five years later, in 1997, they were at $17.2 billion. So the average growth rate in sales from ’92 to ’97 was 12.7%. Sales for 2002 were $22.40 billion; so the average growth rate for the next five years was 5.4%. In 2007, net sales were estimated at $24.96 billion. Sounds good, but the average growth rate from ’02 to ’07 slowed down to 2.2%. Remember, these are nominal dollars; during this time, inflation was chugging along at around 3% per year. So, after 2002, there isn’t any “real growth” in book revenues. Anyone want to bet that nominal sales will go flat and real sales decline from ’07 to 2012? (I’m surely not betting against it!). You can see why Amazon is expanding into music downloads, electronic goods, and all kinds of other household stuff and personal items.

Carr says that “as we come to rely on computers to mediate our understanding of the world, it is our own intelligence that flattens into artificial intelligence.” Personally, I don’t think that “good old-fashioned intelligence” is done for. But it may become a rarer and rarer trait over the next 80 to 100 years. The masses are already increasingly enthralled with entertaining technologies provided and controlled by a small band of international media corporations and cooperative big governments; meanwhile a small class of really smart people direct those corporations and governments — yep, sounds much like science fiction. According to such fiction, most of those really smart people will get together over time and figure out a way to gain totalitarian control of the brainwashed masses. Meanwhile, a small band of loners and rebels will realize what’s going on, and will seek to “unplug” people from “the net” as to fight back against the powers that otherwise keep them contented. It’s The Matrix without the body vats.

Perhaps that won’t happen; just little old me trying to be dramatic. But if it does, and if somehow my little scribblings floating on the vast digital seas of the Internet are preserved and readable in 100 years (which I doubt will happen, given the fact that Google hardly takes my site seriously), well then. Don’t say that Mr. Carr and I didn’t warn you!

◊ posted by Jim G @ 12:13 pm Read Comments (2) / Leave a Comment

Friday, April 18, 2008

◊ Not a good year (2008) nor a good ship (Titanic)

Politics ... Public Policy ... Technology ...

I don’t mean to be depressing, but so far 2008 hasn’t been a good year. The economy is tanking because of a perfect-storm of soaring oil prices, spiking food costs, and a financial crisis set off by years of incautious lending and borrowing. Unfortunately, our nation didn’t have the foresight to heed the warnings that cheap oil, cheap food and cheap credit wouldn’t go on forever. So now we’re in a business recession, and we’re praying that’s all it will be. As to working on long-term fixes, such as energy conservation research, renewed alternative energy development, rationalizing our agricultural regulation and subsidy policies, throttling back the one alternative energy program that did catch fire but is terribly inefficient (i.e., corn ethanol), regulating the crazy world of investment banking and increasing consumer protection in the mortgage markets – well, don’t hold your breath.

You would think that as our nation prepares to select a new president, such issues would be at the forefront of discussion. But the nation has had bad luck on the political front (as though the economic and financial problems weren’t bad enough). The Democratic Party got caught between Scylla and Charybdis, and its boat is sinking. The onslaught by Barack Obama caught everyone by surprise, but the “yes we can” movement disregarded Machiavelli’s advice: it went after its enemy (Hilary Clinton) without having the power to kill. Just as Machiavelli said, if you can’t take out your enemy clean, then you’re going to be severely weakened by his or her revenge. Obama and Clinton seem to be playing out a Greek tragedy, unknowingly advancing their own mutual doom; here’s an article about this by classicist historian Victor Davis. The GOP will most likely pick up the pieces in November, which basically means a continuation of national inaction and misdirection from the previous Bush administration.

I’m very disappointed about this because I think it’s time for big changes, on the level of FDR’s New Deal and the Kennedy/Johnson Great Society (notice that it’s Democrats who carry out big national changes, and Republicans like Reagan who take them apart). America has to do something big about health care, about global warming, about financial market stability, about the Mexican border (albeit, McCain may well be the best person for that), about energy independence, about education, about scientific research, about the growing divisions between rich and poor, about Social Security, about the Middle East (a problem that would be a lot more tractable if we didn’t need so much oil), etc. Yes, all this will mean somewhat higher taxes and more government involvement in the economy. But without it, things are going to get crazy, not to mention unfair. Every so many decades, America has to come together and give its system an overhaul. A McCain victory will put that off for another four years (I’m being optimistic about 2012). I’m sure that Mr. McCain will do a better job of maintaining the status quo than Mr. Bush did, but he will not start the big changes needed.

Given the terrible spectacle that has emerged from the Obama-Clinton struggle, it seems clear to me that American common-sense will decide that the Democrats aren’t up to overhauling the system, so let’s maintain the status quo for now. Maybe the heartland will be more open to considering a risky commitment to change in 2012 if by then the Democrats can develop a series of potential candidates who will inspire the nation’s confidence in terms of their experience, their character, their intelligence and their common sense.

Perhaps Barack Obama did us a favor by showing that Hilary Clinton wasn’t really ready to successfully guide the nation through a course of major change. Her husband was a popular President because times were good; he talked a good line, but he didn’t even try to accomplish anything substantial (especially after Hilary dropped the ball with health care in 1994). In fact he often did the bidding of the conservatives, e.g. by taking apart the family welfare system instead of truly reforming it.

If I was Howard Dean and the other Democratic bigwigs, I would assume that 2008 is a lost cause and start work on grooming the best and brightest possibilities for 2012. The name that I have in mind is Sen. Evans Bayh from Indiana, but there are others, including Sen. Claire McCaskill, Gov. Janet Napolitano, Gov. Tim Kaine and Sen. Mary Landrieu. (This list would also include Barack Obama, if he had the good sense to abort his present campaign and let Hilary take the bullet in November.)

One more thing – there was an interesting article in the NY Times about how the Titanic might not have sank so fast had the shipyard not cut corners by using cheap steel bolts. Had the better bolts been used, as with other ships, the Titanic might have held up long enough for other ships to reach it, saving a lot of lives. This couldn’t help but make me think about the problem that American Airlines had recently about finally getting around to inspecting its old MD80’s for wiring defects, after the FAA finally pressed them (and after Congress and some whistleblowers pressed the FAA into doing its job). This will hopefully avert a modern airborne Titanic incident (admittedly, the domestic airlines have had a pretty good safety record for the past few years). But it does show that business without effective government oversight is a dicey proposition. The need for government involvement has not gone away, despite what Ronald Reagan and his Bush acolytes (and probably soon-to-be McCain acolyte) told us.

◊ posted by Jim G @ 10:08 pm Read Comments (3) / Leave a Comment

Friday, December 7, 2007

◊ Odes to the Long Russian Winter

Society ... Technology ...

I was searching some Russian web sites for info about my family name, and accidentally came across a photo-blog in Cyrillic. It looked interesting, so I did a Google translation and found a poem about the start of the long Rusky winter. Of course, the translation was klunky. So I tried some other on-line translators, and the results were somewhat different. But still klunky — in a charming sort of way. Two of the words just didn’t translate, but I put my best guesses in brackets. But as to that “necessary disk”, you’re on your own there.

Here are four Americanized versions of this ode to the start of the long Russian winter. Despite the syntactical static, you still get the idea. I don’t have any similar thoughts for mid-December in New Jersey, where the temps currently oscillating between the low 20s and high 40s. All I can say is that I’ll take our prosaic late autumn over their poetic early winter, any day!

Dec. 1, 2007

This silence and coziness in the soul, which even does not be desirable to lie down to sleep. You control snowflakes in the lantern light and you begin to breathe flatter and it is calmer… You namurlykivayesh [sing?] to itself tikhonechko [song?], through the word, through time the song, which now would listen to….no the laziness to search for necessary disk… With the winter you… Let it will be bright and comfortable…

Such silence and comfort in the soul that does not even want to fall sleep. Witnesses for the lamppost in white light and you start breathing smoother and calmer … Namurlykivaesh [sing?] imagine tihonechko [song?] through the floor, through the courtesy song, which now would poslushala [listen] …. but Laziness go desired disk … In winter you … Let it be bright and comfortable …

Such silence and coziness in a shower that would not be desirable to go to bed at all. You observe of snowflakes in lantern light and you start to breathe more exactly and more easy… Намурлыкиваешь [sing?] to itself very quietly, through a word, through steps песенку [song?] which now would listen…. But laziness to search for the necessary disk… With a winter you… Let it will be light and cozy …

This silence and coziness in the soul, which even does not be desirable to lie down to sleep. You control snowflakes in the lantern light and you begin to breathe flatter and it is calmer … You namurlykivaesh [sing?] to itself tikhonechko [song?], through the word, through time the song, which now it would listen to….but laziness to search for necessary disk … With the winter you… Let it be bright and comfortable …

◊ posted by Jim G @ 10:06 pm Read Comments (2) / Leave a Comment

Monday, November 26, 2007

◊ Tis The Season

Society ... Technology ...

Tis the season once again for buying gifts for the family. I’m a true-blue techie geek, so I now do most of my holiday season shopping on-line. Other than getting my brother a bottle of wine, I have no use for tromping around malls and stores in late November or December. In fact, I fully intended to do all of my shopping (other than the wine) by Internet this year. I had most of it done by mid-day yesterday, but I still had one site to hit today, a site that I had used before. I found two nice things that my mother might like, so I popped them into the virtual shopping bag and started the check-out procedure. But something got messed up; the total came to $0.00 and I was never asked for a credit card. Maybe I would have gotten the merchandise for free, had I pushed the “place order” button. But more likely, I would have gotten an e-mail in a few weeks saying that my order was canceled. Obviously that would happen on Christmas Eve.

So, I started over again. It seemed to go better this time around, so I punched in my credit card number. But I got a screen saying that my credit card didn’t work. Now this was odd, since I had just used my card on another site just an hour ago, and I was hardly near the spending limit. So I started again. But this time I got the zeros once more. Well, I figured that the server must be acting up because of high volumes; it was Sunday afternoon, after all.

I tried again last night around 10 PM, figuring that e-commerce traffic would be tapering off by then. But still no go. So I tried tonight as soon as I got home. Again, no good. I usually use Firefox; I try to avoid Internet Explorer. But just to see if browser incompatibility was the problem (I still occasionally run into a site that only works for IE, usually a government site), I fired up the great wonder of Microsoft. But that made things even worse; the site froze up after one item on IE.

So, I did something I haven’t done in quite a few years now. I dialed the 800 number and placed my order via a real, live human being. I got put on hold at first, and turned on the TV expecting a half hour wait. But no, after three minutes I was talking with a live person whose accent and speech patterns were like my own (no offense to the call centers in India, but when doing a cultural thing like ordering gifts, I still feel better talking to someone close to home). And despite a false start or two, the whole transaction went fairly well. It didn’t seem to take much time at all. And the woman taking my order was actually rather pleasant and cheerful, and left me with what seemed like a fairly sincere wish for a happy holiday. She didn’t just rush me off with the usual “we’re done, good bye, next call”. I had obviously forgotten that sometimes, dealing with a human being does add something to the equation, something that you can’t get on-line.

This morning, I read a fluff article from the AP business desk about how the retail industry is promoting the Monday after Thanksgiving (which is today) as “Cyber Monday”. Cyber Monday is supposed to be an on-line imitation of “Black Friday”, the post-Thanksgiving mall-hopping spectacle. Well, I’m glad that I went a bit retro this Cyber Monday, reverting back to the phone and the exchange of human voices. Even a techie freak like me can appreciate a nice holiday greeting from somebody out there in the American heartland. Not that I’m giving up on the e-commerce web sites, but you never know when a frustrating glitch turns out to be something like an angel — delivering a blessing in disguise.

◊ posted by Jim G @ 8:08 pm Read Comments (2) / Leave a Comment

Saturday, August 4, 2007

◊ A Visit With Big Brother

Current Affairs ... Public Policy ... Technology ...

The other day, I got a little tour of a police communications center located in a major city in New Jersey. The police have approximately 30 or 40 cameras set up in various spots throughout the city, and they hope to get another 40 or so within the next year or two. That’s not exactly the kind of coverage that London, England has, with thousands of cameras watching almost every street in town. (Allegedly there are 32 cameras within 200 yards of the North London apartment where George Orwell once lived.) Even accounting for the fact that the city I visited was a good bit smaller and less populated than London, the camera system that I saw was quite a bit less comprehensive. Even Baltimore has 500 cameras, quite a bit more per capita than where I was.

The system I saw actually has some privacy protection built in; when it points at a home or apartment building, computer software automatically blocks out the window areas. Or at least that’s what we saw on the screen. But out on the streets, these cameras can see quite a lot. The resolution of the images from these cameras are very good, even at a long distance. The night vision capability is also very good. They seem to have trouble seeing past window glare, e.g. inside a car on a sunny day. So I suggested that they look into polarizer filters, which photographers have used for years. Just doing my part for Big Brother. The people I talked with have other interesting plans to enhance their monitoring capacity, e.g. a system of microphones tied to computers that isolate the sound of gunfire and indicate where it came from (via triangulation). A police dispatcher could see a red light blink on a map showing a gunfire location, and instantly get a squad car on the way. No more waiting for someone to call it in – if anyone would actually do that anymore. The city in question has a growing “don’t snitch, don’t get involved” mentality because of its street gang problem.

The camera system was being attended to by a funky assortment of police assistants and technicians; they didn’t seem very much like Gestapo types. I’m fairly convinced that it will be a while before this system is used for anything more than busting street criminals and getting EMS and police assistance out to auto accident sites as quickly as possible. But then again, the “slope” to abuse of such technology is indeed a slippery one. The city in question once had a mayor who was noted for his authoritarian ways and his appetite for nasty attacks against his opponents. It is easy to picture such a mayor cowing his police commander to have the camera people keep an eye on a reformist challenger during an election campaign. Where ever the young upstart challenger holds a rally or makes an outdoor speech, the cameras will be keeping track of the crowd sizes and movements. Even scarier, anyone working for the city (or anyone who does business with the city) that might be helping the reform candidate could show up in these high-quality pictures. You know they will then be in for a rough time. The political incumbents in cities with such capabilities will no doubt be licking their chops thinking of all the ways they can use these techno-toys to squelch any grass-root political threats.

Because of violent crime and the fear that it brings, our nation cannot go back to simpler days. To mix my metaphors some more, we’ve let the “eye-in-the-sky” genie out of the bottle. How do we now control this stuff? I have a suggestion. Pass a federal law requiring that every feed from every government surveillance camera be available to the public in real time on the Internet, or in recorded version by request at a local library. OK, there will need to be certain exceptions where terrorism and national security might be involved. You can’t let the public monitor line feeds from a nuclear submarine base. However, the cameras that I saw the other day were mostly focused on poor neighborhoods and downtown shopping districts. I don’t think they would have been of much use to al Qaeda. (But then again, a camera that looks at the front of a check cashing store could cause trouble; bad guys could monitor it to find the best time to rob departing customers, or to find out when an armored truck is making a cash delivery).

The police camera question is a tough one; it upsets the balance that our nation has carefully crafted over its 230 year history regarding the tension between citizen privacy and government authority. Right now, most of the police cameras are in ghettos, but once they reach the nicer suburban neighborhoods, you may see a lot more discussion of the issue. Police cameras — coming soon to a streetlight post near you!

◊ posted by Jim G @ 3:06 pm No Comments Yet / Leave a Comment

Wednesday, July 18, 2007

◊ Technology For Peace?

Society ... Technology ...

I was reading an article today on the BBC web site saying that a huge underground lake has been found under the Darfur section of Sudan, and it may bring an end to the terrible violence that has plagued that region for the past 5 years or so. The BBC thinks that if wells are drilled and everyone gets enough water for farming and such, the Arabs and native Africans can settle down and put their guns aside. Let’s hope so.

If this were to happen, it would be one of the first times I know of that a war was ended peaceably by technology. Warfare has become more and more deadly over the past two or three centuries because of technology. But in Sudan, radar and satellite photography and computer analysis were used to find water where no one thought it could be (versus sending bombs and missiles to their targets with pinpoint accuracy).

Technology sometimes appears to be sending us on a one-way ride to doomsday. It’s nice to see that it might at times help humans to reclaim their humanity.

PS — of course, the New York Times is a bit pessimistic about whether the big water find is really going to stop the oppression and make things better in Sudan. I hate to say it, but they could yet be right. Perhaps it is still too early to break out the optimism.

◊ posted by Jim G @ 7:39 pm No Comments Yet / Leave a Comment

Monday, April 4, 2005

◊ Tom Meinen, Economic Prophet?

Economics/Business ... Technology ...

I’ve studied economics a bit, and I know what the bedrock assumption of economics is: that every human being continuously struggles to maximize his or her wealth and consumption. This means that any kind of political system that runs counter to this basic instinct (like communism or socialism) is ultimately doomed to failure. The only thing that works with the human species is freedom, capitalism and laizez-faire, with just enough government intervention to keep the losers from revolting against the winners and upsetting the apple cart. Losers and winners are inherent to the system. It’s just natural that some folk become filthy, stinkin’ rich, while others stay dirt poor. Nothing much to be done about it; social welfare programs just don’t work. As the late Ayn Rand and her followers might say, if everyone is special then no one is special, and we all then wallow in poverty.

I grew up as an economic idealist, someone who believed that humans could use their brains and communication abilities to re-arrange things so that poverty and injustice would be eliminated, or greatly reduced anyway. But the main-stream economists say that it can’t happen because people are natural profit-maximizers. If you set up a collective system (i.e., government) that takes away their incentive to get rich, they would never come up with technical innovations like cell phones and DVD players and decaf coffee and Viagra. We’d still be living in the Middle Ages if socialism had its way (or something like Cuba, anyway). You can’t have technology and social justice at the same time. It’s one or the other.

I’d like to think, though, that there are people who would still do their best to develop good stuff even if it wouldn’t make them rich (so long as they could be reassured of a decent, comfortable life). I may have an example, a guy named Tom Meinen. This fellow has developed some nice little software applications and he gives them away for free on his web site. One is called “Renamestar”, a handy tool for renaming files (much easier than re-naming in Windows, and it allows automatic sequential numbering; this comes in handy for digital photos, e.g. “EllensBirthday01”, “EllensBirthday02”, etc.). Not only is Renamestar free, it’s also not a plant for spyware or advertising software (anytime you download a free program, you ALWAYS need to assume that it’s a “Trojan Horse” for spyware and adware). A lot of people make good money by planting spyware and adware in their “giveaway” software. But Mr. Meinen appears to be honest when he says on his website that his products are free of the nasty stuff.

Mr. Meinen does make one request to anyone who uses his stuff: “all I ask is that you contact me via e-mail or postcard if you use and enjoy a program . . . this knowledge helps to make the hard work of developing software worthwhile”. My goodness, imagine if Bill Gates and company took an attitude like this. OK, you couldn’t reasonably expect to get Windows and Office for free, but maybe you would at least get fair trade practices and fair prices, versus the current Microsoft monopoly.

But yes, we would all have to become like this for the nice-guy approach to work. One hungry wolf spoils it all for everyone – you then have to eat the other guy as to avoid getting eaten (just what Microsoft does so well). But nonetheless: Tom Meinen, more power to you. You are a prophet, a man who belongs to a more civilized age sometime in the future (hopefully). Mr. Meinen also appears to be a vegetarian (his e-mail address is thru a veggie web site), which IMHO is also a glimpse of a better world.

Oh, here’s Mr. Meinen’s site: www.renamestar.com

◊ posted by Jim G @ 8:34 pm No Comments Yet / Leave a Comment

Sunday, January 12, 2003

◊ Little Thing, Big Thing

Current Affairs ... Politics ... Technology ...

Little Thing: Mechanical pencils — wow, they’re back, and they’ve really gotten better! They’ve been around since the 50’s, but they were always clunky and nerdy, with thick leads that wrote like an unsharpened wooden pencil. Now they’re light and comfortable and the leads are thin and they don’t break when you press down. You used to have to twist the tip to adjust the point, but now you just click the top. I’m using a Pentel 0.7mm Champ and some Icy’s. It’s nice to see that an old idea can be brought back and finally made to work right.

Big Thing: The Bush Tax-Cut. OK, here we go again, Republican voter candy… Let’s chop down the overgrown government forest and put the money back into the average family’s pocket. Yea, fine, but there are a lot of things that need doing by the government these days, like rebuilding our highways (have you driven an Interstate lately? Unless you’re in one of the many slow-down work zones, you’re cannon fodder for an armada of haul-ass double-trailer rigs barreling along at 80 with drivers zonked on uppers, trying to fight off the ZZZs). Or fixing our schools. Or properly training teachers how to teach. Or figuring out how to have homeland security while preserving our personal dignity and Constitutional rights at the same time. Or getting ready for all the medical bills that the Baby Boom generation are going to incur as they reach their Golden Years. Oh, yes, and being the policeman to the world, with all the aircraft carriers and stealth drones and anti-missles and helicopters and laser-guided anti-tank munitions that takes.

But hey, I can understand why the average Jane and Joe will fight any tax increase idea tooth and nail, and will welcome any tax cut. That’s because, over the past 30 years, average real income has hardly gone up at all; average income after inflation has increased about one-third a percent every year. At the same time, the after-inflation gross national product of the USA has increased on average about 3 percent each year. OK, so where is all this wealth going, if not into the pockets of the average family? Who is pocketing the difference? Well, there was an article in the October 20, 2002 New York Times Magazine by Paul Krugman that gave a rather clear answer. Over the past three decades, the rich have become filthy rich (and darn, I wasn’t one of them!). When you look at the winners in terms of real income increases over the past 30 years, the top 10% of families clearly did much better than the rest (and, of course, the bottom 10% got poorer). But then, if you look at the top 1%, they did tremendously better. And if you look at the top 0.1%, they did stupendously better.

And now comes our President, with a tax cut that promises to benefit the average family around $300 per year (per the Brookings Institution). But, with its carefully crafted provisions to cut taxes on stock dividends and capital gains, the family in the top 10% is going to benefit more than that. And the family in the top 1% saves over $20,000 per year. This tax cut is clearly a gift to the rich (now gee, why would Mr. Bush want to help them? It isn’t because he and his family are rich too, is it?). But it gets the support of the middle class, as it throws some scraps at them. Too bad that the middle class isn’t asking what the ultimate consequences of this little gift to them (and big gift to the mansion set) are going to be. For one thing, there will be an increased federal deficit, causing higher interest rates, which will increase mortgage rates for average homebuyers. For another, there will be cut-backs in school aid, Medicare, highway maintenance, and high-cost, non-intrusive security measures. Not that the rich care; they have Gulfstreams and don’t need to drive the Interstates; they send their kids to private academies, so they don’t care about break-downs in the public schools; they can pay for their own doctors when they get old, and won’t need to wrangle over HMO restrictions; and again, with their Gulfstreams, they don’t need to go thru airport security with the masses.

Oh well, just a little liberal rant. There are so may conservative rants out there in Blog-land, I thought I’d try to balance things out just a bit.

◊ posted by Jim G @ 7:28 pm No Comments Yet / Leave a Comment

Friday, December 27, 2002

◊ Clonaid — An “X File”?

Society ... Technology ...

My stomach was starting to feel better (see recent blog post), until I read the articles today about the human cloning. Just what humankind needs, another moral and ethical dilemma. As if there were a shortage of children created via the good old fashioned mechanism.

The whole thing has a gothic science fictional quality to it, reminiscent of The X-Files and “V”. I.e., the nightmare you can’t wake up from. An alien child was born, and more are on the way. Clonaid spokesperson Brigette Boisselier would seem right at home on one of those shows. Not that I was a huge X’er or V’er. Both shows were a bit too violent and graphic for my cotton-candy soul. But the Raeliens, with their talk of alien masters, and Ms. Boisselier, with her smooth words trying to make it all seem just fine, do have a creepy aura to them. I’m sure I’m not the first blogger to notice that.

All kidding aside, I think that this is a bad moon rising. It’s bad science at its baddest, an experiment that could have terrible physical, emotional and sociological consequences. Sure, there are potential up-sides, but as with Nazi medical experiments, the down-sides and the unknowns are way too steep right now to be messing with individual human lives. I hope this is just a hoax. But I have that weird feeling, like the one a lot of us had about 9 am on Sept. 11, 2001 when the first disjointed media reports came in, that this could be very serious.

P.S., back to the light side for a moment. As an old guy without kids around, I’m not really sure why a lot of adults are talking about Sponge Bob these days. Nevertheless, they are. So, I checked some search engines to see if any attorneys specializing in helping people clean up their criminal records were taking advantage of the potential pun. But my search for an “Expungement Bob” came up blank.

P.P.S. A few days later, I read that Clonaid is pulling back it’s offer of DNA proof. Hopefully, little Eve is going to grow up as a genetically unique person after all, just a footnote to the history of public hoaxes.

◊ posted by Jim G @ 10:45 pm No Comments Yet / Leave a Comment

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