Contrary Brin

Is Libertarianism Fundamentally about Competition? Or about Property?

2012-01-17T11:30:00.000-08:00

Some folks have heard me beat this drum. But it’s a fresh-enough thought - going to fundamentals that run deep beneath normal politics - so that I am moved to raise it yet again. In part because someone recently asked me, as author of The Transparent Society: “Can transparency and libertarianism complement each other?”

Now let’s have the simple answer first. Yes. A sane, better-focused libertarianism would be utterly compatible with transparency. In fact, it should be the very top priority.

Both Adam Smith and Friedrich Hayek proclaimed that markets are healthy in direct proportion to the number of skilled and knowing player-participants. Indeed, one chief indictment against every pre-modern economic system is that nearly all of them were based on “allocation” of resources by elites. Allocators are inherently knowledge limited and likely to be delusional, precisely because they are few.

Just to be doubly clear on that: almost all previous cultures used GAR - or Guided Allocation of Resources - as their guiding economic principle. Whether the allocation was done by kings, feudal lords, priests or communist nomenklatura, it was nearly always the same: decisions over how to invest society's surplus, which endeavors to capitalize and which products to produce were made by a small clade of delusional elites, as wrong in their models as they were sure of them.

Starting with Adam Smith - and later fervently preached by others, including Hayek - the notion of FIBM, or Faith In Blind Markets, began to compete against GAR. The core notion? That the mass wisdom of millions of buyers, sellers, voters and investors will tend to emphasize or reinforce better ideas and cancel or punish bad ones. Delusions - the greatest human tendency - will be quickly discovered because no longer will some narrow group be able to nurse them without question. Hence, getting back to the original question: the more transparency - and the greater the number of participants - the more people can come up with relatively accurate models and act upon them... or acutely criticize flaws in the models of others.

But let’s extend that thought and ask an even more general question.

Isn’t libertarianism fundamentally an appreciation of competition?

Think about all the core enlightenment processes -- entrepreneurial markets, science, democracy and justice. Each of these modern systems produce the modern miracle of positive-sum games... creating win-win scenarios for everybody. The famous rising tide that lifts all boats.

Now sure, there’s a lot more involved than just competition! There are many cooperative or consensus or even moral aspects... read Adam Smith’s The Theory of Moral Sentiments, to see that "competition" does not mean "cut-throat" or the brutal image of social darwinism. Many of today's libertarians oversimplify, especially the followers of Ayn Rand.

Nevertheless, it is wholly right and proper for a libertarian to emphasize and focus on one main feature of these positive sum processes. The fact that they all arise by harnessing and encouraging fair rivalry among human beings. So let me reiterate.

Competition is the great creative force of the universe.

That's proved. Competition produced all of nature's evolutionary marvels... and us. By far the most successful human enterprise - science - is an inherently competitive process and scientists tend, by personality, to be extremely assertive in going after rivals. Moreover the arts, supposedly our "highest" endeavors, are inherently - often ferociously - competitive, even when they are lecturing us about cooperation! And yes, in professing this vast generalization you can see the libertarian in me - (despite my deep disdain for Ayn Rand.)

But the sane libertarian also knows that competition - in nature and primitive human societies - contains an inherent contradiction. A runaway process of self-destruction that historically always led (and I do mean always) to calamity...

...to the winner turning around and cheating! Victors in ancient combat were never content with incremental or partial success in war. Can you picture the victorious helping their adversaries to their feet and welcoming them to come back to another equal fight the following year? It was human nature, rather, to destroy opponents. The battlefield may have made you great, but you do not want to return there again and again for an endless series of even matches!

Think. In order to have maximum creative output, competition has to go on and on, maximizing innovative aspects and minimizing blood. The clearest example of transforming destruction into endlessly vigorous competition may be the ritualized combat systems called rule-based sports.

Nor is this just about war. Adam Smith saw what had happened in markets and societies for 4000 years. Winners in capitalism tend not to be satisfied with success in the latest market battle, with a cool product or in achieving recent financial or political success. Human nature propels us to use our recent victory to ensure that competitors will fail in future struggles. To bias the next competition. Or to stomp our defeated competitors flat! To absorb their companies. Squat on patents. Create monopolies or cartels to divvy-up markets. Eliminate transparency. Spy on competitors but keep them - and consumers in the dark. Capture regulators and make them work for us. Capture politicians and make the laws favor us.

Suppose that I become rich and powerful. What will I do, if I am one of the 99% who let human nature play out? Then I’ll use wealth and power to game the system so new competitors won't challenge me! If you deny this, you're just being silly. It was the way of oligarchy, in 99% of human cultures. The top priority of the owner-lords in all those nations was one distilled goal - to prevent bright sons of the the peasant class from competing fairly with the children of the rich. Admit it. Go ahead, choose a random decade across the last 60 millennia, in some random locale that had metals. Tell me this wasn't the pattern.

It worked. It’s in our blood. We're all descended from the harems of guys who pulled off that trick.

And here is where Adam Smith came in. He looked around, saw all the cheating by owner-oligarchs destroying the creative effectiveness of markets. And - in the seminal year 1776 - he called for something new. A way to get the best, most creative-competitive juices flowing, in the largest possible variety of human beings, while preventing the old failure mode. And it turned out there was a way.

As in rule-based sports, competition can only becoming self-sustaining... continuing to deliver its positive-sum outcomes... amid a network of transparent, fine-tuned, relentlessly scrutinized -- and universally enforced -- rules.

The vital importance - and difficult complexity - of “fairness”

Fair competition isn’t just a matter of morality. It is also the way to maximize competitive output, by ensuring that bright people and teams get second, third chances and so on. And creating ever-flowing opportunities for new competitors to keep arising from the population of savvy, educated and empowered folk. That kind of fairness requires rules and careful tending to ensure new competitors can and will always arise to challenge last year's winners. And that earlier winners can't cheat. Because... we've seen... they will.

Let’s be plain here. The founder of both liberalism and libertarianism - Adam Smith - weighed in about both of these reasons for fairness, To him, they were equally important. All right, liberals and libertarians each emphasize different ones. Liberals talk about the moral reasons for fairness and libertarians the practical, competition-nurturing ones. They tend to forget that - as followers of Smith - they actually want the same end result!

What they share is something deeper that both movements ought to recognize. They want every child to hit age 21 ready and eager to join the rivalry of work, skill and ideas.

Liberals should recall that fair competition is the driver, the engine of our cornucopia. The source of the wealth that made social progress possible. And libertarians need to pause, amid their dogmatic, “FDR-was-Satan” incantations, and recall that the word “fair” is the only thing that can make competition last.

Ironically, government can play a role there, if carefully watched. e.g. by ensuring that all poor kids get the care and education needed to become adult competitors! By ensuring that social status - whether poor or hyper-privileged - is never the prime determinant of success or failure. In other words, a sane libertarian who loves competition does not scream "Socialism!" at every state intervention. Instead, that grownup libertarian calmly judges every intervention by one standard.
"Will this help to increase the number of skilled, vigorous competitors?"

And by that standard, suddenly, liberals and libertarians have something to discuss. Without a scintilla of doubt, measures for civil rights, sanitation and public health, infrastructure, childhood health care and... yes... the vast increases in literacy wrought by public education... vastly increased the number of citizens capable of independent engagement in markets and innovative goods and services.

Sure, we are finding flaws in our schools! But that judgment (let's remember) is from the higher plateau of expectations and desires that public education created! It is only because we achieved 99% literacy that - suddenly - 99% literacy is no longer anywhere near enough. Is it time to bring market tools and competition into education? Sure. Probably. And I am willing to discuss the assertion that teachers' unions have "become a cartel." Still, when criticism turns into willful dogmatism, a failure to acknowledge the accomplishments and effectiveness of mass society - brought into effect by government, exactly as demanded by Adam Smith(!) - well that's churlish ingratitude and hardly a basis for saying "let's move on to something better."

And there are things government should not do! Some well-intentioned things that stymie competitive creativity, instead of enhancing it. "Equalizing all outcomes. is socialism and I am not on that boat! But maximizing the number of skilled and ready competitors is a different goal and I am here to hold that conversation. You may be surprised how many liberals and moderates will be willing to discuss it (and occasionally vote libertarian) if you make that the issue, instead of "FDR-was-Satan!"

A Movement based on LOVE of something, not HATE...

Sorry, but this needs to be hammered home, so let me repeat it. Screeching an incantation that government inherently suppresses competition is pure religious cant, disproved by countless counter-examples, from education and public health to the vast stimulative effect of public investments in science and technology and infrastructure. Again, look at 4000 years of history. Instead of simple-minded hatred of government, be more interested in pragmatic ways to enhance creative competition. Then the movement might have the subtlety of a surgeon or mechanic, instead of the sensibility of a berserk lumberjack. Make it about love of something, not bilious blame and hate.

So... is libertarianism consistent with transparency?

By that standard, transparency is clearly one of the most vital things that libertarians could defend. Hayek himself said that markets (and democracy and science and justice) only work when all participants know as much as possible. Absence of light is death to all four positive-sum games.
Alas, today's libertarians are (I grieve to say it) in-effect quite mad. They worship unlimited private property, even though it was precisely the failure mode that crushed freedom in 99% of human cultures. And they rage against a system that in general resulted in vastly more wealth, freedom and more libertarians than any other.

This is a quasi-religious idolatry. It makes them complicit allies of the enemies of competition. It makes them murderers of the thing that they should love.

Two scientific mentors gone, but not forgotten

2012-01-16T09:12:00.000-08:00

Alas. Today I learned about the passing (a few days ago) of two great men who were mentors to me in both science and life, each of whom had a dedication or salutation in one of my novels. Professor James (Jim) Arnold and Professor Harold (Hal) Zirin.

Jim Arnold had been one of the great pioneers in cosmochemistry - probing the chemical and isotopic composition of meteorites and lunar rocks, in order to reveal secrets about the origins of the solar system. Working with Harold Urey and others, he helped turn UCSD's sleepy little La Jolla campus into one of the world's greatest centers for chemistry research.

Jim was chairman of my doctoral committee at UCSD and I later worked for him as a post-doc when he ran the California Space Institute, analyzing exciting spacecraft concepts and proposing (much better) alternative space station designs. Jim's gentle wisdom and humor epitomized gracious style. His breadth and depth of scientific insight was exceeded only by his insatiable curiosity. Jim passed away at 88, a ripe and full life... and not enough for those of us who are greedy for a world filled with wonder.

Also today I learned that Hal Zirin died. Zirin was a leading solar astronomer whose work probed the nature of the solar photosphere, chromosphere and corona. He founded Caltech's famous Big Bear Solar Observatory, where I worked for two summers as an undergraduate observer and where I learned much of what later went into my first novel, SUNDIVER.

Hal was a beloved figure around Caltech, known as Captain Corona, the redoubtable sun-powered superhero. At least, that was his monicker in a pair of hand-drawn comic books, one by Dick Trtek and the other by... me. Every time a new building went up on campus, someone would paint a Captain Corona figure on the fence surrounding the construction site.
That's love.

Do You Despise Congress?

2012-01-14T10:15:00.000-08:00

Do you despise Congress? You’re not alone. The current Congress’s 11% approval rating is the lowest since polling began. Yet, because of gerrymandering and the resulting hyper-partisanship, people tend to support their own particular Representative, and to heap the blame on the other party.

Is everything just a subjective matter of partisan opinion? Are there explicit statistical reasons to credit one party in particular with the present mess?

"I think you'd have to go back to the 1850s to find a period of congressional dysfunction like the one we're in today," says Daniel Feller, a professor of U.S. history at the University of Tennessee. In modern history, "there have been battles, delays, brinkmanship — but nothing quite like this," says Thomas Mann, senior fellow of governance studies at the Brookings Institution in Washington, in a book about Congress with a title that provides a succinct answer: It's Even Worse Than It Looks. Mann acknowledges there have been worse times for Congress, but he reaches back a very long way for a comparison.

"There were a few really bruising periods in American congressional history, not only the run-up to the Civil War, but also around the War of 1812," Mann says.

Ah, but as I'll show you (below) things are not only biliously hateful within the hallowed Capitol walls. There is another sin that's become rampant there... one never reported in the press, but in some ways more contemptible than any other.

== Comparison to the "merely" insane 1990s ==

I have long pointed out that Newt Gingrich’s Republican Revolution of 1995 started out with some impressive activity. Part of it was disturbing, like the banishing of all scientific advisory staff from Congress, freeing right-wing members to simply declare any facts they felt like uttering. This action was an early harbinger of what became today's pyrotechnic, outright and open War on Science.

On the other hand, Newt’s initial negotiation of Welfare Reform and budget balancing measures with President Clinton had stunningly impressive results. In fact, those two major accomplishments should have demonstrated conclusively what can be achieved for the national good by pragmatic people negotiating mixed methods to solve problems.

In 1995 Newt and other Republican intellectuals proposed a Health Care plan that later became the template both for RomneyCare in Massachusetts and ObamaCare in 2009. The main features - Insurance changes combined with a required individual mandate - were at the time offered as a market alternative to the more European style "HillaryCare" that the democrats proposed. Still, the Republicans under Gingrich, in the 1990s, appeared to (occasionally) want to deliberate, negotiate, dicker, come up with some way to move ahead.

It was in that spirit that Barack Obama based his Health Care Plan entirely upon the Republicans' earlier proposal. Let's make that even plainer... the "socialist" ObamaCare bill is almost identical to the Gingrich proposal that was in the Republican Party platform for a decade and that Romney instituted in his state. If that isn't negotiation, I don't know what is. But... of course... by then the GOP had moved on.

== The Era of Absolute-No Begins ==

It seems hard to look at it the last decade of the 20th Century as one of halcyon political statesmanship, since 75% of the time Gingrich and the 1990s Republicans were engaged in volcanic partisan behavior rife with irony (e.g. assigning nearly all divorcees to prosecute the just-once-married Clinton for marital misbehavior.) But the 25% of the time that Newt spent on problem solving helped to make the 90s work for America. And, under Gingrich, the GOP-led Congress was part of that.

Alas, things were evolving fast within the GOP. Roger Ailes was taking charge. Soon, the fact that Gingrich actually negotiated with the (constitutionally elected) enemy some of the time became seen as a criminal offense against conservatism and he was ousted from his leadership posts. To this day, many in the party refuse to forgive the fact that Newt co-designed working legislation with William Jefferson Clinton.

So far, we've been discussing things that are common knowledge. But it gets much, much worse. What ensued after Newt's ouster -- years of howling and lynch mob tactics -- have masked from the public a far more important fact: that the GOP-led Congresses from 1996 through 2006 were also the laziest and least effective in 100 years.

I don’t say that from any “liberal” perspective. Rather, I base it on objective and unambiguous standards of hard work, time and productivity. Giving their employers what they pay for. The recent Republican Congresses passed fewer bills, held fewer hearings, issued fewer subpoenas and held fewer days in active session than almost any other since the era of William McKinley. The record is damn near perfect. There are no metrics of legislative or deliberative indolence that weren't broken by the GOP-led Congresses of the last decade or so.

Wanting “less government” is a pat but stupid excuse for this, since Republicans go on and on about changes they would like to make! De-regulations and privatizations. Abolishing departments! Restricting abortions. Hemming in gays and abrogating foreign treaties. Border walls to build! And penalties for hiring illegal immigrants. Unifying church and state. Reining in the judiciary and unleashing corporations, and so on.... Well? Then why didn't you actually do any of those things?

The GOP owned Congress and the Courts for ten years, and operated all three branches of government for six of those years, with nothing whatsoever to stop them from passing anything they wanted. Yet, amid a tsunami of complaints, they would not even issue subpoenas or hold investigations to harass their enemies! Nor even show up on days that they were paid to.

Lip service. That is all Republican Senators and Representatives actually delivered on any of those matters so dear to Tea Partiers and the GOP base. Words, lots of angry words. No actions. Well, almost none. One constituency actually got enough attention to get bills passed. Do you remember which? De-regulation of the banking and mortgage and credit industries. Liberation of Wall Street gamblers. Removal of gas mileage standards. Plenty of the sort of thing that sent our economy toward a cliff.

Otherwise? Pure laziness.

== Watch out for the voting machines ==

Nearly every county in America now uses electronic voting machines that - under several dummy corporations - are made by a single deeply-Republican family. Given the irregularities that erupted in past years -- and the potential for untold mischief -- I had expected that this matter to receive copious attention from Democratic groups. Yet I've heard nothing. Nothing at all. In fact, lack of attention is deeply disturbing.
Now dig this recent statement:

"If someone were to hack into the machine, if the logging is not secure and doesn't protect it from rollback, that would allow someone to tamper with it and leave no trace." – Candace Hoke, Cleveland Marshall College of Law professor, on defects in optical ballot scanners currently in use in voting in the U.S.; quoted in USAToday.

One bit of progress. In most counties and precincts a separate paper record is kept, that can be audited. In most cases, this means a physical ballot that you marked by hand and that was scanned-in as it went into a box. It's an improvement, allowing random audits that might catch any cheaters. Still is this true in YOUR area? It's your duty to check.

If your region doesn't use this method... if you use a "voting machine" with a touch screen, for example... then when you finish voting, ask to see the log of your vote on the printed record. Verify that it printed what you remember voting. Spread the word about this and make your friends curious! If enough people do that, then one of many failure modes will become a bit less likely.

If you cannot do this simple check, start asking why. Bring it up on your own discussion lists and make it viral.

==And the SuperPacs==

Finally, by now all of you savvy types will have watched the YouTube of Stephen Colbert handing his SuperPac over to Jon Stewart. It is rich, hilarious... and educational... and absolutely scary for the future of our republic. This will be the summer and autumn of lies. Expect a BILLION dollars - no less- to be spent by Super-Pacs with zero reporting of where they got their cash. Is this the America you want?

Any American with a lick of patriotism has to know by now... we must get the money out of politics. Or the Republic is over.

Politics Redux: Blue New Hampshire, Transparency and the latest episode of WikiLeaks Mania

2012-01-11T13:50:00.000-08:00

First a note to Ron Paul and Newt Gingrich and Rick Perry. There's a point that your surrogates ought to be making - (with SuperPac deniability for you, of course!) Remind folks that New Hampshire is a Blue State. About as blue as they come. And hence, if the hybrid-type republicans of the Granite State prefer Mitt Romney... what does that say about him? Redmeat for red South Carolina.

Oh, but now on to things I actually know something about...

== The Return of WikiLeaks ==

Last month, WikiLeaks launched its latest campaign, releasing nearly three hundred documents that reveal the extent of sophisticated surveillance technology that has been used by both oppressive rulers and Western democracies -- devices that enable governments or law enforcement agencies to track and monitor individuals via their cell phones, e-mail, and Internet browsing histories.

This is clearly the sort of transparency that - while it may short-term inconvenience some western governments - could help the secular trend toward an open world that (in turn) fosters and strengthens enlightenment nations and people. In other words, embrace this! The answer to most modern problems may boil down, time and again, to a more aware citizenry.

Heck, shouldn't earlier phases of the WikiLeaks affair have taught the US government a valuable lesson? Answer me this riddle. What was the biggest overall effect of Julian Assange's leak of 250,000 State Dept cables? Who benefited most?

It was U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, getting exactly what she needed, when she needed it! Scores of those leaked memos revealed US diplomats candidly despising Ben Ali and Mubarak and other Arab dictators they were forced to deal with. These revelations - secret, and hence credibly sincere - showed US envoys and apparatchiks expressing profound sympathy for oppressed people and holding their noses, forced by unpalatable circumstance to dicker with tyrants. Revealed precisely when the Arab Spring was brewing, those cables could not have been better timed to show youth in Egypt, Tunisia, Libya and so on that "at worst America isn't our enemy... and maybe they're more with us than we thought."

A bizarre assertion? Well, did anybody notice the near- total lack of anti-American themes during the Arab Spring? It may not have been Assange's intent... but that felicitous outcome was the exact thing that he wrought, and maybe our leaders should ponder the lucky break.

More important. They should contemplate the value of this overall, secular trend toward a generally more open world. Light can only - occasionally - inconvenience us. For villainous regimes, it is lethal.

=== And while we’re on transparency... ===

A Missouri judge ruled the FBI does not need a warrant to secretly attach a GPS unit to a suspect's car and track his public movements for two months.

My reaction? Let me surprise you. Mr Transparency is yawning. This simply replicates what would happen if the FBI tracked the fellow with a classic "tail." He was publicly visible the whole time. If a tail was okay, then why not save us money? Yes, yes, this may lead to "them" knowing where we are all the time? So? That's coming. Protest it? Protest the sunset. Both are inevitable.

What matters to me is looking back. And I mean looking back hard. Watch the watchmen. Supervise them intensely, then let them do their jobs. Let’s pick our fights and make them count. Sousveillance!

=== And why transparency won’t be enough ===

Members of the House and Senate regularly buy and sell stocks even while considering major bills that will affect those companies. Yet there have been no insider trading cases brought against Congress members. Nor is it likely, for Congress makes its own rules – and those rules are silent on insider trading. “They have legislated themselves as untouchable as a political class,” writes Peter Schweizer, who has documented the money made by Congress members, in his book, Throw Them All Out. (This despite the promise, in Newt Gingrich's 1994 Contract With America to make Congress fully accountable.)

Both parties are guilty of dubious trades that anticipated the effect of changing government policy--buying or unloading stock just before changes took place. Alas, Schweizer's prescription - to "throw them all out" - won't happen because of another self-serving strategy by the politician-caste. Gerrymandering.

Look, I favor some politicians over others, naturally. The party that’s less disciplined, more diverse and willing to negotiate strikes me as better than one that is the most tightly disciplined and dogmatic political force - and the most fiercely anti-science - in American history, controlled by a media empire owned by unfriendly foreigners.

Nevertheless... at another level, we the people have to recognize that we are being preyed upon by the entire political caste. Money has to be taken out of politics. Transparency must be augmented, exponentiated.

And we must start with Gerrymandering! An ugly, scheming job security program that has radicalized most members of Congress into raving partisan lunatics. Take a look at this outrageous example, as redistricting in Texas comes before the Supreme Court.

Only here’s the thing. A mass public rebellion against gerrymandering is already underway! The practice has lately been banned by referendum in a number of states, most recently and powerfully in California -- a blue state whose largely democratic voting population nevertheless voted to end democrat-leaning gerrymandering. (If only all states had such vibrantly patriotic citizens.) See my article on Gerrymandering.

(Alas, not a single red state has joined the rebellion.)
Well, maybe it’s gathering momentum! A nationwide insurrection against this abuse by the political caste! In 28 other states, lawsuits have been filed against this foul practice. A racket imposed by politicians against their natural enemy. Voters.
Now... if only the Court were on our side...

=== Some Political Miscellany ===

* OWS Fights Back Against Police Surveillance by Launching "Occucopter" Citizen Drone. In response to constant police surveillance, violence, and arrests, Occupy Wall Street protesters and legal observers have been turning their cameras back on the police. I am no lefty or radical. Sometimes the cops are right. But this right to look back must be absolute and inviolable. Mr. Transparent Society is radical about this!

* Techies are now figuring out how to attach sensors and cameras directly to insects and powering the devices off the creatures' own movements. Similar to the "mosquito cams" that I spoke of in The Transparent Society (1997), these will tilt the balance of power toward whoever has the best ability to see... including ability to detect mosquito-cams! Our only hope in such a world is NOT to ban the things - that cannot conceivably work. But to make sure we all have them. And hence that we can catch the peeping toms.

* Three GOP candidates stand above the others, when it comes to intellect, having interesting things to say, and departing (in spots) from pure, Know-Nothing trog-populism. Let's dismiss John Huntsman. He actually wants calm, moderate, pragmatic negotiation - in other words, his chances of getting the Republican nomination stand between nil and hopeless.

The other two? I've praised Gingrich as 1/3 fascinating/smart... if 2/3 crazy. Now see Ron Paul at his libertarian best! If only his crazy-ratios weren't the same as Newt's. Well-well, these are the three I’d at least buy a beer and expect, during the conversation, to hear some interesting (if at least half jibbering loopy) things.

* Obama on Mars! White House Denies CIA teleported Obama to Mars!

* This Girl Snuck Into a Russian Military Rocket Factory!

* Is the US Private Sector dying? Because the “accountants are in charge”?

== And finally - the most important quotation you can cite this year ==

"There is nothing which can better deserve your patronage, than the promotion of Science and Literature. Knowledge is in every country the surest basis of publick happiness."
- President George Washington, State of the Union address, 1/8/1790

Science and technology were responsible for half of US economic growth since 1945. Those who are demonizing science... and disparaging every other knowledge profession... are at-best fools and at-worst the genuine enemies of hope for the republic. Or for human civilization. Don't take it from me. Take it from George Washington.

Whither Goest Capitalism? The fading American Middle Class... and putting Nehemiah Scudder on your car

2012-01-10T08:43:00.000-08:00

Re-lighting the political lamp, let’s commence with a crucial year in U.S. political history... by linking to a video that’s gone viral nationwide, “Capitalism Hits the Fan” by Professor Richard Wolff.

Now, from the title I expected something tinged a little pink. What I found instead was completely fascinating - and not really "leftist" at all. In fact, Professor Wolff passionately defends the general notion of capitalism. That is, a competitively creative marketplace that encourages entrepreneurial start-ups and innovation. A market that would please Adam Smith and continue the productive cornucopia that made all progress possible.

One of Wolff’s charts is incredible. It shows that real U.S. worker wages rose from 1945 till the 1970s in steady pace along with increasing worker productivity. Only then, in the 1970s, the rise in middle class wages stopped, despite accelerating increases in worker productivity and corporate profits.

: Huffington Post 3/19/2011

How could such a de-coupling have taken place? Wolff shows this is not about “left vs-right.” It’s about capitalism shifting from a traditional American model to one that far more closely resembles patterns described by... Karl Marx. Wolff is very good at explaining causes. Like a wise economist, he eschews predictions and prescriptions.

I’m less mature. So hence, I deem the solution to be political. Moreover you can play a large role. Start by sharing this video. America’s salt-of-the-earth types know, deep down, that they’ve been betrayed. So far, they’ve been talked into blaming one group - civil servants - for absolutely everything. Well... also scientists, teachers, doctors, journalists... in fact, every bunch of “smartypants.”

But keep shining light. In time, some will realize that other power centers have been doing the most screwing... and benefiting. That awakening is what Murdoch fears, far more than British subpoenas.

=== The Ideal Bumper Sticker for 2012 ===

This is the year when author Robert Heinlein forecast that the U.S. would tumble into a vicious theocracy led by a fundamentalist, rabble-rousing preacher. Which leads us to this year’s tastiest piece of rebel propaganda that you could possibly put on the bumper of your car.

SCUDDER IN 2012!

Most people pulling up behind you in traffic will experience flat-out, head-scratching puzzlement.

But for many, it will be a WikiPedia moment. When they get home, look up the name, and read about Heinlein’s dark future scenario, some will go “Oh, I see what that bumper sticker meant!”

Whether they nod in agreement or glower in fury, you’ll have made them read and think... and maybe even go pick up a little Heinlein!

Not bad for a simple bumper sticker.

==Looking Forward==

For 2012 and Beyond: Predict the future ofcomputing. Enter your best guess about what we can expect in the years and decades to come.

No doubt we'll be hearing enough dire, apocalyptic visions during 2012. Check out this lovely little epiphany...an optimistic (super!) look at the next forty years, written by someone who hasn't had the joyful spirit of ambition snuffed by grouches of right and left. Marc Millis offers a vision of humanity exploring and expanding into the solar system and beyond...

Immortality, Theology and Art

2012-01-02T17:35:00.000-08:00

First (and least) let's talk briefly about "immortality." I have found myself forced, pretty often, to weigh in on the topic of lifespan extension.

Now, in Scientific American online, David Stipp speaks up for anti-aging research, proclaiming that the time is right to put serious government money into combating the universal slayer of all human beings, the "inevitable" decay brought on by passing years.

Dr. Stipp is correct in predicting that aging will be a realm for increasing attention from researchers. However, his optimism for quick results may be unfounded. He cites very iffy reasons to expect progress to be easy. Yes, it has proved possible to alter and extend the mean lifespans of study populations of flies and mice through various means. Rapamycin is one such trigger. Other researchers have achieved notable results by delaying sex and reproduction and/or via caloric restriction – limiting test subjects to nutritious but very-spare diets.

So far, alas, scattered attempts by human beings to emulate all this – (by limiting themselves to ascetic lifestyles) – have shown little or no appreciable anti-aging effects. (And some have been trying the experiment on themselves for decades.) I’ll be very surprised if those impulsive folks now dosing themselves with rapamycin will achieve anything, either.

Think. For at least 4000 years there have been ascetic monastic communities that would have stumbled, by now, into any “thin-diet” approach for 200 year lifespans.

In my article, Do We Really Want Immortality? I’ve gone into about a dozen reasons why our search for youth elixers will be hard and grindingly slow. Human beings are very different from mice, or even apes, for reasons that may surprise you.

Essentially it’s this. We have already plucked all the low-hanging fruit. Every easily-accessible molecular/chemical "switch" that could extend human lifespan has already been thrown! Because during the Stone Age we became the only animals to need grandparents, hanging around with stores of useful knowledge. Hence, we are already the methuselahs of mammals, getting THREE TIMES the usual number of heartbeats.

The mouse results consist largely of throwing the same easy switches for them - making them (the mice) be more like us.

It is going to be a lot harder to go the other direction. To make us humans more like gods.

=== Let’s Discuss Modern Art! ===

And now -- for something completely different -- here is a capsule review... more a set of impressions ... from when the renowned scultptor John Powers escorted Cheryl and me through several Chelsea art shows, last October. Especially striking was the display of vast sheets of wavy, undulating metal created by Richard Serra and shown at Gagosian Gallery on West 24th Street. The title of the show was: "Junction/Cycle".

I appreciate it when an artist compels shifts in perspective and this exhibit made me change gears several times. Obviously the forms imitate geological caverns and canyons of the American Southwest, river-carved and river-smoothed, sinuous and snake-like. I could almost hear western music by Sergio Leone while I strolled along! Only then my attention might shift-zoom onto the texture of the piece. Squint and you might feel you were looking at fine wood that had been bent and twisted and deliciously tormented into wavy forms, to suit the artist's whim: a dead tree's final life as display-testament, exposing its inner grain for admiration.

Whereupon the engineer in me took over, imagining the process that the artist used, squeezing warm metal through rollers at high, screaming pressure, rollers deliberately set off-kilter, at-once defying the prim evenness of science and industry ... but also proclaiming industry's power and flexibility. "These methods can do much more than merely produce cars and buildings, cities, ships and vessels of space," he seems to say. Industry can be taught to twist, adapting itself and its processes for art's sake. Feminizing its methods by veering from masculine-utilitarian linearity to a voluptuous, sensually and sensuously feminine unpredictability and curvature. "See what industry and metal can do?" the artist seems to say. It can turn out complex forms that seem organic. That seem to live.

My final impression came while looking closely at the scratches, lines and patterns that - from a greater distance - had given me a woodgrain sensation. Up close I could almost hear this metal groaning between the rollers, as the artist subtly added torsion or twist. And (I expect) tossed in extra substances to stain the friction-heated panels that emerged. He must have really enjoyed that part. I'd have liked to see the expression on his face, accompanied by sound -- the sweet-torture shriek as both the metal and the rollers pretended to complain.

For John's take on the exhibit, see his blog at Star Wars Modern. Thanks for the tour, John. And here’s to the kind of synergy of art and tech that opens up the universe of possibilities!

== Shallow Theology ==

And now, from the sublime to the... much less sublime. Okay, so the Kepler Planet-hunter Telescope has ID'd hundreds of exoplanets, many of them quasi-earthlike in one attribute or another, some perhaps even offering conditions conducive of life. Wonderful stuff and such exciting times! Ah, but now a writer for the Institute for Creation Research surprisingly reacts with honest openness, avowing that “this (any discovery of extraterrestrial life) would vindicate evolution and nullify creation” for “the Bible describes only the earth as being habitable.”

Ten points for unusual willingness to face honest tests!

And minus 100 for shallow theology. I know dozens of pros/cons. Shouldn't he?

Many of the finest theological thinkers - Jesuits, protestants, rabbis - have opined about extraterrestrial intelligence, in the context of basic Christian doctrine. C.S. Lewis’s Out of the Silent Planet posited that God might have many created innumerable intelligent species, but that only a few of these -- notably humanity -- fell from their natural state of grace, necessitating a savior. Other Christian deep-thinkers have pondered that perhaps the creation of intelligence always necessitates some kind of “fall.” In which case, Jesus has been very busy, visiting and preaching and sacrificing himself in countless forms to save vast numbers of worthwhile races who possess their own versions of souls and minds.

Or else... according to other, newer Christian thinkers... might it be behooved upon human beings to be the messengers who forge outward to the cosmos and deliver the good news of faith and salvation that originated at Calvary? You can see that there's a wide variety of alternatives to the simpleminded (if remarkably honest) writer's avowal that any ET life would smash the Bible to bits!

Of course all of these are deep thoughts arising out of a basic premise - Original Sin - that I consider to be grotesque and preposterous and, indeed, a most-foul insult to God, portraying him as a petty, vengeful little egotist -- about right for a cramped, pathetic little cosmos, a mere 60 centuries in length. But no match for the deity who set in motion a vast multiverse of fourteen thousand million years and more worlds than any human mind could ever conceive.

While I look askance upon the entire worldview, which snubs the very idea of a capable and loving God, I do find it fascinating to parse all the sub-set ideas that naturally emerge from that mythos. Lewis and the others were anything but stupid!

Certainly the “let’s go interstellar and spread the word" Christians are more likable and bearable than those yearning for a nasty, genuinely satanic Book of Revelation apocalypse.

Still, even for those dim enough to want the sad-cramped “creation” while believing fervently in the (deeply wrong) notion of a spiteful God, even for them, there are so many possibilities and options. Alas, such thinking as sunk low since Lewis. Part of the modern allergy among the faithful, toward anything remotely resembling ambitious thought.

== Will We Abandon Outer Space for Inner? ==

With my new novel EXISTENCE I plumb deeply into the problem of altruism or loyalty in robots and AI. Isaac Asimov dealt with the issue by positing his famous Three Laws of Robotics... then decrypting over the years many ways that such rigid rules might go wrong. Now Swiss researchers have used virtual robotic simulations to gradually “evolve” cooperative or altruistic traits, by allowing robots to sacrifice themselves in order to ensure successful kin. They found “greater food-sharing in groups where robots were more related.... The more closely related the robots, the quicker they cooperated. It shows how general the [theory] is, whether you are an insect, a human or a robot..."

Meanwhile, to see where all this may lead (at the super-optimistic end) have a look at this essay by one of the smartest guys I know... John Smart... who believes he knows the answer to the Fermi Paradox or the universal Great Silence among the stars. That all advanced civilizations discover the unlimited joys and opportunities of Inner Space! Getting small. Whereupon any individual might access (subjectively) infinite resources and accomplish almost anything.

Well, anything except travel to the stars. John deems that a cold, sterile and fruitless occupation, certain to repel most sapients, once they sample the glories within. “How are you gonna keep them out in the sky, once they’ve seen InnerSpace?” In fact, I am skeptical of this explanation for the Great Silence. It is a version of the Honey Pot hypothesis... that something becomes so alluring to ALL sapient-techno races that none of them forges forth to conquer the galaxy.

It had better be a damned effective honey pot! Because that one exception... say a ship full of Hell’s Angels who despise all that cyber crap and colonize another solar system... could be the one seed of like-minded descendants to fill the star-lanes.

Moreover, this hypothesis ignores the high likelihood that sophonts will want to at least learn about alien races, other cultures, other ways and strange entertainments, far across the great vacuum desert. Even after committing themselves to vast inner-cyber realms, they might still send emissaries, of the general type that I portray in Existence - crystalline worldlets containing their own immensities, though only a meter or less in size and durable enough to cross the empty interstellar realm.

Those who are wise will not abandon the objective universe, altogether, but will find ways to reach across it. To embrace vastness, as well as the voluptuously small.

A year of peril...And a year of promise

2011-12-31T21:07:00.000-08:00

As we look back upon 2011, let's take a bigger perspective by peering a century further in time. The year 1911 was amazing in many ways. Amundsen and Scott were racing for the South Pole's “last place on Earth” - illustrating how new technology can amplify both competence (when it is present) or else blithering stupidity. (Do rent the 1990s miniseries The Last Place on Earth.)

It is also the centennial of the publication - by Hugo Gernsback - of some of the earliest American science fiction --those gosh-wow Amazing Stories reflecting an era of unbridled optimism... just before the world crashed into decades of dogma, fury and tech-amplified war. Have a look at this brief appreciation of Gernsback.

I often reflect back upon the mood that prevailed in 1910, and 1911... and even 1912, when it looked as if the great genius progressive, Teddy Roosevelt, might come back to inspire even greater can-do enthusiasm. Inventions poured forth at a staggering rate, transforming the lives of millions in a rapidly-burgeoning middle class, suddenly possessed of cars, radios, refrigerators, vacuum cleaners, frozen foods, vitamins, train travel and access to the very sky itself. Which seemed to be no limit...

... till fewer than a dozen vapid members of an inbred oligarchy indulged in their worst moronic impulses and plunged the world into hell. The First World War was a calamity that simply did not have to happen. One might liken it to a spasm by the Olde Order against the surge of egalitarian hope that would soon make Czars and Kaisers obsolete... and it is a sample of the kind of rulership we’ll go back to, if oligarchy returns.

* Here’s a cool look at “100 years in 10 minutes.”

=== SOME POLITICS WE SHOULD ALL GET BEHIND! ===

* Want science and scientific issues to be debated in 2012? Is it about time for candidates to show if they know (or care) about actual facts? Half of US economic growth since 1945 came from scientific and technological advances (and a second “national debt clock” should show how deep the US government would be in the black, if it got minimal royalties off satellites, pharmaceuticals, electronics and so on!) Yet, that source of our power and wealth is languishing. Make it an issue! Donate to Science Debate 2012! Make President Obama and his opponents face this square-on. And see how bad (and good) it’s become.

* Want to get even more vigorous in defending the future from ambition-haters on both right and left! At the Extreme Futurist Festival in Marina del Rey, Dr. Kim Solez expanded on an idea from AI researcher Ben Goertzel: Could a holiday — a “Future Day” — help bring the ideas bouncing around the scientific world to the masses?

* Of course, if you really hanker to change the world in all the ways you think that it should change, visit my page about Proxy Power.

=== THE INTERNET OF THINGS? ===

Some original thinking is taking place, in the realm of transparency and the future of information flow. Starting from some riffs that I offered in The Transparent Society, a group centered around the notion of an “internet of things” has offered an Idea Contest that might be worth a look.

Are we heading toward the City of Control? The City of Trust? Or - as I suppose - the City of Reciprocal Accountability and positive -sum games?

Do you imagine that the choice between Big Brother and Reciprocal Transparency is far away? Think again. “The audio for all of the telephone calls made by a single person over the course of one year could be stored using roughly 3.3 gigabytes. Information identifying the location of each of one million people to that accuracy at 5-minute intervals, 24 hours a day for a full year could easily be stored in 1,000 gigabytes, which would cost slightly over $50 at today’s prices. For 50 million people, the cost would be under $3000.” See: Recording Everything: Digital Storage as an Enabler of Authoritarian Governments, a report from the Brookings Institution.

=== SCIENCE FICTION PERSPECTIVES ===

* The Toaster Project, by Thomas Thwaites - Making a toaster from raw materials. Very similar to the idea I keep pushing (and have for 20 years) for a TV series called REBUILDING EVERYTHING (FROM SCRATCH!) Also see Thwaites' TED talk on the toaster.

* Speaking of “toasters”... read The Future of Moral Machines, a fascinating discussion of the philosophical and practical problem of enhancing increasingly intelligent robotic systems with the ability to make “moral” choices. Also see: Unaccountable Killing Machines: The True Cost of U.S. Drones.

Then see a comprehensive rumination about Drone Ethics: Robots at War in The Atlantic. Alas, as is always the case at that magazine, there’s not even a whiff of respect for the advanced thinking about this topic that has appeared in the pages of thoughtful science fiction.

* Here's an accumulation of articles and speculations by David Brin about science fiction. What is the tense relationship between SF and fantasy? How can both genres help kids and help civilization? Is the coming transparent society inspired by sci fi? What about future visions of biology? The environment? Plus Asimov! Dune! and cool Youtube surprises.

* Why would aliens want to invade us? Phil Plait does a great job dipping in the shallow end with this whimsical take-down of movie cliches....

Sure, most movie reasons seem pretty lame. Resources? Much easier to get from comets/asteroids. Our bodies? Lame excuse; they could breed cattle to carry their implanted parasite-young. And why attack JUST when we’re ready to defend?

Still there are others. Other worrisome possibilities you've likely never imagined. Stay tuned for... Existence!

=== SCIENCE MISCELLANY FROM 2011! ===

And now a science potpourri!

* Natural bridges over the Marianas Trench -- At least four bridges span the ocean depths!

* Comet Lovejoy - the comet that streaked the sun... and lived! From the International Space Station! A newfound comet defied long odds on Dec. 15, surviving a suicidal dive through the sun's hellishly hot atmosphere coming within 87,000 miles (140,000 kilometers) of our star's surface. Researchers expected the icy wanderer to be completely destroyed. But Comet Lovejoy proved to be made of tough stuff. A video taken by NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) spacecraft showed the icy object emerging from behind the sun and zipping back off into space. Here’s to comets... and cometologists! (And learn more at Heart of the Comet.)

* Faster than light neutrinos? Click on the video.

* Duh! moments from science!

* Artist Andy Gracie is attempting to breed a strain of fruit fly that could survive on Titan, Saturn’s largest moon.

* This is fun: Explore the slingshot effect.

* Watch flying robots build a 6-meter tower.

* Somebody try out bottlenose.com/ and report back to the rest of us?

* Is solar power experiencing a major price breakthrough? Actually, I see SEVEN new techs that might (perhaps) experience profound breakthroughs in the next four years or so.

* Capable of producing a beam of light so intense that it would be equivalent to the power received by the Earth from the sun focused onto a speck smaller than a tip of a pin, scientists claim that a new laser planned to be built in Europe could allow them boil the very fabric of space – the vacuum.

=== Even MORE Miscellaneous! ===

* Coffee & Power, an online network for connecting people together to hire each other for small jobs, or “missions,” has opened its first official workclub in Santa Monica, CA. It’s the first expansion of Philip Rosedale’s (Second Life) “meta-company” outside the San Francisco Bay Area.

* With 3-D printing, manufacturers can make existing products more efficiently—and create ones that weren't possible. before. Meanwhile, professional solid modeling tools such as AutoCAD and SolidWorks and 3-D printer kits costing less than $1,500 are making 3-D printing cost-effective and time-saving.

That’s is for 2011.

Let's make 2012 the year that gloomy forecasts fail. I plan to finish the year, marking the solstice on the steps of a Mayan temple!

And I hope we all will strive to prevent Robert Heinlein's dread foretelling of Nehemia Scudder! Welcome to 2012. May it not be a year of twits shouting Armageddon, or dopey nostalgia! May it be the year of restored science, confidence and calm, adult negotiation... and a restored sense of delight in the future.

Santa frets about melting North Pole! Call N. Korea “Chinese”! Plus who is anti-science?

2011-12-22T13:17:00.000-08:00

* All right, it’s a simple though not-so-cheery meme. But it mixes warm and fuzzy mythology with deep-important truth. Poor Santa Claus is in trouble! Tell every child you know that the U.S. Navy is in full tilt preparation for an “ice-free arctic.” Our admirals don’t think there’s the slightest “controversy” over human generated climate change. The Navy’s Arctic Roadmap states, "the current scientific consensus indicates the Arctic may experience nearly ice-free summers sometime in the 2030s." Yes Virginia, that includes the North Pole. The Navy knows what’s coming and they are hard at work getting ready... as are the Russians.

So, why tell children? Especially around Yuletide? Because maybe fear for Santa Claus might help them get through to knucklehead parents, who clutch beliefs that are far, far more mythological than jolly old gift-giving elves.
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== Taxes? My Oncle lives in Dollars, Taxes! ==
* My in-depth exploration of reasons to enact a “transaction tax” on hyper-fast Wall street predatory computerized trading is now permanently posted online. See why a teensy 0.1% fee might save us from Terminator!

* As for the current hoo-row over taxes, in general? Who'd have thunk that the best investigative journalism in America would be at Rolling Stone and Vanity Fair? Seriously, read this cogent and informative article. Sure, the author has a political axe to grind. But most of the people he quotes are conservatives and republicans, many of whom served Ronald Reagan! And the facts speak for themselves.

Aw, heck. Ask your uncle who is steamed about taxes whether he thinks they are at a historical high, since 1935... or low? Ask whether he thinks the federal share of our nation’s GDP is low? Or high? And if rates are their lowest in 80 years, then why is his top priority to shrink them even further - only for the rich?

== What to do about the “Hermit Kingdom”? ==

* All right, speaking of elves... or rather, nasty dwarves... the passing of leadership in North Korea to the latest Amazing Kim is provoking endless ruminations amid the pundit caste and blogosphere. But seriously, what’s your solution? The Hermit Kingdom tipped over, long ago, into jibbering kakocracy. Nuclear armed, with tens of thousands of hidden artillery tubes aimed at Seoul, its ruling caste lives by extortion, telling its people that the bags of rice they get, with American flags on them, are “tribute from Yankees who are terrified of the Dear Leader.

Compare North Korea, as viewed from space, to any other nation on Earth. (It's dark as a cave.) Visitors to North Korea attest that the average young person, who is not a member of the officer caste, is two to five inches shorter than their southern cousins. What to do about this intractable horror story? I have a suggestion... it is obvious and yet no one but this opinionated, undiplomatic contrarian will ever mention it... for reasons that are also obvious.

Declare that we consider North Korea to be the 23rd province of China.

Look, I’ve said before that I respect the neo-Confucian approach taken by the mercantilist Chinese leadership caste. I don’t agree with it - in some ways vigorously - but I can grasp what they are trying to accomplish and overall they have been managing a miracle... financed by Americans via Walmart. (It helps that their leaders arise out of engineering, unlike our parasitical business school grads.) Look, if the Western Enlightenment fails - and I will die fighting to defend it - then Eastern-Confucian noblesse oblige seems the least-bad of all the alternatives.

But seriously, when we’re talking about North Korea, can there be any question? That brutal mini-state is entirely a creature-creation of China. It was fostered and guarded by Mao’s armies in the 1950s. It is defended in the UN by Chinese Security Council vetoes. Its economy is kept running by Chinese-subsidized energy, coal, iron and grain. China sells the sole-core North Korean institution - its army - nearly all the weapons and equipment they use. “Special zones” are completely run by Chinese companies and ministries. Above all, the Hermit Kingdom continues to exist and maintain its wretched rule by Chinese sufferance.

Is there any rational way to perceive the People’s Republic of China as anything other than the true operator of North Korea? Were they firmly to inform the top North Korean generals that it was time for change, those generals would obey.

One can envision why the Chinese leadership might want to maintain a Potemkin ruse of sovereignty, propping up the insupportable. Some reasons seem plausible... like preventing the appearance of a strong and united Korea on their doorstep. Other hypotheses erupt out of fevered imagination and paranoid-Hollywood scenario-building. For example, what better place to engage in experiments that go far beyond the limits of decency, anywhere except in the Kim family’s psychotic realm?

Currently, by accepting the fiction of North Korean autonomy, we allow the Chinese top leadership to shrug aside responsibility for this festering canker on the world’s lip. But why accept this convenience, from which we derive zero benefit? No question that the “23rd province” assertion would be a bold and aggressive diplomatic move! For several reasons. First, because China claims that Taiwan is province number 23! All right, we’d have to linguistically finesse around that. Perhaps by calling NK an “autonomous region, like Tibet.”

Also, of course, we’d have to assert that such a situation isn’t right! Proclaiming the north to be sovereign Korean territory, occupied as a satrapy by puppets of a neighboring regime. While demanding long term that Korea be unified, we might also insist at least that the occupying power govern well. Moreover, if people are starving in this satrapy, the onus falls in one place. On one doorstep.

No question, this is dicey territory. Moreover -- and let’s be clear -- I am not even asserting that this proposal is wise. I am open to all alternatives. Still, this should be on the table. Mentioning the un-mentioned possibility... that’s my job. Moreover, even leaking that the US is thinking about this might send a useful message.

One thing is clear; the status quo cannot stand. Such a declaration would serve notice to the Chinese Leadership caste that - despite their other accomplishments - this is a problem they can evade no longer. Whatever is done in-and-by North Korea is their responsibility. From misuse of nuclear weapons... all the way to future lawsuits that might be filed by millions of very short Koreans... there are many disincentives against allowing this nightmare to continue. But only if the persons who are truly responsible, and have the power, are told that this is their responsibility.

== Political Miscellany ==

* The Skeptoid offers a list of the Top Ten Anti-Science Web Sites. It is informative and surprisingly apolitical... well, in the sense that it assails jibbering nonsense generated by lefty-idiots in equal numbers to right-wing idiots. I’ve always avowed that the degree of insanity seems equal at both extremes. The big difference is between the mere tens of thousands who attend to one end’s nonsense, vs tens of millions who march to the opposite drum. Indeed, and illustrating this point, what’s missing from the list of virulently anti-science web locales? The site that attacks science more intensely and effectively than any other?

Fox.

* Want science and scientific issues to be debated in 2012? About time for candidates to show if they know (or care) about actual facts? Half of US economic growth since 1945 came from scientific and tech advances, yet that's languishing. Make it an issue. Donate to Science Debate 2012. And see how bad (and good) it’s become.

* Think Warren Buffett is an aberration? Read about Charles Feeney, a multi billionaire who wears a $15 watch, who is giving it all away - in ways that make a big difference. He recently gave $350 million to Cornell, to create a vast new science and technology campus on Roosevelt Island, right next to Manhattan. Given that 50% of our economic growth since 1945 came from S&T innovation, that's called "putting your money to good use." It's true patriotism.

* I’ll keep saying it. Though I find him 50% crazy, I also think Newt Gingrich is by far the most interesting and entertaining Republican candidate, displaying moments of brainy and insightful cogency. Take this: “Newt has been warning of the danger of an electromagnetic pulse (EMP)—a burst of radiation created by a high-altitude nuclear explosion... that could take down electrical systems over hundreds or thousands of miles... knocking us back to the 19th Century. ‘In theory, a small device over Omaha would knock out about half the electricity generated in the United States,’ he was quoted as saying.”

Alas, we then move back into crazy territory. “In Gingrich’s view, the threat of an EMP attack justifies actions such as preemptive strikes on the missile installations of nations such as Iran and North Korea.” Well, Barry Goldwater was 50:50 in much the same way. But gosh do I miss him now!

In fact, as Scientific American points out, the primary target of an EMP wouldn’t be ground-based power systems. It would be satellites. Moreover, the best defense would be a small, $50 million a year program to foster the moving of EMP resistant technologies out of the military and into civilian electronics. This should have been started decades ago. By now, we’d see this worry as quaint... instead of deeply worrisome.

* Aw heck, as long as we're Newting... and in fairness? I won't be soon forgiving Nancy Pelosi for what she did - or failed to do - as Speaker of the House. Cynically trading away what she considered a low priority to democrats, re-establishing the Congressional Office of Science and Technology Assessment. That independent analysis agency used to give congress-folk an extra set of eyes, to double-check on matters that involve scientific appraisal... in other words, everything. OSTA had been chucked out by Newt Gingrich and his pals in 1995. (Now why would they want to do that?) But Madam Speaker now bears almost-equal blame. She flubbed a chance to do fantastic good, with a flick of her wrist.

* Drones and robots are increasingly replacing humans on the battlefield: intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, even “targeted killing”. They’re particularly good at the 4 D’s: dull, dirty, and dangerous jobs, as well as “dispassion”, the ability to react without emotion. Here’s an extensive look at some future scenarios, worthy of discussion regarding the ethical consequences. Allow this only if they carry a "reporter bug" that tells society everything they do!

* In the Stanford Law Review, Ryan Calo discusses how domestic surveillance drones will challenge our notions of privacy, calling them “the visceral jolt society needs to drag privacy law into the twenty-first century.” As small as an insect, public and private camera-carrying drones will be available to police, journalists, paparazzi, and hobbyists. Would that these scholars had the courage and breadth and class to study and acknowledge the vast literature of cogent science fiction prethinking that's already gone into these issues.

* And finally, coming full circle: Current climate models underestimate the potential impact of permafrost. Warming temperatures are melting permafrost, frozen ground that underlies nearly one-fourth of the Northern Hemisphere. One recent estimate indicates that this permafrost contains twice as much carbon as the entire atmosphere. Released as carbon dioxide or methane, this could exacerbate global warming…a runaway cycle. We can't afford anymore to coddle fools.

Are we "evolving" toward becoming "marching morons"?

2011-12-17T16:28:00.000-08:00

Evolutionary biologist Mark Pagel recently spun a fable for The Edge about selection and drift in the human attribute of innovative creativity. His assertion in Infinite Stupidity is that the very same civilization we built through innovation becomes a driving selective force, one that winds up sapping innovative genius from the gene pool.

Now at one level, Professor Pagel's argument is just a reiteration of the old "marching morons" notion - once popular in 1950s science fiction, as well as the earlier Eugenics Movement - that the long term effect of complex civilization must be to reward mediocrity and propel a decline in net human intelligence.

Pagel starts with a reasonable premise: that as humans created ever-larger societies, featuring rapid communication among greater populations, more people would benefit from copying the innovations produced by a few truly creative individuals.

So far, that seems pretty obvious. Cultural dissemination of new techniques started really burgeoning about thirty to forty thousand years ago, around the same time that trade networks clearly developed, with seashells adorning necklaces in the Alps, for example.

The late Paleolithic Renaissance, at the dawn of the Aurignacian, erupted with astonishing abruptness after a hundred millennia of static technology. Within a few score generations - an eyeblink -- our ancestral tool kit expanded prodigiously to include fish hooks and sewing needles made of glistening bone, finely-shaped scrapers, axes, burins, nets, ropes and specialized knives that required many complex stages to create.

Art also erupted on the scene. People adorned themselves with pendants, bracelets and beads. They painted magnificent cave murals, performed burial rituals and carved provocative Venus figurines. Innovation accelerated. So did other deeply human traits - for there appeared clear signs of social stratification. Religion. Kingship. Slavery. War.

And -- for the poor Neanderthals -- possibly genocide.

What changed?

The cause of this rather rapid shift is hard to confirm, but Pagel seems to be implying (by my interpretation) that it was triggered by something as simple as an expansion of clan size - augmented by increased inter-clan trade.

So far so good.

Only then Professor Pagel does something I find wholly unjustified, even rather weird. He proposes that - amid this flurry of trade-enhanced innovation - the need for the trait of innovativeness would decline, on a per-capita basis, because the average person or small group would benefit by copying whatever came along.

"As our societies get larger and larger, there's no need, in fact, there's even less of a need for any one of us to be an innovator, whereas there is a great advantage for most of us to be copiers, or followers." In other words, what need to maintain the expensive capacity to create new ideas when you can simply borrow them from a small coterie of idea-guys, scattered across the continent?

Alas, Professor Pagel spins a just-so story that is conveniently and charmingly free of reference to historical or archaeological evidence. For example, he ignores the fact that innovation sped up, intensely and supra-linearly, as the number of individuals connected in a society increased.

According to Pagel's premise, that rate should not rise appreciably with increased communication! Rather, if the amount of innovation were simply satisfying a Darwinian need, then with an expanded community the per capita creativity resource supplying that need would atrophy until the need was barely met. With the minimally needed level now acquired and satisfied by trade. people would simply become more dull and parasitical - that's his theory. Only logically it would hold actual-total innovation at the same, pre-trade level.

Toynbee, Marx and Wills

I mentioned that this notion has a long history. Dour folk have long held that civilized life must have negative effects upon the gene pool, leading some, a century ago, to push eugenics legislation. But there are other glimmers from the past that merit mention.

For example, Karl Marx actually praised the cleverness and acumen of the bourgeois capitalist class, deeming them absolutely necessary for economic development. Their competitive creativity (and theft of labor-value from proletarians) would drive capital formation. Cyclically, the actual number of capitalists would see a secular decline with time as their trade networks expanded. In the end, Marx foresaw this brilliant class extinguished, after all the capital was "formed" and when their competitive cleverness was no longer needed. You can see how this eerily mirrors or foreshadows Pagel's teleology.

Another maven, who comes across better in light of real history, was Arnold Toynbee. His survey of the past led him to conclude that civilizations rise when they support and eagerly learn from their "creative minority" -- those who innovate useful solutions to rising problems. And societies fail when they don't. (In which case, does America's current war on science... and upon every other clade of mental accomplishment... forebode a coming fall?) In this light, Pagel's assertion seems dour, indeed.

A third, more recent voice is Christopher Wills, whose book Children of Prometheus contends that civilization, in fact, rapidly accelerates changes in the gene pool, propelling evolution ever-faster. I believe this case is very well-made, and wholly consistent with what really happened in the era discussed by Professor Pagel.

The Great Acceleration

In fact, after the Aurignacian and later Mesolithic phases, the pace of creativity only sped up, then exponentiated. Agrarian clans and then kingdoms allocated surplus food to specialists, rewarding them for talent and expertise, sometimes in accurate correlation to their effectiveness at innovation. (Though skill at persuasiveness - lying - was always a higher correlate. That trait has almost certainly been an evolutionary rocket; but more on that another time.)

Key point: with agriculture, the collection and allocation of food surplus became a substantial human reproductive driver, as subsidized specialist roles became common. Competitively striving to attain that status, youths who became scribes, blacksmiths, tool-makers, engineers and priests must have achieved enhanced reproductive ability almost equal to the feudal lords who soon dominated every society.

Hence, a proclivity for nerdiness would increase... though, of course, not quite in pace with an ever-rising tendency toward oligarchy. I'll admit that the trait most avidly reinforced was the ability of some men to pick up metal implements and take away other men's women and wheat... a trait that required not only strength but some cleverness and yes, innovation.

Nevertheless, the brain-lackeys - the priests and tool-makers and monument builders - certainly did well. And they passed on the traits that made them successes. So much for the dismally grouchy "marching morons" hypothesis.

All of this is clear from the historical record. I find it disappointing that Professor Pagel seemed so willing to spin us a vague tale without confronting any of it. Indeed, for an evolutionary biologist to weave such a story without referring to reproductive advantage seems very strange, indeed.

A Warning for the Future?

But it isn't finished. Pagel extrapolates to the modern age: "As our societies get bigger, and rely more and more on the Internet, fewer and fewer of us have to be very good at these creative and imaginative processes. And so, humanity might be moving towards becoming more docile, more oriented towards following, copying others, prone to fads, prone to going down blind alleys, because part of our evolutionary history that we could have never anticipated was leading us towards making use of the small number of other innovations that people come up with, rather than having to produce them ourselves."

He continues, "What's happening is that we might, in fact, be at a time in our history where we're being domesticated by these great big societal things, such as Facebook and the Internet. We're being domesticated by them, because fewer and fewer and fewer of us have to be innovators to get by. And so, in the cold calculus of evolution by natural selection, at no greater time in history than ever before, copiers are probably doing better than innovators. Because innovation is extraordinarily hard. My worry is that we could be moving in that direction, towards becoming more and more sort of docile copiers."

"Domesticated?" One is tempted to demand that the professor speak for himself, not this wild spirit!

But ah, well. So we come down to the couch-potato argument. The question posed by Nicholas Carr and other cyber grouches who contend that Google is making us Stoopid. As I have said before, any sensible person can look around and see plenty of signs that suggest the cynics may be right. Their criticisms may be more inherently useful than the giddy proclamations of cyber-transcendentalists, like Clay Shirky. Criticism is welcome... even if I find both sides romantically unrealistic.

Nevertheless, look, when you boil it down, this innovative decline thing is just an assertion, bereft of even correlative evidence, let alone proof. Sure, ninety percent of Internet activity is crap. But that could be said about everything, all the time, especially during all the eras leading up to this one. And while Pagel's lament may elicit voluptuous schadenfreude, it is hardly utilitarian or helpful.

If civilization relies upon Toynbee's creative minority, depending on the small percentage of creators more and more, then that minority had better buckle down and find ways to get more support from those marching (copycat) masses. Duh?

Help Make a Trailer for my next book? Plus Media Thoughts - and Coolstuff!

2011-12-15T21:04:00.000-08:00

Before diving into media and strange science, here’s a tentative announcement.
I’m thinking about a contest to create a mini-trailer for my new novel (coming in June) - a great big near-future science fiction saga called EXISTENCE.

I've already sent feelers to the Computer Graphics society, whose members made some shorts based on my uplift books for an earlier contest. I’m also pondering a call for folks interested in doing a live action version. Like this one done by my friend Jeff Carlson for his terrific book Plague Year.

Can't afford to offer a huge prize for the winner and time is short. But I can promise a nibble... plus publicity and loads of fun. And a chance to read the novel early, for free! Starting with these novellas already posted online.

The Smartest Mob (a parable about times to come!)
Shoresteading
Aficionado

== Using Science Fiction to Excite the Future (minds) ==

* Do young people - and the teachers and librarians who work with them - benefit from science fiction? Do you know any educators who might want to learn more about the genre of literature that is fascinated with change? And that does more than any other to inspire children to strive for success? A nice, two page article describes several ongoing efforts to help educators learn about this field. It includes a short note, as well, from one of your favorite authors. See also this site summarizing several resources for teaching sci fi!

* If you know any educators, send them to www.AboutSF.com to access excellent materials that teach about the literary genre of bold ideas, willing to discuss the inevitability of change.

== Fanboy Gushing about Firefly ==

Okay, I have spoken before about that great - if tragically brief - sci fi miniseries. My kids (and wife) adore Firefly. But one episode stands out, written by Joss Whedon himself. “Mrs. Reynolds” is just plain dazzlingly well-written from beginning to end. Every sentence - even those just tossed aside - sparkles with cleverness and fun and even (sometimes) real depth. That’s a fellow I’d buy several beers.

== More Science! ==

* A hundred years late, is Oswald Spengler finally proving right about the Decline of the West? Take this factoid:
”It isn't just Americans concerned about science, though Europeans seem a little dramatic about it. Currently, America can only employ 16% of its Ph.D.s in academia, what most academics regard as 'science', so there is a glut of post-docs and not enough grants to give them all jobs, but Europeans have a different sort of problem - young people are not going into science at all.”

* In about 18 months a newfound object that’s probably a small, compact gas cloud, will draw near the cosmic orifice at the center of our Milky Way galaxy. Its orbit will carry it to within about 36 light-hours of the black hole, roughly twice the distance now separating NASA's Voyager 1 from the sun. If it is a cloud, then some of the material will get sucked in! (A mere star would likely plunge on by, in a very tight orbit.) Very exciting, if this makes the Beast come alive!

* To gather material from asteroids or comets (re my doctoral thesis!), NASA is developing a sample-collecting space harpoon which could be projected "with surgical precision" from a spacecraft hovering above the target. Seriously, this is what I would have done with my life, if you folks hadn’t bribed me into the arts, instead.

* Best-yet candidate "life-world"? The host star lies about 600 light-years away from us toward the constellations of Lyra and Cygnus. The star, a G5 star, has a mass and a radius only slightly smaller than that of our Sun, a G2 star. As a result, it is about 25% less luminous than the Sun. The planet orbits the G5 star with an orbital period of 290 days, compared to 365 days for the Earth, at a distance about 15% closer to its star than the Earth from the Sun. This results in the planet's balmy temperature of around 72 degrees Fahrenheit. It orbits in the middle of the star's habitable zone,

This new exoplanet is the smallest-radius planet discovered in the habitable zone of any star to date. It is about 2.4 times larger than that of the Earth, putting it in the class of exoplanets known as super-Earths. Alert! When you read estimated “temperatures” for such planets, remember it is the raw, black-body calculation based on the albedo of rock and the net insolation at that distance from its star. As we’ve seen on Earth, Venus and Mars, the greenhouse effects of an atmosphere change everything!

== Humor! ==

* See some cool T-Shirt logos that satirize all the blatantly silly things that are today touted as "controversial" instead of just plain wrong, but the now-lamentably crazy "history" channel, by Fox and by loons on both the left and right.

* Two bitingly funny comics online: A History of the World (according to The History Channel) from Tree Lobsters, and Life After College, from Abstruse Goose.

== The Frontiers of Life! ==

* Know any researchers or organizations that might be very interested in a possible Conference on Uplift? Yes, regarding “the plausibility of altering the problem-solving or linguistic intelligence of higher animals or humans.” Oh it would spark a HUGE row! And get everybody on TV.

* Dolphin language? Here’s new research that pretty much verifies my own hypotheses. “Researchers in the United States and Great Britain have made a breakthrough in deciphering dolphin language in which a series of eight objects have been sonically identified by dolphins. Team leader, Jack Kassewitz of SpeakDolphin.com, ‘spoke’ to dolphins with the dolphin’s own sound picture words. Dolphins in two separate research centers understood the words, presenting convincing evidence that dolphins employ a universal “sono-pictorial” language of communication.

“...(he) recorded dolphin echolocation sounds as they reflected off a range of eight submersed objects, including a plastic cube, a toy duck and a flowerpot. He discovered that the reflected sounds actually contain sound pictures and when replayed to the dolphin in the form of a game, the dolphin was able to identify the objects with 86% accuracy, providing evidence that dolphins understand echolocation sounds as pictures. Kassewitz then drove to a different facility and replayed the sound pictures to a dolphin that had not previously experienced them. The second dolphin identified the objects with a similar high success rate.”

Sonic glyphs based on shape reflections? Quick! To the Predictions Registry!

* Proof that the unconscious ponders complex matters that affect WHEN or IF we consciously become aware of things.

* Woolly mammoth to be brought back to life from cloned bone marrow 'within five years'. Um... predicted in both EARTH and EXISTENCE.

* Remember the “arsenic life” that was claimed from a poison lake in California? A year later, it is still very interesting, but arsenic has NOT replaced phosphorus in the crucial sites along the spine of DNA. Hyped up? Well... probably.

== Politically Relevant ==

* Federal regulators have tentatively approved a nuclear reactor designed by Westinghouse Electric Co. that could power the first atomic plants built from scratch in the U.S. in a generation.

* In terms of weather, 2011 has made it into the record books. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced that during this year, there have been 12 different weather disasters that cost more than $1 billion. The previous record was nine in 2008.
Given these two facts -- um, who are the flexible pragmatists and who are the dogmatists who drove us off a cliff in the first decade of the century?

== And the Land of the Bizarre ==

* Afterlife is a system that involves turning a deceased human body back into its core chemical energy. The decedent is placed into the special Afterlife coffin which features small drains in the bottom. The drains lead to microbial fuel cells beneath the coffin that thereupon charge batteries that loved ones can recover and emblem "Dad" and use for some purpose stated in dad's will.

* Smell your way to intuition? "Participants in the study assessed, with some degree of accuracy, how outgoing, anxious or dominant people were after only taking a whiff of their clothes. The study is the first to test whether personality traits can be discerned through body odor."

== Useful? Or Chilling? ==

* LocAid can use your full cell phone number to figure out exactly where you are right now. Banks and card issuers are interested in checking where their customers are—as a way to reduce fraud—and of retailers interested in sending deals to people nearby. Currently, the company claims to have a very strongly protective privacy policy in which each request for the info must be presented to the cell phone owner on an opt-in basis. A reasonable model, if it works and if it is maintained with power in our hands.

* New research published in Science suggests it may be possible to use MRI to induce brain activity patterns to improve performance on tasks involving visual performance, such as playing the piano. This worked even when the subjects weren’t aware of what they were learning. Inspiring or creepy?

== The Paranoia Lamp is Lit! ==

"The commentator says there's "absolutely no explanation" for the nearly Mercury-size mystery object other than that it's a spaceship. "What object in space cloaks itself and doesn't appear until it gets hit by energy from the sun?" siniXster asked.”

Hmmm. well, the official explanation is convincing. Notice how the “ship” is aimed right at Mercury, and happens to lie over the pixels where the planet had been the previous day or two. The supports the STEREO spacecraft managers’ explanation that they “subtract the previous day’s pixels in order to enhance the coronal mass (which is normally quite dim). That subtraction creates a visual artifact where the planet had been, the day before.

Still, these “Aha!” moments are fun! They show how excitable amateurs with keen eyes can interact non-destructively with the professionals. That is exactly the process for a society that blends common-sense skepticism up-top with a T-Cell approach for swarming those low-probability events... one out of a million of which might turn out to be way-huge.

What is criminal and insane has been the recent trend by cynical media to pit us against each other. And especially the recent campaign to turn 1/3 of Americans against every profession of intellect, knowledge and skill.

Guest Thinkers Contemplate Culture War and the Hijacking of Capitalism

2011-12-14T08:08:00.000-08:00

Continuing in a political vein... I'll hand over the floor to a few Large Minds - some of them pals - offering them a chance to lay some politically redolent thoughts on you.

== Two Successful Capitalists Decry The Hijacking of Capitalism ==

Let’s hear from two fellows who are unabashed capitalists and acolytes of Adam Smith... just like Warren Buffett and Bill Gates (and me!)... starting with one of the world’s top/respected pundits on technology industry, Mark Anderson, CEO of the Strategic News Service:

“For me, there is no more poignant example of the Bush 9.11 era, and the need to get beyond it now. Like two slides, I picture, first: an army of soldiers surrounding bin Laden in the mountains of Tora Bora, and then being ordered by Team Bush to wait until the locals can get there and participate, at which point the enemy has escaped.

“I compare that slide to the story of this year: after a year in secret investigation and preparation, Team Obama finds a likely target compound in Pakistan, orders in Seal Team Six via stealth choppers, uses overwhelming force, and shoots to kill. DNA samples are taken to confirm ID, and the body is dumped ignominiously in the ocean, with no propaganda pics for the enemy, and no burial process or site to rally round.” What a difference. And yet, which man is called a “wimp”?”

(I will soon put up an essay appraising the different ways that democrats and republicans use military might and wage war. You’ll be astonished by how stark it is, like night and day. Almost like two different species.)

Another guest voice is venture capitalist Nick Hanauer, a solid member of the 1%, explains the problem of wealth disparity:

"There can never be enough superrich Americans to power a great economy. The annual earnings of people like me are hundreds, if not thousands, of times greater than those of the average American, but we don’t buy hundreds or thousands of times more stuff. My family owns three cars, not 3,000. I buy a few pairs of pants and a few shirts a year, just like most American men. ....I can’t buy enough of anything to make up for the fact that millions of unemployed and underemployed Americans can’t buy any new clothes or enjoy any meals out. Or to make up for the decreasing consumption of the tens of millions of middle-class families that are barely squeaking by, buried by spiraling costs and trapped by stagnant or declining wages. ... Rich businesspeople like me don’t create jobs. Middle-class consumers do, and when they thrive, U.S. businesses grow and profit. That’s why taxing the rich to pay for investments that benefit all is a great deal for both the middle class and the rich."

Now, this one-percenter is a hero. I like him and agree with what he says. But still, just among us chickens, the point he's trying to make is a bit more complicated than it appears. Supply Siders do not expect 1%ers to help the economy by buying stuff (which is high velocity stimulation), but rather by investing in new “supply” systems like plants and equipment and factories and inventions.

The irony? This is exactly what Hanauer and other venture capitalists are doing! Indeed, I believe that what they do - (starting new companies that create new goods and services) - should be rewarded with very low capital gains taxes. It is risky and does a lot of good. And does that make me a supply-sider?

The problem is that the Supply Side cult as a whole is wedged. It envisions ALL one-percenters to be risk-taking primary investors in new enterprises and new employment and new productivity, like Hanauer. Instead most are passive recipients of dividends and capital gains from established stocks, and beneficiaries of immense tax-breaks. They do not use increased income to create new productive enterprises, or jobs. They use it to get richer. Period.

This is catastrophic during a depression, when you want money to be high velocity, not clutched tight or sitting in a vast scrooge portfolio, but passed from dockworker to barber to dentist to grocery chain to janitor to gas station. Supply siders tout the he lowest-velocity use of money, rewarding the least economically useful activity, which has never ever ever done what the supply siders claim it would do.

== Why Culture War? ==

Yes, Phase Three of the American Civil War has been foisted on us by powerful, cynical men for their own political and economic gain. But there have to be deeper things going on. Psychological drives that those men cleverly exploit.

Our next guest, researcher and science fiction author Dr. Charles Gannon, has offered his own diagnosis of Culture War and why so many millions of our neighbors nod along with Glenn Beck, marching willingly to enlist in the Great Big War on Science... and on teachers, doctors, journalists, civil servants, and so on, biliously hating every American knowledge profession.

(Go ahead and ask your crazy uncle to name ONE major center of American intellect and knowledge that isn’t under attack by Fox and co. Make it a wager!)

Chuck Gannon suggests that in this modern, dizzying age, people respond to that most primal of all fears: fundamental loss of control.

"In short, people are realizing more and more that they know less and less about almost everything in their lives. How many people understand what is going on with the euro and how that's part of a much bigger picture? How many understand ANYthing about how their smartphone works--not what it does, but how it WORKS? What are the ethics of cloning? Of copyright? Of no child left behind versus the death of rigor and excellence?

"Head in hand, they feel the grey matter between their hands threatening to explode. And they want relief. And they have their eureka moment. "I know! I will adopt a stance! And so what if I can't figure out my own stance? I can BORROW one!

"I will shop amongst the bazaar (bizarre) of demagogues and choose the one that says the things I like best. And the details--well, they're only details. Someone else will think about those--and besides, I'm fed up with details. (Secretly, where they can't even hear it: "all those details I don't understand make me feel stupid....")

"I suppose, at some level, it has ever been thus. However, I think the Tofflerian Waves and Culture Shocks geometrically amplify the discomfort. The distance between the haves and have nots is growing, yes--but I think the separation between the knows and know-nots is growing just as fast. It is not that they ARE stupid, but they feel that way.

"And in a culture which panders to couch-potato passive consumption of media and goods, dumbs down the critical reasoning component of schools (and life), and in which an integrated view of "reality" moves further and further beyond the reach of even the most cognitively proactive folks, they hardly have the role-models or encouragement, or preparation to FIGHT through the tides of uncertainty in their lives and set sail upon the high seas of perpetual indefinitude that is the modern world."

Worth pondering. Thoughts anyone?

== Call the GolgaFrincham B-Ark! ==

Our next guest, my cousin Jonathan Baskin, has some pretty cool insights into the pathetic world of Public Relations spin-doctoring.

“The public relations industry's trade association is running a campaign to come up with a new definition for PR. I can see the problem, since social media technologies have democratized the tweaking, spinning, and obfuscating of the truth that used to be the exclusive purview of PR professionals. In an age when anyone can be an expert on anything, every opinion is as valid as the next and no fact need go unchallenged, contradicted, or ignored. The mediascape has become a truth free zone. You’d think the PR people would have died and gone to heaven, but there’s no money to be made when nobody needs an intermediary to peddle access through those Pearly Gates.

"We’re all PR people now.”

== Good News? ==

In 2010 there were 34.3 births among every thousand girls between the ages of 15 and 19. That’s down 9 percent from 2009. And it’s the lowest number in nearly seven decades of reporting. The figure comes from a new report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention called Births: Preliminary Data for 2010. [Brady E. Hamilton, Joyce A. Martin and Stephanie J. Ventura] And it’s filled with interesting stats. For one, teen births have hit that record low. And that statistic includes more good news – birth rates are at record lows for all ethnic and racial groups, and even for younger teenagers.

The number of births to unmarried moms also declined. And pre-term births declined. The trend towards lower numbers is general - the birth rate fell overall by 3 percent. It’s also down for women in their twenties and thirties, according to a recent article in Scientific American.

So...let's see. In addition to all this good news... crime has plummeted. So has illegal immigration. (See below for details.)

The Soviets are gone and the terrifying muslim world is democratizing. Osama's dead.

Federal taxes consume less of the national income than at any time since 1950.

Tax rates are the lowest in 80 years.

So why are these the areas people scream about? Instead of all the ways things have genuinely gone worse? Oops. The long list of ways things went worse during the first part of this century.

== A Prediction I wish Never Came True.... Has ==

Shock! As retreat of Arctic sea ice releases deadly greenhouse gas. There are truly vast amounts of hydrated methane ices on the ocean floors. As temperatures rise, these will be released. And methane is far more powerful a greenhouse gas that CO2. Predicted in my novel EARTH.

== And finally... some political potpourri ==

* Said it before and I will keep saying it: I want a second “clock” set up next to the National Debt Clock, showing what our debt would have been by now, if the US government had been allowed to collect royalties, like a business, on its own inventions. Like the Internet, communications satellites, weather satellites, pharmaceuticals, microchips, weather forecasting, aeronautics and jet engines, and so on.... All were given to businesses and the world for free!

And that’s not a subsidy? Not socialism? Or better -- is it proof of the value of a mixed social contract, in which vigorous entrepreneuialism and competitive creativity have been fostered by a generally benign and responsive government? Do you doubt that the Alternative Debt Clock would be in the black and running backward?

If nothing else, it would graphically repudiate those now proclaiming that neither science nor government have any value.

* It's 1999. America rides high, making so much $$ off innovation we use WalMart to uplift a world middle class. Our Pax is unchallenged. A rich, scientific people. What mistakes would an enemy lure us into making, to change all that? Repeat Vietnam? Repeat our Civil War? Wreck our science and expert classes? How about all three? Read The True Cost of 9/11, by Joseph E. Stiglitz.

* See a vastly detailed and deeply disturbing article in Bloomberg about the Koch brothers -- getting richer with secret Iran sales. Seriously, read at least the first ten paragraphs or so.

* Think Adam Smith would have approved? Goldman-Sachs manipulates the world's aluminum supply AND makes money renting the storage space.

* Evidence for influence of the Saudi Royal House in American affairs has piled high, such as the way President George W. Bush openly spoke of having been “partly raised by” Prince Bandar bin Sultan and walks with him holding hands - a friendliness that showed whenAmericans were forbidden to fly for two days after 9/11, but every well-connected Saudi was rushed out of the U.S. and away from the reach of FBI interviewers, on luxury charters at taxpayer expense.

Lately, we’ve seen how Rupert Murdoch’s top partner at News Corp. and Fox is Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal, whose direct sway at Fox is not related in a recent article by Accuracy in Media. But connect the dots. The same media empire that is drumming up Culture War and spite toward all American scientific or intellectual castes... and the same one that pushed for the US to get mired in a decade of draining land wars in Asia. Hm.

* Wow, this was more interesting than I expected it to be. "On Debt, Democracy, and all that..." by Michael Hudson
* “Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich have promised to complete a nearly 1,950-mile fence to secure the U.S. border. Michele Bachmann wants a double fence. Ron Paul pledges to secure the nation's southern border by any means necessary, and Rick Perry says he can secure it without a fence — and do so within a year of taking office as president.”

Meanwhile, the actual rate of illegal immigration is plummeting. Many sources, including the Pew Hispanic Center, agree that the number of illegal immigrants in the United States peaked at 12 million in 2007, but then dropped by almost 1 million through 2009, and has largely held steady since then at about 11.1 million. Border Patrol apprehensions of illegal immigrants have also fallen sharply. In fiscal year 2011, which ended Sept. 30, the Border Patrol captured 327,577 illegal immigrants on the southwestern border — the lowest total in four decades.

* President Obama recently gave a speech in Osawatomie, Kansas, the same place where, back in 1910, Theodore Roosevelt said: "We grudge no man a fortune in civil life if it is honorably obtained and well-used," Roosevelt said, but added: "We should permit it to be gained only so long as the gaining represents benefit to the community."

Describing what he called a "new Nationalism," Roosevelt said it "regards the executive power as the steward of public welfare. ...It demands of the judiciary that it shall be interested primarily in human welfare rather than in property, just as it demands that the representative body shall represent all the people rather than any one class or section of the people."

* And finally, from Scientific American: “The Horn of Africa is in the midst of its worst drought in 60 years: Crop failures have left up to 10 million at risk of famine; social order has broken down in Somalia, with thousands of refugees streaming into Kenya; British Aid alone is feeding 2.4 million people across the region. That's a taste of what's to come, say scientists mapping the impact of a warming planet on agriculture and civilization.”

Gingrich, Asimov, and the "Flash" Computer-Trading Monster!

2011-12-10T18:48:00.001-08:00

Both Republican former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and Nobel prize winning Keynsian economist Paul Krugman have a trait in common. They grew up fervent science fiction fans, especially transfixed by the future-historical speculations of Isaac Asimov. Gingrich wrote about this influence that helped to shape his life.

“While Toynbee was impressing me with the history of civilizations, Isaac Asimov was shaping my view of the future in equally profound ways….For a high school student who loved history, Asimov’s most exhilarating invention was the ‘psychohistorian’ Hari Seldon. The term does not refer to Freudian analysis but to a kind of probabilistic forecasting of the future of whole civilizations. The premise was that, while you cannot predict individual behavior, you can develop a pretty accurate sense of mass behavior. Pollsters and advertisers now make a good living off the same theory.”

Here’s an interesting essay comparing Gingrich’s obsession with Isaac’s Asimov’s compelling sci fi memes. Writes Ray Smock: "Edward Gibbon saw the decline of Rome, Hari Seldon saw the decline of the galactic empire, and Newt Gingrich saw the decline of America." Further, Newt was attracted to the idea of one man shaping the destiny of an entire civilization. Smock adds, "History and fiction seem more exciting when there is decline. This gives heroes, visionaries, demagogues, and politicians something to fix."

As the similarly obsessed author of Foundation’s Triumph, who tied many of Isaac's loose ends, I'd have a thing or two to say to Newt! Could be an interesting intellectual tussle.

Still, this aspect to his background speaks well for him. Ten points. Out of....

== Why a Transaction Fee Might Save Us From The Terminator! ==

Here’s a vital issue under discussion (at last) on both sides of the Atlantic. Governments, both rich and poor, urgently need two things: a way to calm speculation in the financial markets and also new ways to raise revenue. In late September 2011, the European Commission proposed a tax or fee on financial transactions. This appears to be part of the newly announced European Union plan, with Britain the sole dissenter.

"A levy of just 0.1 percent -- or even just 0.05 percent -- levied on each stock, bond, derivative or currency transaction would be aimed at financial institutions’ casino-style trading, which helped precipitate the economic crisis. Because these markets are so vast, the fee could raise hundreds of billions of dollars a year - from the sector of the economy that made towering profits while being directly responsible for our present depression, " writes Philippe Doust-Blazey in the New York Times.

Read the article. But note that it does not mention the top reason for such a tax! That it might benefit real human investors by slowing finance and equity trading back down to the speed of human thought.

Would that necessarily be a good thing? The concocted rationalization you will hear, in opposition to this proposal, is called “market efficiency.” According to what’s become a bona fide cult, any process or innovation that allows ever-smaller increments of trade to happen ever-faster is “efficiency,” and that will automatically lead to better allocation of society’s capital, and thus a skyrocketing economy.

This is wrong in many ways, starting with the pure fact that the flourishing of fast-cybernetic trading has directly correlated with the steepest decline in the health of capital markets in a century. Indeed, the increase in market volatility that we have seen lately, with sudden spikes in apparently random directions, can be generally attributed to this trend.**

== The Core Advantage of Having a Seat ==

Then there is the small matter of "seating." Historically, stock markets (and bourses for commodities and credit instruments) began with some fellows gathering at an inn or under a tree to regularly sell or trade share certificates to each other, or on behalf of other folks. When this became big business and moved into dedicated buildings, these Members held "seats" and practiced the standard methods of guilds everywhere, limiting who could come to the table and buy or sell. All outsiders had to hire seated members to trade for them, while paying commission. Collusive club practices that have been banned (as recommended by Adam Smith) in most other parts of the economy!

Yes, a little market competition arrived recently, as E-Trade and other online member-brokers slashed commission prices for retail folks like you and me. New electronic methods made that possible. But also, the sheer volume of retail trading increased greatly, making up the difference.

What the seated members don't want us to notice is that flash-computerized trading gives them a new, incredible insider advantage over the rest of us. Even if you or I had a computer and program as good as the systems owned by Goldman-Sachs, we could never do what they do, because they are on the inside, making millions of flash trades for free!

You, on the other hand, would pay commission on every flash trade and - no matter how advanced or clever or wise your program - you would lose. In other words the transaction tax already exists. It is levied by members of an elite cabal who use it to prevent anybody else from doing what they can do with new technology.

This is not "market efficiency." It is the kind of market warping influence manipulation that Adam Smith despised.

But absolute refutation of the "efficiency" argument comes from a different direction. From Physics, biology and thermodynamics.

== Computers and markets emulate life ==

Living creatures thrive by finding a steep gradient of usable energy. Green plants utilize the fact that incoming sunlight is thermodynamically clean and much less entropic than the surrounding environment. (Greenhouse retention of Earth’s infrared radiation is thus intrinsically entropic.)

Some of this gradient is used by the plant to grow and reproduce, or else gets stored away, while some is lost as transaction cost.
Animals in turn consume plants for that stored useful energy, investing the time and effort to bite and chew and digest in order to benefit from some of the remaining gradient. Predators then pounce and bite and digest in the next stage. There are always losses with each transaction, hence the number of predators who can be supported at each scale gets smaller and smaller.

Along the way, each plant, herbivore and carnivore has parasites, intestinal worms and bacteria, etc., that grab some of that stored energy along the way. If they grab too much, the animal can’t get a steep enough or plentiful enough energy gradient and it dies.

Can you see it yet? Beyond a certain level, increasing the total number of transactions does not make living systems more efficient. It flattens all energy gradients and makes life unhealthy... even dead.

Oh, I can hear the objections! "Biology has no relevance to economics and finance." Well, we could argue about that endlessly, but it doesn't matter. Because entropy - indeed, all of the things I described above, like energy gradients - are vital factors in modern information theory. And information theory is the exact basis that fast-traders claim to have underlying everything they do.

== Returning to capitalism ==

Yes, the existence of a stock market does create a habitat-ecology for living companies to compete, to form alliances, to prey on each other, to seek out the capital they need in order to grow. Stock markets are vastly over-rated in the latter category, since the companies themselves benefit very little from wild swings in share price, except when offering NEW shares. (There should be substantial difference in the capital gains tax for new shares than for gains in the simple trading of old shares, an activity that only helps capitalism at very low efficiency.)

Still, you get synergies. When a human investor looks at a company’s new product and bets “this new gizmo or service is gonna go big!” and orders 1000 shares on E-Trade, at low commission, then there’s a good chance that capital will flow to a place that can benefit and utilize it, all motivated by the hope of a nice profit “meal.” Buyers always believe that the "true" value of the share is higher than the seller thinks, and yes, one of them will be proved wrong. That is the darwinistic aspect of equities markets. And under certain conditions - when all the players are getting fair access to all the information that they need and nobody's doing insider deals - it is good.

Defenders of computerized flash programs that dive in and pounce on any detected market trend, making millions of automatic trades, detecting or anticipating the decisions of human traders... these folks tout that they provide a service - “efficiency.” But which efficiency? For whom?

(Indeed, a whole new transatlantic fiber cable is being laid, just to enable a few brokerage firms to gain a couple milliseconds advantage; they’ll make billions. Do you see how that helps our market economy? I can’t.)

Here is the core article of faith among those pushing flash trading, as expressed to me in a note from a senior Wall Street partner . "There is a gap between the perceived value of the stock as desired by the buyer and perceived by the seller. That means the true and correct value isn't being accurately pegged. By jumping in between buyer and seller, we help eliminate this gap, causing the inefficient disparity to go away, helping the market settle on the true price."

Yee-god. Did you grasp that? He admits that he makes his living by leaping between buyer and seller, snapping up the value gradient that motivated the buyer to make an offer in the first place. And he manages to rationalize that he is doing a gooood thing. Good for buyer and seller. Good for markets. Good for capitalism. Good for himself. Well... one of the above.

Some have likened the ruthless voracity of these trading systems to the "tragedy of the commons," a very important concept you should be familiar with. Others suspiciously see the blizzard of computer-trading as a way to create a vast fog, behind which a few thousand oligarch golf-buddies can hide insider deals. Both views have some merit. But there is another that goes deeper to the heart-essence of the matter.

Want the exact parallel in nature? It is those gut parasites or e-coli or salmonella, or Typhus, who nibble away the gradient of potential profit that the human trader perceives, between the current asking price and what he or she feels the stock may soon be worth. It is the core logic of parasitism. If you ever read Douglas Adams's The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, these are the perfect passengers aboard the Golgafrincham B-Ark.

We need a small Transaction Fee not only because it will bring in revenue from the sector of the economy that made huge bonuses while wrecking our economy, restoring an emphasis on those providing new, competitively innovative goods and services.

The bigger reason is that human investors won’t care about - or even be aware of - a 0.1% trade fee.

But those computerized parasitical systems will howl in agony! Thus, it will give you a better chance to gain from your own savvy and insight, when you log into your E-Trade account.

== The Past and the Future ==

This kind of tax or fee is well-precedented. Enacted to help pay for the first world war, the "Securities Turnover Excise Tax" or STET worked just fine in the United States from 1914 to 1966. From 1960 to 1966, stocks were taxed at the rate of 0.1 percent at issuance and 0.04 percent on transfer. Bonds were taxed at the rate of 0.11 percent at issuance and 0.05 percent at transfer.

Indeed, there is a way that conservatives might find a way to rationalize a "fee" instead of a "tax," if all of the funds generated went first into paying the expenses of the SEC, the various insurance programs and other regulatory apparatus that they rely upon for the smooth functioning of their markets. (Thus removing these entities from the burdens shouldered by the public treasury.) Insurance funds could be greatly expanded to provide a cushion vs the next market contortion. Especially, funds could be spent on balancing and fairness on the international scene.

In fact, there are some even in the Belly of the Beast who have come around to supporting a return to this sensible measure. For example, David Harding, CEO of Winton Capital, $26B hedge fund, the world's largest quant-based fund, was quoted in the Financial Times: "I would be in favor of a low [financial transaction tax] if part of it was used to finance more supra-national regulation of markets."

Moreover, it is already the norm in most advanced countries. The EU is apparently instituting a STET across the board in the Eurozone and Britain, whose "city" bankers rule the roost, nevertheless has a STET. For comparison, the UK's STET is about .25 percent, and Taiwan just dropped theirs from .60 to .30 percent.

Nobel Prize winning economist Paul Krugman makes the case for reinstating the STET in more conventional terms than I do here: "But wouldn’t such a tax hurt economic growth? As I said, the evidence suggests not — if anything, it suggests that to the extent that taxing financial transactions reduces the volume of wheeling and dealing, that would be a good thing.

"And it’s instructive, too, to note that some countries already have financial transactions taxes — and that among those who do are Hong Kong and Singapore. If some conservative starts claiming that such taxes are an unwarranted government intrusion, you might want to ask him why such taxes are imposed by the two countries that score highest on the Heritage Foundation’s Index of Economic Freedom."

Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) and Rep. Peter DeFazio (D-Ore.) recently introduced The Wall Street Trading and Speculators Tax Act that would impose a minuscule tax of 0.03 percent on financial transactions, meaning that longterm investors would barely notice it. Even so, it could raise more than $350 billion to reduce the budget deficit over the next nine years, according to an analysis by the Joint Tax Committee, a nonpartisan congressional scorekeeping panel.

== The Real Reason to Worry ==

So, what does all of this have to do with The Terminator? (Okay, I saved the sci fi perspective till last. But it has a terrifying kind of plausibility.)

You'll recall the by-now cliched premise of that film - it supposes that (sometime in the future) the U.S. military would develop a super computer/program/system called "Skynet" that gradually becomes self-aware through a process that theoreticians call "emergence from complexity." This is actually taken very seriously by deep thinkers about artificial Intelligence. Indeed, our first encounter with AI may come exactly that way... by surprise.

Only... supposing that this malevolent AI comes from a military source? That's pure Hollywood. Such systems are built with high priority to systematic reporting, accountability, multiple redundancies, fail-safes and obedience to chain of command. No, there are other complex computer systems that seem far more likely to suddenly become self-aware in powerfully dangerous ways.

Take those high-speed trading systems we've been discussing. They are growing incredibly sophisticated, at a very rapid rate, absorbing and incorporating models of human psychology, with one goal in mind. To appraise and predict behavior patterns in order for the program to track and to pounce on opportunities for predatory trading. Competitive ferocity is the only criterion for success. Indeed, if you were to even propose inserting balancing factors like ethics or morality or accountability into such a project, you'd at-minimum be laughed down and probably fired.

A bizarre-sci-fi notion? MIT researcher Alexander Wissner-Gross suggested that the first true AI could emerge on a planetary scale from the developing system of interlocked exchanges for high-frequency financial trading, which could be seen as a developing global “brain” already operating at relativistic speeds.

Moreover, these systems are receiving billions in funding (including their own new transatlantic fiber cable) entirely in secret. There are no public agencies involved. No third party observers. No Congressional oversight committees. No supervision whatsoever. Laboratories developing new genetic strains of wheat are under closer accountability than cryptic Wall Street think tanks that may unleash the first fully autonomous AI... programmed deliberately to have only the behavior patterns, goals, attitudes and morality of parasites.

And so we see the ultimate reason to demand the Transaction Fee. At a low level - say 0.1% - it would never bother a private citizen who is optimizing his portfolio on E-Trade, especially if each trader gets a hundred or so "freebies" that come exempt from the tax. But it would remove the incentives that Wall Street "geniuses" now feel compelled by, to invest in these monstrous, hyper-fast trading programs that swamp the market in a blizzard of uncountable mosquito bites.

The fee (which could also help balance our budget) can be tuned to give that human a fighting chance and to discourage the very worst kind of artificial intelligence from leaping upon our necks out of the dark.

====== Notes ======

* In fairness, here is a report written by a finance industry think tank attempting to rebut the notion of transaction tax. It appears to make precisely the "efficiency" arguments I predicted. It appears, in any event, that the experiment will be run, if the new EU arrangements do include (as I've heard) a transaction fee. One reason that the British government (largely swayed by the "City" banks and trading firms) opted out. Go ahead and hear the other side out. Only remember, it all boils down to "supply side" mysticism that has never, ever seen any of its large scale predictions come true.

**For example, when asked to appraise why markets experience a sudden crash on May 6, 2011, without any apparent reason, Wall Street analyst Peter Cohan explained why such things are happening more often, and in wilder swings.

"... 70 percent of the volume of trading on the stock exchanges these days is done by something called flash traders, and that's basically computers that buy and sell stocks and hold them for about 11 seconds on average. So all of the discussions that we have the economy, politics, regulations, company earnings -- all that stuff -- there's just no way that a computer holding and selling a stock in 11 seconds is going to be able to do all of that analysis. So it's really all out the window. And there's really no clear-cut explanation for why stocks move up and down every day."

*** One expert wrote in, supporting the STET with a series of sample portfolio experiments, showing that any human trader will see almost no inconvenience of "friction" but that flash predatory programs would lose their advantage: "Now compare this to the cost of the transaction taxes. In my own case, my most frequently traded portfolio is once a month. A .05% tax would amount to a 1.0005^12 or ~ .6% drag on my CAGR. For my quarterly and annual portfolios, the numbers are ~.2% and .05% respectively. I would point out that this is small compared to the reduction in drag that came from decimalization that happened after I started running this portfolio.

"The useful thing is that this drag increases exponentially with trading frequency. Trade 1000 times and the drag is ~64%, 10,000 times and it is ~ 14,800%, a million times and my calculator overflowed. This means that even if you deem .6% too onerous for the monthly trader, you could go to .005% and the 64% bite occurs at the 10,000 trade level and 14,800% at 100,000 trades and now you can calculate that a million trades will give you a drag of ~5*10^23% all while costing me 0.06% a year on my monthly.

 "You could even feed this money into the SIPC so that this provides additional counterpart protection as compensation for the minor sums being charged to the low frequency trader. I would argue that any putative efficiency gain from high-frequency fully automated trading is more than outweighed by the systemic risks of putting the financial system largely in the care of systems whose behavior cannot be comprehensively understood, much less predicted. That this can be limited while imposing essentially zero net cost on retail investors strongly argues for doing so."

Taking on Ambitious Projects

2011-12-04T22:21:00.001-08:00

== Ambitious Projects: Compatible? Or Conflicting? ==

Our silly, insipid “culture war” crams people along an absurd “left-right axis” while ignoring the real fault line... It’s the chasm between those working for an ambitiously better future and those dragging us down into bitter nostalgia, yearning for a golden past that never was. The latter dwell on both ends of the political axis. (Though the infestation is far worse on one side.)

Here are several projects that share the former goal - an eagerness to transform tomorrow! Can we look past the surface politics to see a way forward for some of them?

--The Entrepreneur Access to Capital Act. If passed, this act would allow entrepreneurs to crowdfund. That means they could raise money over the Internet through relatively small donations from people they don't know. (This model has been pioneered - for the arts - by Kickstarter, but only for "donations" not for the crowd-sourced buying of actual investment shares.) The bill removes barriers to doing business – but this time for the little guy.


NewYorkerJuly12, 2004

--The Prevail Project is still kind of amorphous - one of many efforts to get people thinking about problem-solving and solution-generating in general, rather than obsessing over which tool to use - (e.g. market vs state). “In the Prevail Scenario, what really matters – as always – is not how many transistors we get to talk to each other, but how many ornery, imaginative, unpredictable human beings we can bring together to arrive at surprising ways to co-evolve with our challenges. Because only in this bottom-up way will humans really control their destinies, rather than have them controlled by our creations.”

The site is worth visiting, if for no other reason, than to read the quotation from William Faulkner’s Nobel speech: "I believe that man will not merely endure: he will prevail...."

--Not incompatible! Recall the “seasteading” proposals I discussed here, a couple of months back? Pointing out many aspects that no other pundits seem to have mentioned - a few of them critical, but mostly fascinating and several quite supportive! (I portray seasteading in my next novel.)

Well, things appear to be picking up. “Blueseed” is creating a high-tech visa-free entrepreneurship and technology incubator on an ocean vessel in international waters. “Our facilities will be a short ferry ride away from Silicon Valley so that great ideas and talent from around the world can live, work, and play while having convenient access to the San Francisco Bay Area.”

Of course, this is not quite creating a new national sovereignty. A vessel at sea is still subject to many external rules. It will be within the US 200 mile economic and environmental zone, but outside the 12 mile visa/passport/commercial law reach of the US or California. Those entities could make things hard, though, if Blueseed isn’t careful. Blueseed will also be answerable to Panama or Liberia or wherever they register their ship. This might help provoke a long-overdue fresh look at those flags of convenience.

In any event, I wish them luck! It sounds like a fun experiment. It might even make some money while stimulating productive activity. (Still I wonder. Won’t most visitors still have to transit through Bay Area airports? Who would use s ship to visit them, avoiding US customs? A pretty long voyage... to accomplish what? Hey, just askin’.)

--Thinking Big: io9 offers a list of Ten mega construction projects that could save the environment -- and the economy. These large-scale concepts (not all practical!!) include
- The 'Lunar Ring' of solar panels placed on the moon
- A space elevator to lift cargo into orbit
- The world's first carbon-neutral city
- Geothermal power plants that can extract lithium, zinc and manganese
- One far-out idea: coral-like chemically-engineered structures that would grow, self-repair and respond to the environment.

--Darpa’s Sci-Fi Ambitions: A few of Darpa's long-range projects include
- Cognitive Computing ( a computer chip that mimics a brain)
- The 100-Year Starship Study
- Synthetic blood
- A Battery-powered human exoskeleton
- Insect cyborgs
- A flying submarine
- Mind-controlled prosthetic limbs.

Some of these grand-scale projects have the potential to revolutionize our world. ...

As does great science fiction! Joe Haldeman’s new novel EARTHBOUND is the final volume in the trilogy that started with MARSBOUND, followed by STARBOUND. Visit Joe's websiteto learn more about this imaginative series.

We need an ambitious, future-oriented, scientific, problem-solving civilization filled with both creative competition and lots of heart. Believers in the positive game know we can have all of the above. We had better! And fie on those zero-summers who claim we have to choose!

== Post-Modernist Hilarity ==

Finally, lest anyone imagine that I think imbecilic anti-science fanaticism exists only on the radical right, let's go back two decades and dig this hilariously apropos 1st paragraph of a book review -- by the philosopher Matthew Cartmill -- of Donna Haraway's book, Primate Visions: Gender, Race and Nature in the World of Modern Science. This review appeared in the International Journal of Primatology (Vol. 12, No. 1, 1991)

”This is a book that contradicts itself a hundred times; but that is not a criticism of it, because its author thinks contradictions are a sign of intellectual ferment and vitality. This is a book that systematically distorts and selects historical evidence; but that is not a criticism, because its author thinks that all interpretations are biased, and she regards it as her duty to pick and choose her facts to favor her own brand of politics. This is a book full of vaporous, French-intellectual prose that makes Teilhard de Chardin sound like Ernest Hemingway by comparison; but that is not a criticism, because the author likes that sort of prose and has taken lessons in how to write it, and she thinks that plain, homely speech is part of a conspiracy to oppress the poor. This is a book that clatters around in a dark closet of irrelevancies for 450 pages before it bumps accidentally into its index and stops; but that is not a criticism, either, because its author finds it gratifying and refreshing to bang unrelated facts together as a rebuke to stuffy minds. This book infuriated me; but that is not a defect in it, because it is supposed to infuriate people like me, and the author would have been happier still if I had blown out an artery. In short, this book is flawless, because all its deficiencies are deliberate products of art. Given its assumptions, there is nothing here to criticize. The only course open to a reviewer who dislikes this book as much as I do is to question its author's fundamental assumptions-which are big-ticket items involving the nature and relationships of language, knowledge, and science.”

Is Ignorance Bliss? Or is it Red?

2011-12-03T11:06:00.001-08:00

I’ve been content to leave up-top my big, controversial posting about Ayn Rand and her novel/film Atlas Shrugged, in part because the ferment was cool and fun. And also because I am neck-deep in copy-editing my big new novel EXISTENCE. (Appearing in June!)

But I owe you all something new, so here’s a potpourri of science snippets and other cool stuff. Starting with -- the poetry and Symphony of Science, as well as The Case for Mars.

== TEDx Brin? ==

TED style public talks are short but punchy and usually fizzing with possibilities! Watch them all! Here are two of my 2011 performances -- idea-packed splashes in the deep end of the pool.
"The World of 2061 Re-inventing Civilization" - from the recent TEDx Brussels conference, and

"Making Gods: Will That Bother Anyone?" a fun romp showing how scripture can - and must -be interpreted in science-friendly ways! Amaze your friends, especially the believers! Performed for the great big Singularity Summit in New York City.

Oh, any folks following the new TV series “Prophets of Science Fiction”? I seem to be on every week. But don’t let that keep you from tuning in to shows on Asimov and Dick and Clarke and Bradbury and Heinlein!

Now for a glimpse at three disturbing scientific studies that have bearing on America’s silly, fratricidal, lobotomizing and treasonous “culture war.”

== Ignorance is Blissful Certainty? ==

The less people know about important complex issues such as the economy, energy consumption and the environment, the more they want to avoid becoming well-informed, according to new research published by the American Psychological Association.

And the more urgent the issue, the more people want to remain unaware, according to a paper published online in APA's Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.

"These studies were designed to help understand the so-called 'ignorance is bliss' approach to social issues," said author Steven Shepherd, a graduate student with the University of Waterloo in Ontario. "The findings can assist educators in addressing significant barriers to getting people involved and engaged in social issues."'

Sigh... Sometimes I feel we're in Stapledon's Last and First Men. Barely comprehending the range of curses, embedded in human nature that wage war against enlightenment.

Next: Read this Rolling Stone article: "How Ignorance, Greed and Ideology Are Warping Science and Hurting Democracy" by Julian Brooks. It reviews a book we all should buy and then quote extensively to our friends." As science writer Shawn Lawrence Otto points out, in his tough-minded Fool Me Twice: Fighting the Assault on Science in America, too many Americans are either plain ignorant of science or actively hostile to it, or both. The very thing responsible for half of U.S. economic growth in our lifetimes, putting food on their very tables. And that's as true of political leaders and journalists as it is of ordinary citizens.

After those two downers, Let's Talk About the Future We Want - a UN-related effort to "launch a global conversation to learn what people want their communities to be like in 2030. “We want everyone -- all ages, cultures, religions, genders and countries - in the conversation. If we finally confront head-on the economic, social and environmental challenges we face, and if we get busy building more just, peaceful, and sustainable communities, what would ours look like?"
It's aimed at the UN's Rio+20 international conference next June on sustainable development. Seems like people reading Contrary Brin would have thoughts to contribute to this effort.

== Miscellania ==

Armed police drones? Jeez, let’s dig in our heels over this one. Surveillance is one thing. But anyone shot by a cop should at least get to see the badge, look a human in the eye, and get a chance to yell “I give up, copper!”

Breaking the Deep Space Barrier: A reusable, electrically propelled spacecraft would open up vast realms of deep space to human exploration.

Scientists have outlined which moons and planets are most likely to harbour extra-terrestrial life, via the Earth Similarity Index and Planet Habitability Index. (A big topic in Existence!)

Dolphin whistles help solve mysteries of cosmos, from black holes to supernovae. A dolphin’s variable frequency sonar helps un-muddle signals reflecting off many objects (multipath interference). Scientists are using this same technique to better design neutron detectors.

How Star Trek imagined the iPad 23 years ago. In Star Trek: The Next Generation, crewmates had widespread use of smooth, flat, touch-based control panels throughout the Enterprise. These were known as , or Personal Access Display Devices.

Eeek! It’s the 'Brinicle' ice finger of death! Filmed in Antarctica. You've now been warned: don’t cross Brin the Eskimo!

Some are hoping to pin down the last universal common ancestor (LUCA)—not the first life, but the most recent organism from which all life on earth descended. 3 billion years ago, did there live a single mega-organism, filling the planet's oceans before splitting off into three groups: single celled bacteria & archaea and complex eukaryotes? Eerily like Chris Moore's lovely, gonzo science novel FLUKE.

Frank Herbert, in an old interview, agreeing with some things I’ve said... before I ever said them! ;-)

Worth six minutes of your time: Six Thought Experiments humorously explained in a minute apiece by David Mitchell: Zeno’s Paradox, The Grandfather’s Paradox, The Chinese Room test of Strong Artificial Intelligence, Hilbert’s Infinite Hotel, The Twin Paradox, Schrodinger’s Cat. Way fun!

Remember this from a year or so ago? A "time traveler" tries to disrupt the Large Hadron Collider? "Countries do not exist where I am from. The discovery of the led to limitless power, the elimination of poverty and Kit-Kats for everyone. It is a communist chocolate hellhole and I'm here to stop it ever happening." The story sounded lovel-quasiy-plausible (with the presumption that the fellow was mental) till the very last line, when it seems sure to be a "gotcha!" practical joke. If it were true with the last line? Brrrr! Can someone report back to us that this was definitively (instead of 99% sure) a hoax story? A sunday-afternoon investigation for our proto-smart mob.

== Of practical Use to Parents and Teachers! ==

The curse of the gifted child? This study suggests that when students are praised for their intellect (You must be really smart!) rather than their effort (You must have worked very hard!), they come to believe that such abilities are innate, unchangeable. The ‘hard-working’ kids may be more likely to persist, believing if they try hard enough, they will succeed.

See? That's a piece of wisdom you can't cram onto the stupid left-right axis. It just is.

Atlas Shrugged: The Hidden Context of the Book and Film

2011-11-27T16:27:00.000-08:00

Now and then we had a hope that if we lived and were good, God would permit us to be pirates. - Mark Twain

There was nothing else even remotely interesting at Blockbuster -- so we rented ATLAS SHRUGGED.

Well, after all, I often talk about Ayn Rand and her passionate followers, who have effectively taken over the U.S. Libertarian movement, influencing much of the rhetoric we hear from the American Right... (even though no libertarian policies have ever been actually enacted during Republican rule). I've published both scholarly papers and popular articles about Rand's fiction and philosophy.

So, I thought, why not give her acolytes one more shot at selling me on her biggest, most-central tale? An honest person does that. Whereupon, with a sigh, but opening my ears and mind, I slid the disk into the player....

== For the record ==

First a couple of honest disclaimers: (1) It may seem that I am aiming most of my critical attention, lately, at "right-wing authors." (Recently, I dissected Frank Miller's travesty "300," showing how it tells outright historical lies in service of a deeply anti-American theme. ) But I do notice foibles of the left, as well. For example, I promise soon to offer up that long-awaited piece about James Cameron's beautiful but misguided film, AVATAR.

(2) As one of the few sci fi authors who delivered a keynote at a political party convention - indeed it was the Libertarian Party - I may seem somewhat of a "heretic" to the Rand-followers who now dominate the LP. But no one can deny my ongoing campaign to get folks to read Adam Smith, the founding sage of both libertarianism and liberalism.

Like Smith, I believe in fair and open and vigorously creative competition - the greatest innovative force in the universe and the process that made us. Encouraging vibrant, positive-sum rivalry - in markets, democracy, science, etc - is one reason to promote universal transparency (see The Transparent Society ), so that all participants may base their individual decisions on full knowledge. That positive aim - also preached by Friedrich Hayek - should be the goal of any sane libertarian movement... instead of fetishistically hating all government, all the time, which is like a poor workman blaming the tools. Anyway, a movement based on hopeful joy beats one anchored in rancorous scapegoating, any day.

(Adam Smith favored feeding and educating all children, for the pragmatic reason that this maximizes the number of skilled, adult competitors, a root motive of liberalism and a role for government that is wholly justifiable in libertarian terms.)

For my full, cantankerously different take on the plusses and minuses of contemporary libertarianism -- and other oversimplifying dogmas -- have a look at this essay: Models, Maps and Visions of Tomorrow.

Only now, with due diligence done, let's get back to ATLAS SHRUGGED: THE MOTION PICTURE.

== Rand's Books... and the Movie ==

Despite my low esteem of Ayn Rand's simplistic dogma, I do rate THE FOUNTAINHEAD as by far her best book. In its smaller and more personal scope, that novel offered a pretty effective (if melodramatic) portrayal of uncompromising genius having to overcome the boneheaded doorkeepers of art and architecture -- two realms that are always beset by bullies and villainy. In that tale, the hero's adversaries came across as multi-dimensional and even somewhat plausible, if also a bit cartoonish. Indeed, the 1950s Gary Cooper movie was pretty good, for a Rand story.

Alas, in contrast, ATLAS SHRUGGED takes on civilization as a whole -- all of its institutions and enlightenment processes, top to bottom -- calling every last one of them corrupt, devoid of hope, intelligence or honor. Moreover it proclaims that the vast majority of our fellow citizens are braying, silly sheep.

(Consider this irony; a movement propounding that all people can and should think for themselves also teaches its adherents to openly despise their neighbors as thinking beings. A party that proclaims fealty to market forces also holds that the number of deciders and allocators can and should be very small. In other words, you can have Hayek or Rand. Not both.)

But pause a moment. How does the book hold up, strictly from the perspective of writing and art? Well... I won't mince words. ATLAS SHRUGGED royally sucks as a novel, with cardboard characters, rivers of contrived coincidence and dialogue made of macaroni. (Can you dig a 70 page SPEECH?) Of course, none of those things matter if your taste runs to an endless smorgasbord of indignant resentment. (A scientifically-verified drug high!) In which case the speechifying is mother's milk.

Heck, the left produces plenty of polemics just as turgidly tendentious. In fact, the previous paragraph pretty much described Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale.

Am I letting politics bias my judgment of Rand's literary qualities? The intellectual maven of conservatism, William F. Buckley, a founding light of modern libertarianism and also a noted novelist, called Atlas Shrugged "One thousand pages of ideological fabulism; I had to flog myself to read it."

Given such source material -- and universal boos from both critics and the viewing public -- was I surprised to find that the movie version of Atlas Shrugged bites, at the level of basic film 101 storytelling? For example, it is only in the last five minutes that the director deigns to clarify a core villain. As for the "heroes"... well, their famously emotionless "I don't give a crap" mien may work for campus geeks. But not in cinema, where passion propels.

(A deeply ironic and smirk-worthy "oops" appeared on the cover of the DVD version, blurbing ATLAS SHRUGGED as a saga of "courage and self-sacrifice" -- which would be the ultimate Randian sin!)

== A High Point ==

One sequence of this film does stand out. I'm a sucker for lyrical cinematography, especially when it involves beautiful scenery, or else a love-ode to fine technology. And there's about ten minutes in ATLAS SHRUGGED when we get both, as the male and female leads ride their new super-train along shimmering rails made of miraculous metal, speeding across gorgeous Rockies and over a gasp-worthy bridge.

The emotional payoff -- two innovators triumphing over troglodyte naysayers by delivering an awesome product -- portrayed Rand's polemical point in its best conceivable light. I am all for that aspect of the libertarian dream. Indeed, it is the core theme that makes THE FOUNTAINHEAD sympathetic and persuasive. So, for ten minutes, we actually liked the characters and rooted for them. Significantly, it is the portion when nobody speaks.

Alas, though. The film then resumed a level of simplistic lapel-grabbing that many of us recall from our Rand-obsessed college friends -- underachievers who kept grumbling from their sheltered, coddled lives, utterly convinced that they'd do much better in a world of dog-eat-dog. (Using my sf'nal powers, I have checked-out all the nearby parallel worlds where that happened; in those realms, every Randian I know was quickly turned into a slave or dog food. Sorry fellows.)

Ah well. Let's set aside the pathetic storytelling, crappy direction and limp drama to appraise the film on its own, intended merits. On what it tried to be. A work of polemical persuasion.

== The Core Polemical Purpose ==

ATLAS SHRUGGED is, after all, an indictment of modernist, enlightenment, Smithian-liberal civilization. To Rand, this "great experiment" has all been one big mistake, doomed to expire from its own internal contradictions.

I use that Marxian expression deliberately. For, in significant dialectical ways, Ayn Rand was deeply influenced by Karl Marx -- virtually an acolyte, in fact. She kept essentially intact Marx's scenario of bourgeois decadence, guild protection, capital formation, conspiratorial competition-suppression, class-narrowing business cycles and teleologically inevitable divergence between the worker and owner castes.*

The chief difference is that Rand - a Russian emigre - stops short at the penultimate phase of Karl's projection - the moment of pinnacle capitalist consolidation - freezes it and calls it good. Tearing out and throwing away all hints of the next and final stage prophesied by Marx.

That's it, actually. Rand, in a nutshell. You might grasp the stunning parallels at once... if anyone my age or younger had ever bothered to actually read and understand both Rand and Marx. Well enough to draw obvious conclusions. Alas, our grandparents were far, far better-read than we hyper-opinionated moderns. (See what happens - in an ingenious interpretation - when Rand and Marx recombine.)

Hence, Ayn Rand shows us society making one dismal choice after another -- an endless chain of socialist or bourgeois-oligarchic or meddlesome-statist outrages against individual initiative. Endearingly, Ayn Rand despised all three of those centers of villainy equally, portraying them uniting to pass laws that punish or seize companies who "compete too well."

Indeed, if I ever witnessed our nation enacting the kind of insane bills that are reported in this film (piled one-after-another, every five minutes), heck, I'd be looking for John Galt myself!

Yes, I'm enough of a libertarian to know that foolish things do happen! Witness Europe, mired in nanny-state entitlements, eight week vacations and a "right to retire" as young as 55. Self-defeating regulations prevent companies from firing workers, with the consequence that they seldom hire new ones. As for the movie's heroine, Ayn Rand chose a railroad heiress for good reasons. The old Interstate Commerce Commission (dissolved by the democrats in the late 1970s, but still a horror when she wrote) was the classic exemplar of a government bureaucracy "captured" by lordly oligarchs and used as a tool to squelch competition.

In other words, the endless litany of "leveling" crimes against creative enterprise that roll across the page/screen in ATLAS SHRUGGED aren't entirely without real-world analogues. Her fictional betrayals of creative enterprise are based on a genuine complaint... that Randites regularly exaggerate more than 100-fold, alas, into caricatures and absurd over-generalizations.

To see this danger expressed far better - and more succinctly - than Rand ever managed, read the terrific Kurt Vonnegut story: Harrison Bergeron. Other expressions of legitimate libertarian worry can be seen in the fiction of Ray Bradbury and Robert Heinlein. They have a point.

Okay, the core concern is a valid one and somebody in society should keep warning us! Though ideally, someone with common sense and proportion, alas.

I mean, gee whiz. Ayn Rand railed against the ICC... and it was eliminated. Canceled, rubbed out, utterly erased - along with the grotesque Civil Aeronautics Board - by the very same democratic processes that she and her followers despised. Competition among railroads was restored and it was done by a mix of pressure from a savvy public and resolution by genuinely reform-minded politicians. If Ayn Rand were writing the book today, a railroad would not have been her chosen archetype.

I wonder: did anyone making the film ever ponder this? Did any Randians notice at all?

== A Remarkable Chain of Ironies ==

I guess I sound pretty harsh. Only now, let me do one of my famous contrary swerves and openly avow something that Ayn Rand gets right. Despite gross exaggeration, she pretty much nails the basic problem!

Almost every time the book or film depict some betrayal of human competitive ingenuity, it happens like this:

A conspiracy of "old money" oligarchs gathers in conniving secrecy, exerts undue political influence and misuses government power for their own, in-group self-aggrandizement. Except for a few, pathetic union stewards, the ruination of market forces is stage managed from the top. The squelching of entrepreneurial enterprise and the corruption of trade is always executed by villainous old-guard capitalists. Moguls who don't want any rivalry from rambunctious newcomers.

Now think about that. Socialists do come under derision from Rand, but mostly as ninnie, do-gooder tools of the scrooge-oligarchs! In fact, this is where her followers get things right. Anyone who considers the long, lamentable epic of human history will recognize this as the ancient pattern, pervasive across 99% of cultures -- with the most prevalent sub-version being feudalism.

What Randians never explain is how getting rid of constitutional-enlightenment government will prevent this ancient curse from recurring. (Were the oligarchs stymied in ancient China, Babylon or Rome, where liberal constitutions were absent?) Indeed, enlightenment governments are the only force that ever kept the feudal sickness partially in check. Exactly as prescribed by Adam Smith.

(Name another society that ever made more libertarians, hm?)

In other words, by her very own premise, the answer isn't for creative people to "go on strike." It is to fix the tool (government) by yanking it out of the hands of conspiratorial criminals who have improperly seized it. You do that with transparency, with light (as Hayek prescribed). Not by blaming the tool and throwing it away.

== You Are Getting Very Sleeeeepy... ==

Oh, but more ironies abound! Here you have a polemic about individualism, that portrays one accomplished CEO after another "gone missing"... dropping out of sight after each one listens to a solitary pitchman from a utopian community, who croons "Come. Follow me and joiiiin usssss."

Um, let's see. When have we heard that before? Drop everything. All your past loyalties and the companies you've built. Stop fighting for your family or country. Listen to this incantation and follow our charismatic leader to the special society he has built, just for the exclusive elect, like you.

Good lord, does she have to make the hypnotism-cult thing quite so explicit? So very much like Jim Jones and David Koresh? Did you know that Rand-followers who recite her catechisms light up exactly the same parts of the brain as other true-believers pronouncing passages from the Bible or Koran or Hindu Sutras? And these are not the corners of cortex used by scientists while performing analytical or "objective" reasoning.

But you don't need any of that to conclude we're dealing with a cult. Just follow the recruitment process used by John Galt. Who surreptitiously sabotages successful companies in order to drive their owners into his arms! Who then deliberately vandalizes and cripples the nation's ability to feed itself or engage in commerce that he doesn't control, in order to wreck any possible competition with his elite enclave. Oh, criminy.

Yes, I'll admit that Ayn Rand at least portrays technology as good. That gives her points over the dismal Tea Partiers, or Fox, or the equally dismal (though less-numerous) science haters of a ditzy-fringe far left. Alas though, she treats technology like something magical. Lone inventors weave a spell and suddenly there's a new metal or new motor. The vast intricacy of collaboration, development, supplier networks, and infrastructure is both a topic to Rand and an excuse for incantatory over-simplification.

But it is science that truly gets short shrift. Ayn Rand's lack of any reference to scientific research that might support or falsify her assertions about human nature should send alarm bells clanging. Her ignorance of Darwin or human biology, for example, is almost identical to Marx, but much less excusable, given when she lived.

Nowhere, either in Atlas Shrugged or subsequent libertarian cant, is there acknowledgment of the immense stimulative role of U.S. government financed R&D, especially in fields of pure science that would never have attracted investments from anyone looking to a "return horizon." Indeed, I have long yearned for a second national debt clock to be set up, this one showing what the public debt would be now, if only the taxpayer had received normal levels of royalties from rockets, satellites, communications, fiber optics, computers, pharmaceuticals, and the internet. Well? Wouldn't that be fair and businesslike? Tellingly, while many scientists have a fiercely competitive libertarian streak, almost none who are in the top ranks ever hold any truck with Ayn Rand.

The analog to Rand is not the scientist Darwin, but the rhetorician Plato. Sure, she claims to prefer Aristotle. But in both verbal process and incantatory reasoning style, she is Plato's truest heir.

==Ayn Rand on Privacy==

All right, veering briefly aside from Atlas Shrugged, let's see what Rand says about privacy, a topic I happen to know a lot about:

"Civilization is the progress toward a society of privacy. The savage's whole existence is public, ruled by the laws of his tribe. Civilization is the process of setting man free from men."

Of course, there is a level at which Rand is simply stating the obvious. That autonomy and long lives arose as our technology and civilized complexity improved. When food surpluses were meager, only a tiny aristocracy could be subsidized and unchained from the land. But a mixture of science and continental peace mixed with our ability to trade goods and services till even science fiction authors can now pretend we are producers of a primary product, worthy of being fed by farmers.

As for the quote itself: as usual, Ayn Rand mixes some core truths of the Enlightenment with mystical teleology. The rise of the individual - never steady or even - has been a core theme of the West, ever since the Renaissance, and especially the Enlightenment. But this progression isn't fated, ordained or even natural.

Rand looks at a couple of hundred years and one quarter of the planet, and assumes the trend is unstoppable. But Huxley and Orwell - backed up by Malthus and Darwin - showed us what's "natural." The diamond-shaped social structure that we take for granted can all-too easily slump back into the oligarch-dominated pyramid.

Only Enlightenment methods ever offered an alternative hope. Rand followers take it for granted. Indeed, they assume that we can dismantle the processes and structures that Adam Smith prescribed, that made the Enlightenment work in the first place.

They bear a burden of proof that we would not just slump back into the condition that prevailed, for thousands of years, before Smith and his colleagues came along. In America, that slump is already well underway.

== The Posterity Problem ==

I saved the best for last, hoping that at least a few libertarians - those most-favored with our greatest human trait, curiosity - have hung with us to this point.

(Are any of you still present?)

Elsewhere, I've revealed the biggest and most telling red flag about Ayn Rand - one that I've not seen mentioned elsewhere. It is that none of her uber role-model characters, at any level or in any way, ever indulge in the most basic human project --

-- bearing and raising and loving and teaching children.

Out of 1000 pages, just one of them glances briefly at a mother - a baker, an enlightened and awakened proletarian who is not a member of the elite caste. She gives a short riff about preferring Randite education methods in Galt's Gulch over public schools. That is it for procreation. As for the New Lords - several dozen of them, all dynamic Rand-heroes of the future - not even one of them bothers to pass his or her genes forward in time. Nor do any of them take responsibility for, or even mention, this essential investment in time. And this from the "life-centered" philosophy.

There is a reason that Rand consistently avoided any mention of procreation among her new-lord caste -- because writing-in even one member of a next-generation would shine searing light upon the biggest flaw of her hypnotic spell, revealing that her "fresh" tale is actually the oldest one in the human saga.

Let me explain. It is glaringly simple.

We all know this about aristocracy -- that it seldom breeds true. In the past, royal or aristocratic houses would grow fat, lazy and decadent. England's Plantagenets managed to stay virile for 400 years but most lines devolved much quicker. Oligarchs had to make inheritance-of-privilege state policy. They gave top priority to quashing open markets, science, democracy or equal justice - because any of these liberal processes might engender new competitors to rise, afresh, from below, exposing the spoiled grandkids to dangerous rivals.

Yet, even so, there was some churn! A violent form of social mobility. Inevitably those decadent houses got toppled by new, fresh blood. By vibrant competitors who grew lean and tough in exile. Who trained and gathered their forces in the woods, then swooped in to storm the castle. And thereupon established a new lordly line.

Deep below her superficial adherence to Marxist teleology lies this ancient cycle, far older than the enlightenment, or even writing. It is the very essence of what Ayn Rand stands for. Her characters are the brash, virile, sturdy, innovative barbarians, born free and ready to seize destiny in their own two hands, ripping fortune out of the clutches of pathetic old-fart lords who are spent and bereft of cleverness or might. It's the oldest story, writ-new and draped with modernist garments. Even in her portrayals of sex, the closest parallel is a godlike Viking who kicks down the door and takes what he desires. Because he is the grandest thing in all directions. And because he can.

It is an ancient mythos that resonates deeply in our bones and especially within pasty-skinned, pencil-necked nerds, who picture themselves as Achilles, as John Wayne, as Ender Wiggin, as Harry Potter or some other demigod. An old, old formula that was mined by A. E. Van Vogt and L. Ron Hubbard and Orson Scott Card and so many others.

But therein lies a problem! It's the romantic Phase One of this old cycle that Rand admires - the rise of a self-made buccaneer who seizes lordship from decadent, inbred fools.

Phase Two - what happens next - she never talks about. She averts her eyes and the reader's attention.

Why do none of Rand's characters ever have kids? Because theose kids'll inherit the olympian status wrested by Howard Roark or by Dagny Taggart and Hank Rearden. Sons and daughters of demigods, they will assume privileges and power that they never earned through fair competition. They will take lordship for granted as a right of blood, and use it to squelch new competitors from rising to face them on a level playing field. Until their own decadent line has to be toppled, amid war and waste and pain.

It's what happened in 99% of human societies. Ayn Rand faces a steep burden of proof that "this time it'll be different." A burden she never picks up. Rather, she shrugs it off.

If there are offspring, then the reader might become consciously aware of this inevitable outcome. and realize: "Hey, I've seen this before. It's the same old boring-human pattern, and nothing new, after all."

== The Problem Is People... ==

Oh, but maybe I am reading too much into this aversion toward kids. After all, as the recent film reminds us, Ayn Rand was pretty much an equal opportunity hater of people, in general. (As evidenced by her passionately-admiring defense of the horrific murderer William Edward Hickman.)

Just look at how brothers are portrayed in ATLAS SHRUGGED. Always treacherous, small-minded, parasitical and craven. Clearly, Rand is no Nazi, no believer in the paramountcy of blood. Sons, daughters, brothers and sisters? Neighbors? Strangers? Spouses? Co-workers? Civilization? Bah, who needs em. Who needs anybody?

Well? I said she ignores Darwin and this is consistent! Reproductive success? Fie and feh!
Her ubermensch demigods are less like "lords" - obsessed with establishing an inherited clan of privilege - than they are pirates - superior in boldness and in mind, going wherever they like, taking what they deserve by the very essence of what they are.

And hey, doesn't everybody love a pirate?

Yoho. That's the life for me.

==================================

*Followup notes:
1) Someone pointed out a more powerful example of de-regulatory goodwill on the part of the US government, which was, till around 1990, the principal owner, developer and subsidizer of the Internet. Picture the moment when a few dozen government guys - and advisor/consultant outsiders - sat down and decided to BACK OFF... to simply give the Internet to the world, instead of clutching-close this potential source of vast power. It was one of the greatest episodes of voluntary de-regulation in the history of the world. (I was living in France, using the French "minitel" alternative to the Internet, so I know how that might have gone.)

And yes, re-coalescence of top-down control over the Internet remains constantly a danger, from malignant efforts like SOPA. But the key lesson of the Internet - plus the dissolving of the ICC & CAB and Barack Obama's recent commercialization of the US space launch system - is that freedom-oriented policies can be negotiated within the institutions of a vast and overwhelmingly successful continental democracy. (And generally, the ones most willing to negotiate are democrats.) The demonization of those institutions, first by Rand and now by Culture War, portraying them as inherently incapable of reason or pro-freedom redesign, is illogical and a churlish example of flat-out ingratitude.

Worse, from a Randian perspective, it is refusal to pay legitimate debts.

2) Hold the presses! I just thought of another major deviance that Rand took, separating her from Marx in a quirky ironic way...beyond her belief in Nietzschian ubermenscen and her denial of Marx's final teleological phase. There's also her approach to the Labor Theory of Value (LTV). Oh, she bought into LTV, hook, line and sinker! But in ways the Master would find utterly heretical.

Now, here I am going to give Ayn Rand some cred, because clearly, she recognized what Marx did not, that LTV is complete crap when it comes to all labor hours being equally valuable. That's baloney and one of Marx's most glaring mistakes. Only then, like many converted heretics, she plunged to the opposite extreme, while staying on the same axis! Positing that some peoples' time and labor must be deemed almost infinitely more valuable, not just in a market scarcity sense but in pure, platonic essence. It is a third major departure from Marx...

...but let's not get carried away. Because her scenario is still entirely based on LTV! Think about it. The great crime of the dire-enemies who are called "looters" is to steal labor value from the good guys in order to maintain society's capital base - precisely the same situation described by Marx! Only in her story, the theft is not from proletariat workers but from geniuses, necessitating their own revolution to reclaim that value! Sure, she turned 180 degrees the cast of characters who are the heroes. But the underlying principle and scenario - LTV theft from the productive caste, followed by revolution against the thieves and their recovery of stolen capital - is utterly the same. That is utterly pure Karl Marx.

It is the master's tale... with an M. Night Shamalayan twist! Oh, my.

3) Yes I gave short shrift to one aspect of Atlas Shrugged that Rand probably considered paramount, That is the book's keynote role as a philosophical and psychological polemic. She blames wrong action on wrong thinking, attributing to all of Galt's enemies an addiction to "death-loving" drives. All those who disagree with Galt (and Rand) are, in effect, dismissed as psychopaths who are fixated on achieving death. Note how this makes them inherently evil and unworthy of negotiation, by virtue of of their core platonic essence. (There's Plato again!) There's nothing human about such people.

What's fascinating is where this take us in regards Ayn Rand the Marxist. I describe how her chief departure from her mentor is where she excises what comes next. After portraying Marx's ultimate capitalist consolidation and finalization of capital formation with great fidelity, she omits entirely his final step - revolution of the skilled proletariat. But how? Now vastly outnumbering the owners, with no middle class left to sap dissent, and with both state and church neutered, what's to stop them?

Well, replace the old church with a new one! Rand posits that the New Lords will not only be brilliant inventors and terrific managers, but also vastly enlightening priests. They will correct wrong thinking and replace it with right-thinking. With a philosophy that encourages life (even though there are no kids.) At which point the prols will not rebel, because their faith is now pure. Yes, it is a Randian faith - in themselves and in a system that challenges them to 'strive for life!' Nevertheless, it truly is awesome to see that her rejection of her mentor, Karl Marx, consists entirely of thwarting his final stage by enthralling the masses with a stunningly-persuasive incantation... or opiate... of uniform thought. A catechism of pure, unchanging and permanent Truth.

Wow.

----

Pining for Feudalism as an Antidote for Modernity

2011-11-26T09:12:00.001-08:00

I promised a cogent and careful review of Ayn Rand's ATLAS SHRUGGED: The Motion Picture. And I'll get to it soon. But first, may I unleash an informal screed? One scribbled in rapid response to a manifesto that was posted online a few days ago - one that I found intellectually offensive.

It's an unbelievable essay written - in apparent sincerity - by my colleague John C. Wright (a pretty good author, by the way), in which he asserts that the long darkness called feudalism was admirable, and that - by dismal contrast - we now live in an age that is benighted by crudely materialistic modernity and a shabby shallowness of the soul.

Commenting on the specific stretch of abject misery and ignorance known as the European Dark Ages, Wright redefines it -- "or, as historians call it, ‘Late Antiquity’ or, as we Catholics call it, the ‘Lost, Glorious, Honorable, Ancient and Most Chivalric Golden Age of High Christendom...’"

He goes on:

"No one wants to die at thirty, half a mile from where he was born, unless of course he likes his home, and any patient would prefer antibiotics to leeches, I grant you. But man does not live by bread alone, or even by jet travel and space age medicine. We paid the price to enjoy the mixed blessings of the modern day, and something beyond the price we paid was lost, something precious.

"To look at mankind, who so clearly yearns for some sort of communion or reunion with nature that the pagans people the woods with nymphs and satyrs, or the nursery tales or Aesop fables with talking animals, and conclude the only possible relation between man and elf is mutual genocide is a Darwinian rather than sacramental view of life: it is simply blind to what in man, weak though it may be, is not devout to totalitarian modernism and ideas of total war. It is the world view of François de Robespierre, who guillotined the aristocracy of France like vermin, not the view of Francis of Assisi, who saluted the verminous wolf as his brother."

Woof. Naturally, I am torn. I love a good contrarian! And Wright clearly envisions himself in that role, leveling his lance to charge against the giant, clanking, soul-grinding mill called modernity...

...even though a mere glance at the last 6000 years shows which human phenomenon is standard fare - feudalism, serving the darwinian reproductive success of brutal men - and which type of society (modernity) is the brash upstart, with all odds stacked against it.

Okay, I love a contrarian. And yet, those who have read my denunciations of romantic nostalgia - (respectful denunciation, when I speak of the honest romantic Tolkien, but disdainful when it comes to the cosmic ingrate, George Lucas) - won't be surprised to learn that another part of me has no patience for this utter, counterfactual drivel.

Man, oh man. Where to start on this sophistry?? As if the pagan forest-lovers weren't vastly worse-off in the era Wright idolizes? Hounded and burned at the stake by medieval catholic bishops? (OMG, which era produced copious numbers of wistful, pastoral-loving fantasy novels?)

As if the aristocracy of 1790 France were prime examples of humanity, wisdom and charity, instead of monstrous persecutors who stupidly hand-crafted their own fates? Or as if 99% of the noble-born Assisi's peers were anything other than drooling-evil horrors, who only paused in their relentless reciprocal treachery long enough to join forces in a grand overall program of oppressing the serf-masses, cauterizing every low-born child's dreams?

Zoom in upon Wright's claim that those who criticize nostalgist romanticism "...conclude the only possible relation between man and elf is mutual genocide is a Darwinian rather than sacramental view of life: it is simply blind to what in man, weak though it may be, is not devout to totalitarian modernism and ideas of total war."

Oh cripes. Where to begin. First. We owe absolutely nothing to $%#! elfs or wizards who clutch secret "wisdom" (what we moderns call "useful information about the world") to themselves for thousands of years, leaving men and women to flounder in miserable ignorance, when they might have opened a college in Lothlorien Forest, so we'd have flush toilets and palantirs on every desktop. Oh, thank God such creatures are mythological, because Tolkien himself opined that they were - in truth - the enemies of humankind.

Evidently, Wright swallows the romantic turd-wallow that things are better when knowledge is mysterious. Or, as the wise authors of BORED OF THE RINGS put it:

"Rings go better with hocus pocus."

(All right, you have to be over 50 to get that joke. But trust me: BORED OF THE RINGS is every bit as sagacious and insightful as the tome that it satirizes!)

Total war? Oh man, John, you dare to lecture us about TOTAL WAR? Sorry, I do like you and you write well, but anyone who thinks we've gotten worse in our brutal savagery is simply a historical ignoramus. I mean an ignoramus of historical proportions, who knows nothing of what the Assyrians did to the lost ten tribes of Israel, or the Romans to Judea, or the Mongols to Poland, or the Spanish to every native population they encountered. Or the Polynesians to each other, every year. Do you doubt that I could go on with this list? All day and all week? Can you cite counter-examples? Sure, but not many.

By comparison, ever since the heroes of the democratic enlightenment conquered Mordor... I mean toppled Hitler's Nazi uber-romantics, who Tolkien himself diagnosed as super-examples of the nostalgic way... ever since George Marshall's brave men of the west pounded those monsters into dust, the per capita rate of violence on planet Earth has plummeted every single decade.

Don't believe it? Watch this: Stephen Pinker on the Myth of Violence. Then ponder the most marvelous irony: that you think modernity is more violent and cruel only because modernity has succeeded in raising our standards of decent behavior, making us more self-critical about the travesties that remain. Crimes that are so much milder than our ancestors commited routinely, without a twinge.

Oh, oh, the irony! Only... it gets richer:

"But we all know, or should all know, that modern society for all its hard and metallic glories and all its cold and soaring skyscrapers, and for the miracles of moonshots and penicillin shots, and the blessings of good plumbing and the opium of twenty-four-hour television, has lost something. Anyone who does not sense or suspect that modernity is missing something, something important, has no heart and no taste for High Fantasy."

No heart. What miserable donkey-hockey! John Wright suggests that everybody, across those dark millennia, spent their time - while hunkering in frigid huts - thinking noble thoughts and experiencing wondrous insights of soul-expanding wisdom, instead of grunting like beasts and knifing each other for scraps. What a reach! Based on what evidence? Just because one priest per generation scribbled something poetical by candle light?

Good lord! Extraordinary claims demand extraordinary evidence. Show us how grinding poverty and ignorance have ever elevated great numbers of human souls. Ever. And I mean ever. You don't have to prove it, just show us any correlation. Any at all!

Let's see. Who wrote - during those long, awful centuries - the fine, poetically wise things that John Wright admires? From Augustine to Aquinas to Assisi... to Maimonides, Lao Tze and Buddha? Aristocrats, all! Men who had free time and plenty of food and access to every scrap of "media" available during their era. And yes, the low-brow media too, that Aristotle and Archimedes and Socrates all enjoyed, attending every bawdy play they possibly could. As did Shakespeare, Goethe and Voltaire.

So... because there is vastly more media crap around today, that means we should ignore how much more good stuff we also have at-hand? Every glimmer of wisdom that survived the burning of the Alexandrine Library or being hidden in wizard grimoires is now available. And those who choose to explore it all now can.

Um, instead of proclaiming that poverty and ignorance made our ancestors wise... perhaps... might one venture to suggest an alternative, vastly more realistic hypothesis? That as we increase the percentage of humanity who have surfeited bellies and disposable incomes and free time, then perhaps we might also see a commensurate increase in the percentage who feel the stirring of God's Second Greatest Gift?

What gift am I talking about? One that comes in close-behind compassionate love? The attribute that comes nearest to making us just like God....

The gift called curiosity.

Oh, sure, the fraction who engage in wonder, while trawling today's internet, is far from a majority. Perhaps it always will be. But to deny that the number who actually ponder and wonder and who compassionately care about the suffering of those who dwell very far away is vastly, profoundly, overwhelmingly greater than it used to be, during epochs of tooth-and-claw, is just plain pathetic.

Is there more diversity in their glimpses of the sublime? Do these millions who are liberated by modernity contemplate -- and argue over -- a wider range of marvelous thoughts than just the virgin birth? Sure! Does that make us lesser beings, as John Wright presumes? Or does it perhaps make us incrementally more like the God who conceives an entire cosmos, filled with marvelous contradictions? The latter, you betcha.

Lost something? John are you serious? Trotting out the old "lost something" cliche?

John Wright beckons us with the sweet-sick smugness of the Zero Sum Game. The notion that we cannot gain the treasures of modernity without giving away something precious in return. A sourpuss idee fixee that was well-distilled by Walt Whitman in his despicable poem: "When I heard the Learn'd Astronomer." As if the man of science does not also stare skyward, in wonder. Take it from this "learn'd astronomer": you can scrutinize the cosmos and stare at it in aesthetic joy. You can do both.

Pause. visit this brief symphony, this aria to science.

It is this rejection of the Enlightenment's Positive Sum Game that makes an ingrate of John Wright. And ingratitude -- toward the generations who strove so hard to lift their children, one rung at a time, to better and more sagacious lives -- is the most churlish human habit. This is not reverence of our ancestors, but the most atrocious way to insult them!

In contrast, I am the one here who honors the men and women of the middle ages, along with all the brutal centuries that both preceded and followed. I honor them because I admit and avow that, amid all of that horror, some of them built more than they tore down, That - amid terror and ignorance - they succeeded at a grand and noble project. To conceive and labor and give birth - generation by slow generation - to a marvel. To a miracle. To us.

We are the crowning glory - so far - of their hard strivings. Moreover, the geas that this lays upon us - to raise kids who are better still - is the greatest duty and burden we could possibly take upon our backs. It's what we owe them.

Oh, sure, I recognize this snarky grouchiness as what it is... part of today's viciously treasonous phenomenon called "culture war." It all fits into a tsunami of know-nothing rage expressed by the Murdochians, their anti-science, anti-progress rejection of all possibility of human improvability. Their hatred of this spectacular civilization that Ben Franklin and George Marshall and so many other heroes helped us build with our own hands. Their blatant putsch to re-establish feudalism.

But let me make plain that this is not a matter of mere politics alone. Indeed, there are anti-tech, pastoral-mystical troglodytes on the left, as well!

No, it goes far beyond mere politics. This fever is an immune response against modernity, by a portion of our genes that arose out of the harems of feudal lords. The dank, pitiable part of our human soul that yearns for hierarchy and prim order and mystically secretive gate-keepers of knowledge. A spiteful grudge against modernity's level playing field and wide-open frontier of opportunity.

If I might borrow and adapt a metaphor from H.G. Wells -- although today's major villains are the murdochs, there is plenty of the same sickness among our eloi friends on the other side. This isn't left-versus-right. It is about personality.

The crime, the betrayal of hope, is identical at both extremes. It lies in their cultish mystifying and worshipping - without a scintilla's evidence or proof - a golden past that irrefutably wasn't, and a cruel darkness that only now is parting from before our eyes.

Farewell to Two Amazing Women

2011-11-25T09:58:00.001-08:00

Two fantastic women departed from our sight on Earth last week, leaving it more barren than before.

Anne McCaffrey was my friend and colleague -- a wonderful writer, deeply devoted to her craft, her fans, her civilization, and delivering wonder to millions.

I barely knew Lynn Margulis, who was no less gifted and no less a gift, having prodigious impact on the world of ideas and the advancement of science. Both were fascinating people, cultural icons and role models.

==Lynn Margulis==

Professor Lynn Margulis was instrumental in developing "endosymbiotic theory"... the incredible theory that our very cells derived out of the unification of many separate species that learned, through the harsh selective process of evolution, to work together for their common benefit.

Once a radical idea, it's now widely accepted that the mitochondria inhabiting - and providing power to - the cells of eukaryotic metazoans like fish and mammals are descended from bacteria-like creatures that once lived independently, but somehow united through a process of symbiosis that became Margulis's lifelong theme. Other cellular organelles have since been proposed or accepted as having joined us through a process of incorporation that took a billion years.

This theme was taken to new levels when Margulis extended the early "Gaia Hypothesis" of James Lovelock... the notion that Earth's biosphere shares many traits of a living organism, such as self-correcting feedback loops, synergistic behavior and overall optimization, as if it were in effect a living being.

That's the "weak Gaia Hypothesis." The strong version, which Margulis never proclaimed, would remove from my previous paragraph the words "if it were in effect."

I made extensive use of Margulis ideas, performing riffs in my own work. Heart of the Comet explored possible implications of endosymbiotic theory. And it was impossible to avoid having great fun with both weak and strong versions of the Gaia Hypothesis in my novel Earth. Both themes reappear in my forthcoming book, Existence.

What I admired most about Lynn Margulis was her bold willingness to always take a step back in order to encompass the wider context, the bigger picture. Then an even bigger context, and so on.

==Anne McCaffrey==

Anne was a sweet lady who showed me great kindness whenever I visited her impossibly green farm in County Wicklow, Ireland.

I could reminisce further, but that would just be pointless bragging. So I'll pay tribute to the colleague and writer who entertained and influenced millions. One thing Anne did for me was to help distill what is the essence of my profession. It happened one day when we were both being interviewed by a reporter, who referred to the famous McCaffrey "Dragons of Pern" books as "fantasy novels."

Oh, how Anne bristled! With clenched restraint, she corrected the reporter:

"I don't write fantasy. I am a science fiction author.

Now, a great many people have tried to define the difference between fantasy and SF. Some try to explain it as a matter of past or future, or setting, or gimmicks and tools (e.g. swords vs spaceships), or even the vast moral distinction between magic and science. And sure, one can grasp how some folks make lazy assumptions. If it's got dragons, well then, it must belong in the same category as Tolkien, right?

Anne dealt with that part of it swiftly. "My dragons were genetically engineered. Scientists designed them to help colonists save themselves from a terrible environmental threat."

Hm, well. It's not just the dragons. Most of Anne's tales are filled with colorful things like tapestries and great stone castle holds, with much talk of weaving and herbal lore and fathom-deep traditions. There are duels and nobles and bards and songs and brave knights that are standard fare in your typical fantasy. If you're going to judge by superficialities, like the furniture, then it's easy to see why some people make the mistake.

But here's the real difference and it goes to the heart. The characters in the Pern stories dwell in a feudal setting, all right. But unlike the endlessly repeated trope-protagonists in all those Tolkien-clone universes most of them don't want to!

And they don't intend to. Not for any longer than they must.

In the course of Anne McCaffrey's fictional universe -- as the stories unfold -- people discover that things weren't always this way - with peasant-serfs tied to the rocky land, wracked by filth, pestilence and arbitrary rule by hereditary lords, staring in occasional wonder at the great dragon-riders who protect them from raining death. Sure, their condition is eased by a myriad lovely traditions and crafts, reflecting the makeshift creativity of brave folk, improvising - making the best of things across centuries of darkness.

But during the span of many novels, they come to discover a core truth: that things could be better. That their civilization fell from a height so great that people once voyaged between stars, cured disease, pondered secrets of the universe... and even made dragons. And, as soon as they realize this, they start wanting to get all of those things back.

Anne's characters know there's something better than living in grimy ignorance and violence, even lightened by clever medieval arts. It will be a long climb back, but they itch to get their hands on flush toilets, movable type, computers, democracy. And one thing is certain - they are going to quit being feudal, just as soon as they can.

Oh, sure. Feudalism tugs at something deep within us. Those images of lords and secretive mages and so on resonate, because we're all descended from the harems of guys who managed to pull off that trick! Anne -- lately in collaboration with her most-excellent son, Todd -- certainly made good use of those themes, and more power to them both!

But the McCaffrey notion of the time flow of wisdom was always aimed forward, rooted in a love and belief in progress, in our ability to raise better generations, in a hope that better days will come.

Anne McCaffrey was a science fiction author. One of the best. And I'm proud to say she was my friend.

------

My condolences to Dorion Sagan, and to my esteemed colleague Todd McCaffrey, and to their families. Soar on.

Snips of Science, Tech and Politics

2011-11-19T13:51:00.001-08:00

Think I'm kidding about "sousveillance" and people-power vision? Now citizen protesters have drones! This video shows the view from a Polish RoboKopter with video camera. Getting an aerial view is the next step in compelling DIY citizen video.

== Antimatter and FTL Neutrinos? ==

The world's largest atom smasher, designed as a portal to a new view of physics, has produced its first peek at the unexpected: bits of matter that don't mirror the behavior of their antimatter counterparts. This could alter our understanding of matter and anti-matter...or provide a clue to why our cosmos is only made (largely) of one kind.

And yes, there’s been a lot of interest in the recent neutrino experiments in Italy. Does a recent result that replicates the “faster-than-light finding” actually prove it??

Well, I remain skeptical.

1- this new result comes from the same pair of facilities in the alps and Italy; it's not a confirmation.

2- it's very hard to synch the clocks. Show me you’ve done that and measured the distance properly.

3- if neutrinos traveled FTL with any consistency they would have arrived months before the light from supernova 1987a, instead of right on time. A hundred thousand light-year journey. Any systematic exceeding of the speed of light would be noticed!

One suggestion that would explain the 1987a results, yet allow something anomalous over the very short, initial distance from Switzerland to Italy? It’s been suggested that perhaps some neutrinos bump out of our "brane" just after being made, then settle back in and travel normally. Very sci fi-ish idea.

== Political matters ==

The IRS has opened new enforcement offices overseas, beefed up staffing and expanded cooperation with foreign governments. A similar disclosure program in 2009 has so far netted $2.2 billion in back taxes, penalties and fines, from people with accounts in 140 countries.

Between the two disclosure programs, a total of 30,000 tax cheats have come clean. "The world has clearly changed," IRS Commissioner Shulman said. "We have pierced international bank secrecy laws, and we're making a serious dent in offshore tax evasion... Unlike a few years ago, it's very clear now that there's a real price to be paid for people who think they can hide offshore and not pay their taxes."

You’ll be hearing the “class war” refrain for years. Gather some capsule, one-sentence answers:

* Across 6000 years, 99% of human cultures were pyramid-shaped, and the owner-lords were the ones who oppressed both freedom and competitive markets. Try reading Adam Smith! So why this effort to demonize every elite EXCEPT the lords?

* Only one generation of human beings did not know “class warfare” - the Post-World War II generation that lived in the miracle that FDR built - a vigorous capitalist-entrepreneurial market and booming middle class... amid the flattest non-pyramidal social order ever seen. The first time ever that self-made millionaires outnumbered the inheritance brats.

Sure, some FDR regulations were excessive. But just try to argue with those results. The crux: as the anti-FDR cult grew ever-more vituperative and bitter toward America's most popular president ever, it tore down everything he built... all three of those vital metrics of US national health have diametrically reversed. And this is good for America... how?

Why are people who make grand pronouncements so unwilling to let their opinions change, when shown the failure of their predictions?

* Ask your "ostrich" friends: "Tell us how to avoid “class war” now that 400 families own a greater share of our wealth than 50% of Americans. Is there some disparity that would finally make you worry? When they own more than 75%...Perhaps more than 90%? WHEN will you admit that we’ve returned to the normal condition that reigned in 99% of human cultures? Then will you admit that FDR wasn’t Satan, or that our parents in the "greatest generation" weren't complete idiots, after all?"

All right, some of that sounds “liberal.” I guess I’ll be accused of that leaning even more, after my next posting about Ayn Rand. But I promise, I’ll skewer some on the other side, soon! Also remember this. Libertarians - especially Ayn Rand followers - are not "right-wingers." They have their own perspective and I'll show that it is a very close cousin of ... Marxism.

== The Abortion fight ... and the Bible ==

Mississippi voters recently defeated a ballot initiative proclaiming that life begins at conception. Here's an eye-opening letter in the LA Times by Sandy Smith... and one wonders why this wasn't brought up till now!

"I don't know what Bible the folks in Mississippi are reading, but it's not one I'm familiar with. The New Testament has no references at all to a fetus, but the Old Testament is very specific. If a man kills another man, he must pay with his life; if he kills an animal, he must offer restitution. But, according to Exodus 21:22: "If men who are fighting hit a pregnant woman and she gives birth prematurely but there is no serious injury, the offender must be fined whatever the woman's husband demands and the court allows." A fetus was considered potential property."

I say again, the whole and entire purpose of the anti-abortion crusade was to give the right a "moral high ground" against foes who seem much more giving and Jesus-like. It lets them say "saving babies trumps all other things that would've made that hippie Jesus side with the left! That one issue makes Jesus side with us!" An extremely effective polemical trick.

== A Bit of History ==

An interesting word introduced to our comments section blogmunity by a new member: Seisachtheia was a set of laws instituted by the Athenian lawmaker Solon (c. 638 BC–558 BC) in order to rectify the widespread serfdom and slaves that had run rampant in Athens by the 6th century BC, by debit relief.

Under the pre-existing legal status, according to the account of the Constitution of the Athenians attributed to Aristotle, debtors unable to repay their creditors would surrender their land to them, then becoming hektemoroi, i.e. serfs who cultivated what used to be their own land and gave one sixth of produce to their creditors. Should the debt exceed the perceived value of debtor's total assets, then the debtor and his family would become the creditor's slaves as well. The same would result if a man defaulted on a debt whose collateral was the debtor's personal freedom.

Solon's law changed all that. Forbidding slavery due to debt and freeing those who had been so enslaved. Athenian slavery still existed, but under terms more gentle than Sparta, by far.

Looking Upward!

2011-11-16T09:46:00.001-08:00

Last time, in reaction to Frank Miller's horrendous slur at kids trying to rediscover activism, I dissected Miller’s travesty book and film "300" showing that its outright lies about Greek history reflected a deeply anti-freedom and anti-American agenda.

That stirred a lot of reaction! But not as much as I’ll get from my next couple of postings about popular culture. Soon I plan to do a critical dissection of the film version of Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged. Then I promise to get to that long-awaited piece about James Cameron's beautiful but misguided movie, Avatar.

At which point I’ll have aimed barbs in all three directions! Right, left and libertarian. Contrary Brin indeed!

This time? Let’s clean the palate with something lighter. A little potpourri.

First, an announcement: Watch the Prophets of Science Fiction! An episode about Philip K. Dick airs this Wednesday, 10pm on the Discovery Science Channel. Along with other interviewees, I offer a few insights about this great writer. Future episodes will cover greats like Asimov, Clarke, Bradbury, Heinlein and so on.

And see my recommended reading list of sci fi for young adults, reinterpreted visually by Worlds Without End. More generally, Worlds Without End has extensive coverage of science fiction, fantasy and horror novels, with links to authors, as well as complete listings of major awards, including Hugo, Nebula, Locus, John W. Campbell, Philip K. Dick and World Fantasy Awards. Also forums to discuss your favorite novels and authors.

== Worrisome ... ==

A new copyright bill, Stop Online Piracy Act, or SOPA, intends to shut down rogue websites suspected of intellectual property violations. But it may go too far toward censorship, infringing upon free speech--it is opposed by the Electronic Frontier Foundation. On Boing Boing, Cory Doctorow writes that this new law "would give government and corporations the power to block sites like BoingBoing over infringing links on at least one webpage posted by their users....The only thing that is going to stop Hollywood from owning the Internet and everything we do, is if there is a big surprise Internet backlash starting right now.” Have a look and learn about SOPA. And consider joining the resistance.

Fellow writer Charlie Stross has very cogent points to make about “evil social networks.” Pointing out that basic human psychological, social and commercial forces will make them drift toward a core business model:

"So the ideal social network (from an investor's point of view) is one that presents itself as being free-to-use, is highly addictive, uses you as bait to trap your friends, tracks you everywhere you go on the internet, sells your personal information to the highest bidder, and is impossible to opt out of. Sounds like a cross between your friendly neighborhood heroin pusher, Amway, and a really creepy stalker, doesn't it?"

His focus is on Klout... but the warning applies to all.

== Strangeness! ==

New photos have appeared in Google Maps showing unidentified titanic structures in the middle of the Chinese desert. Bizarre, science-fictional (or nightmare) constructions... some of them featuring the blasted remains of planes and other vehicles. Some sort of targeting array for space weaponry? Gee!

Less disturbing and far more inspiring HD images from space! See this Time Lapse from Space.

Starship Sofa’s latest anthology is way cool. Look it up! (The last story is one of my quirkier self indulgences.)

New super-slippery substance: One fan wrote in recently with a suggested “hit” for my predictions registry: “This was on Slashdot 11/15/11. It reminded me of the lubricant found in the tracks the wagons slid within in The Practice Effect... My question is, if it's soo slippery, how do they get it to stick to anything?”

This is simply wonderfully beautiful... a murmuration of starlings.

== Some political grist - with a sci fi twist ==

To a Keynsian (or anyone sensible) the economic stimulus wasn't enough to get out of a nosedive economic downturn caused by Wall Street and gross negligence. How to bootstrap out of it? Inspired by the economic boom-example of World War II, Nobel Prize winner (and huge Asimov fan) Paul Krugman suggests that we might fake an alien invasion...

Moving from science fictional riffs on economics to our current, threatened enlightenment.... More evidence that class war is being waged top-down. The top 1 percent of earners more than doubled their share of the nation’s income over the last three decades, this article said. And there’s tons more. Gee Whiz, read this thing.

Millionaires are receiving billions in taxpayer-funded support every year that helps them pay for everything from child care to bad debts to boats and vacation homes, according to a report by Sen. Tom Coburn. People who individually earned more than a million dollars in 2009 even managed to collect a total of nearly $21 million in unemployment insurance. "From tax write-offs for gambling losses, vacation homes, and luxury yachts to subsidies for their ranches and estates, the government is subsidizing the lifestyles of the rich and famous," wrote Coburn, an Oklahoma Republican. Always thought he was one of the smarter-saner ones.

Some of it is unfair to remove completely, like $9 billion in retirement checks. Look, a deal is a deal. On the other hand. dig these two: $21 billion in gambling losses and $28 billion in mortgage breaks for mansions, vacation homes and yachts. Choke, gurrgle groan...

Professor Max Boykoff has a very interesting new book out entitled Who Speaks for the Climate? Making Sense of Media Reporting on Climate Change.

Heard from a person who lectures on deception for the NSA notes, "illusion, misdirection, ridicule" these three - the legs of the stool of deception. But the greatest of these is ridicule."

== Finally... lefties... grow up! ==

As one who despises the left-right axis and who believes that certain variants of conservatism and libertarianism have real value, I have spent most of the last political decade trying to get “ostriches” in those realms to wake up to how those potentially respectable movements have been hijacked by monsters. If enough ostriches lift their heads... if we can regain a conservatism that is about intellect and curiosity and joyful argument, in the spirit of Goldwater and Buckley, and a libertarianism in the pragmatic tradition of Heinlein and Adam Smith...

...then all moderate Americans could gather at a table and negotiate mixed solutions to problems, yet again. That would end Phase Three of the American Civil War.

But I do aim barbs leftward! You folks know I have no truck for the rare but noisome flakes on that side. Above all, we should only have contempt for those who might feel tempted by a self-righteous insurrection against their somewhat limp, but generally well-meaning president.

Oh, sure, he’s got the wrong personality for these times. But to see what’s at stake (you liberals out there) please read this New York Times article about the U.S. Supreme Court: The Court and the Next President.

Hold your nose and learn to be practical people. Better yet, grow up.

Roll over, Frank Miller: or why the Occupy Wall Street Kids are Better than the #$%! Spartans

2011-11-13T11:37:00.000-08:00

I had a new essay prepared -- balanced and funny -- about Ayn Rand and the film version of her epic novel Atlas Shrugged. But that can wait while I post something quick and angry.

A few days ago, the famous comic book writer and illustrator Frank Miller issued a howl of hatred toward the young people in the Occupy Wall Street movement. Well, all right, that's a bowdlerization. After reading even one randomly-chosen paragraph, I'm sure you'll agree that "howl" understates the red-hot fury and scatalogical spew of Miller's lavishly expressed hate: “Occupy” is nothing but a pack of louts, thieves, and rapists, an unruly mob, fed by Woodstock-era nostalgia and putrid false righteousness. These clowns can do nothing but harm America."

In fact, I need do nothing more -- in order to reduce that individual's public esteem -- than simply point you all to his bile-drenched missive. Please. If you must choose between reading that or my detailed, cogently-argued response (below), by all means let his words suffice! I cede the floor. Let him express the maturity and thoughtfulness of his side.

(Side? Miller has one. I do not. While I openly state the obvious - that America's right wing has gone insane, waging open Civil War against science, medicine, economics, journalism, education, skilled labor, civil servants, and every other practitioner of mental arts - I am nevertheless an equal-opportunity contrarian, often seen skewering shibboleths of the far-and-loony-left. If one side is far more crazy-dangerous to the Republic right now, I can remember when it was the other. I'm a paladin for militant, pragmatic moderation!)

Well, well. I've been fuming silently at Frank Miller for a years. The time's come, so get ready for steam! Because the screech that you just read - Miller's attack on young citizens, clumsily feeling their way ahead toward saving their country - is only the latest example of Frank's astonishing agenda. One that really needs exposure to light.

I'll do it by dissecting - calmly and devastatingly - his most famous and lucrative piece of modern propaganda. The comic book and movie tale about Spartans at the Battle of Thermopylae.

A tale called - "300."

== Leni Riefenstahl would be proud==

Though I'm not best-known for graphic novels*, I've done a few. I've been sketching out a script about one of the greatest heroes of western civilization - Themistocles - the man who actually defeated Xerxes. the Persian emperor, during his brutal invasion of Greece, after the Spartans failed so miserably at Thermopylae. In part, this would be an answer to Frank Miller's "300"... a book and film that I find both visually stunning and morally disturbing.

For one thing, "300" gave all credit to the Spartans, extolling them as role models and peerless examples of manhood. Adorably macho defenders of freedom.

Uh, right. Freedom. Sorry, but the word bears a heavy burden of irony when shouted by Spartans, who maintained one of the worst slave-states ever, treating the vast majority of their people as cattle, routinely quenching their swords in the bodies of poor, brutalized helots... who are never mentioned, even glimpsed, in the romanticized book or movie. Indeed, the very same queen who Frank Miller portrayed as so-earthy, so-kind, was said to be quite brutal with a whip, in real life.

Miller's Spartan warriors honestly and openly conveyed the contempt for civilians that was felt across the ages by all feudal warrior castes. An attitude in sharp contrast to American sympathies, which always used to be about Minuteman farmers and shopkeepers - citizen soldiers - the kind who bravely pick up arms to aid their country, adapting and training under fire. Alas, Frank Miller's book and movie "300" ridiculed that kind of soldier...

...even though the first invasion by Persia, ten years earlier - under Xerxes's father - had been defeated by just such a militia army... from Athens... made up of farmers, clerks, tradesmen, artists and mathematicians. A rabble of ill-disciplined "brawlers" who, after waiting in vain for promised help from Sparta, finally decided to handle the problem alone. On that fateful day that citizen militia leveled their spears and their thin blue line attacked a professional Persian force many times their number, slaughtering them to the last man on the legendary beach of Marathon.

== The inconvenient truth of Marathon

Think about that for a moment. Can you picture it? Damn. Please pause here and Wiki "Marathon." Even better, watch it computer dramatized. Prepare to be amazed there were once such men. Go on... I'll wait!

Frank Miller rails against effete, pansy-boy militias of amateur, citizen soldiers. But funny thing, none of his Spartan characters ever mentions those events, just a decade earlier! How bakers, potters and poets from Athens - after vanquishing one giant invading army, then ran 26 miles in full armor to face down a second Persian horde and sent it packing, a feat of endurance that gave its name to the modern marathon race. A feat that goes unmatched today. Especially by Spartans.

That Athenian triumph deserves a movie! And believe me, it weighed heavily on the real life Leonidas, ten years later. "300" author Frank Miller portrays the Spartans' preening arrogance in the best possible light, as a kind of endearing tribal machismo. Miller never hints at the underlying reason for Leonidas's rant, a deep current of smoldering shame over how Sparta sat out Marathon, leaving it to Athenian amateurs, like the playwright Aeschylus, to save all of Greece. The "shopkeepers" whom Leonidas outrageously and ungratefully despises in the film.

With that shame over Marathon fresh in memory, Leonidas was eager to prove Spartan mettle when Persia invaded a second time, even though he could find just three hundred volunteers. That much, "300" gets right. Alas, truth is rare in that book and film. Like the notion that Xerxes cared a whit about rustic Sparta in the first place. Athens was always his chief target. It was the heart of the West.

Even when it comes to the Battle of Thermopylae itself, "300" tells outright lies. For example, 1,000 Thespians refused to leave their comrades at the end. They stayed in the pass and died next to Leonidas's 300 Spartans. More shopkeepers. Their valor was inconvenient to Miller's narrative, So he just wrote them out. Worse, he slandered them, depicting them running away.

Oh, remember those helots? As slavemasters, Spartans made the later Romans seem positively goody-two-shoes, by comparison. In his book and movie "300" Frank Miller never shows the two thousand helot luggage-bearers who Leonidas's gang of bullies whipped before them into the pass at Thermopylae, carrying their masters' gear and food and wine and shields.

Where were those slaves during the battle? Why, in the front line! Handed spears but no armor, they slowed down the Persians with their bodies, then made the ground conveniently slippery with their blood. Huh, funny how that got left out! I'm sure it was just an oversight.

== Thermopylae: what was going on in plain view

But the worst slander of all is one of glaring, outrageous omission and tunnel vision. It is what "300" might have shown happening just offstage, simply by turning the camera! Indeed, Leonidas could see it with his own eyes, in plain view throughout the fight, if only he chose to swivel his head. (Alas, Frank Miller doesn't let him turn, in the comic and film.)

The Athenian navy, hard-pressed and outnumbered, guarding his flank in the nearby Artemisium Straits. Again, a citizen militia of fishermen, merchants, blacksmiths and philosophers, they too were at Thermopylae! A few miles out to sea, they battled odds no less desperate than Leonidas faced, without the convenient cliff and wall, against vastly superior Persian forces. Only with this one important difference.

Where Leonidas failed to hold for more than a day or so, the Athenians kept firm! They only retreated when the Spartans let them down!

The commander of that brave flotilla, Themistocles, is a hero far more in keeping with American traditions. A Washington-like commander who makes good use of volunteers - plus new technology and brains - to stave off hordes of arrogant, professional conquerors. Less interested in pompous bragging and macho preening, he cared about his men, striving to achieve both victory and survival. He despised "bold gestures." What mattered were results. Saving his country. His civilization. His men.

And now that you know this, can you believe that Miller and his partners refused to let Leonidas turn his head and witness such a wonderful thing? And maybe give a brief, respectful nod to his allies' epic courage? Don't you feel cheated? You were.

Forced to give way when Leonidas failed to hold a narrow pass, Themistocles and his sailor militia kept up a fighting retreat, survived the burning of their city, (where their dauntless women handled a skillful evacuation)... till they finally drew the vast Persian navy into a trap at a little island called Salamis... glorious Salamis...

...where outnumbered Athenians - and their neighbors - utterly crushed the invading armada, sending Xerxes fleeing for his life. THAT was what saved Greece, not futile boasting and choreographed prancing on the bluffs of Thermopylae. (And again, what a movie someone might make out of the true story!)

As for the later land battle at Platea - glorified by the book and film "300" - it was hard-fought tactically. But strategically it wasn't much more than a mopping-up, slaughtering a demoralized and cut-off Persian force that Xerxes had already abandoned. And even at Platea, there were more men from Athens (and Attican towns) than Spartans! And it was Athenians who raced ahead and turned the Persians' flank.

Oh, one more thing about Platea. At the exact moment that Frank Miller portrays the Spartan Dilios taunting and deriding his own allies before a desperate fight -- (yeah, that's likely) -- it happens that simultaneously Themistocles and his fleet of volunteer sailors were also finishing off the rest of the Persian navy, at Mycale. Dig it, the Athenians fought two epic battles on that same, fateful day. The day the West triumphed and survived. A day worthy of Tolkien and Peter Jackson! And those are the facts. Live with it Miller.

Do the Spartans at least get credit for commanding Greek armies ashore? A couple of years after Platea, repelled by Spartan arrogance and brutality, the Greek cities dumped Sparta from any further leadership role as they spent the next thirty years pushing Persia ever further back, expelling them entirely from Europe and liberating enslaved populations. Led by the democratic rabble from Athens.

In other words. History wasn't at all like the book, or the movie "300." It was much, much better!

== Artistic license? Or goddam evil-batshit lying?

Look, artists get a lot of leeway. At least in this society of freedom they do. (They sure didn't get any slack in feudal times, dominated by warrior-caste bullies.) Miller and the makers of the 300 flick were entitled to emphasize the Spartans and their martial spirit, even though their brave "sacrifice" at Thermopylae accomplished very little, except to make a fine tale of futile bravado. A three-day delay? We're supposed to be impressed by a three-day delaying action?

Well, okay, that's about equal to Davy Crockett at the Alamo. I'm willing to give credit and always have been! Okay, Leonidas and the brave 300 Spartans (and 1000 Thespians!) deserve a movie. (They've had several.) But please. This was a small "feat" at best.

Okay, okay. I'll also admit, "300" certainly offered a great excuse for ninety minutes of homoerotic dancing! Hey, I can appreciate the aesthetics, in abstract. It's not especially my thing - and real Spartans did NOT engage in combat that way - still, 300 gets full marks as a lavishly choreographed fight'n'flex number. And for terrific painted-on abs.

But there comes a point when artistic license turns into deliberate, malicious omission. And then omission becomes blatant, outright-evil lying propaganda. "300" not only crosses that line, it forges into territory that we haven't seen since the propaganda machine of 1930s Germany. White is black. Black is white. Good is defined by the triumph of will.

I might have just sat and glowered, if they simply omitted the Athenians. But to sneer at them and call them effeminate cowards?

After Athens' citizen soldiers accomplished epic triumphs the Spartans never imagined and that they would never, ever come remotely close to equaling? At battles whose names still roll off our tongues today? Achieved by the same kind of "cincinnatus" militias that propelled both Republican Rome and the United States to unparalleled heights, during their time of vigor?

The kind of soldiers who make up our U.S. military today! Citizens-first, despite their vaunted professionalism.

(Historical note: Yes, the Athenians had their faults too! They owned slaves, though far more gently than Sparta. Women had few rights - though the legend of Lysistrata was born there. After they lost Great Pericles, their democracy fell into the kind of populist foolishness that we see in America today, idiotic foreign adventures and callousness toward neighbors. But all of that came later. And at their worst, they kept the basic virtues that are at-issue in this matter of "300"... and in my response. Fierce pride in citizenship.)

No, this is not just artistic license. Expressed repeatedly - with the relentlessness of deliberate, moralizing indoctrination - "300" idolizes the same arrogant contempt for citizenship that eventually ruined classical Greece and Republican Rome, and that might bring the same fate to America.

My own graphic novel "The Life Eaters" never sold as well as Miller's. Heck, that's not my expertise. (Though it was a finalist in France, where they adore the Graphic Novel art form.) With gorgeous art by Scott Hampton, "The Life Eaters" tells a vivid story of rebellion and resistance to a very Spartan-like oppression. But forget the shameless plug. I'm not competing with Frank Miller on his turf. I've got plenty-enough turf of my own.

What I do suggest is this: use your own imagination! Picture an answer to "300," told from the point of view of an escaped Spartan helot-slave serving aboard one of Themistocles's ships, staring up at the frenetic death-prancing of his former masters on the cliff of Thermopylae, shaking his head over their futile, macho posturing, then turning to help the amateur fighters of Athens and Miletus and Corinth get on with the real job of saving civilization.

Doing it without boasting -- or painted-on abs -- but with wit, courage, comradeship, skill... and the one thing that matters most. Something Leonidas never came close to achieving.

The only truly indispensable accomplishment. Something that is often best won by citizen soldiers -

- victory.

Science Fiction for Young Adults: A Recommended List

2011-11-09T18:12:00.000-08:00

What books can we give our teens that don't mire them in a swamp of vampires, domineering wizards or nostalgia for feudalism? These are a few of my personal science fiction favorites for young adults, weighted more toward SF and a little common sense mixed with lots of sense-o-wonder. Many are classics that I grew up with...along with some marvelous recent additions.

Adams, Douglass: The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy Seconds before Earth is destroyed to make way for a galactic freeway, Arthur Dent is saved...for a hilarious journey across space and time.

Anderson, M.T.: Feed A futuristic consumer-mad world where news and advertisements are fed continuously to the brain--till a hacker disrupts the flow during a teen trip to the moon...

Anderson, Poul: The High Crusade Nominated for a Hugo Award. An alien spaceship from the Wersgorix Empire lands in 14th century England during the Hundred Year's War. Adaptability plus stubbornness tilt the odds! (Any book by this author will please a bright teen.)

Anthony, Piers: A Spell for Chameleon A humorous fantasy, from the Xanth series. Every citizen possesses magical powers, except for our young hero, Bink.

The Source of Magic Bink and his friends set off on quest to determine the source of Xanth's magic, when they encounter unexpected enemies. And worse puns.

Asimov, Isaac: The Caves of Steel A murder mystery, set in a far future, when vast domed cities house an over-populated Earth. Detective Elijah Bayley teams with a humanoid robot to solve the crime.

Foundation Trilogy Gibbon's Decline of the Roman Empire with an interstellar twist. The Galactic Empire is going to fall, but Hari Seldon has a plan. Vast in scope. (Later concluded by us Killer B's).

I, Robot Selected stories about humanity's future love/hate relationship with our artificial friends.

Barnes, John: Orbital Resonance Through our 13-year old protagonist, Melpomene Murray, Barnes presents a riveting portrayal of life in space aboard the Flying Dutchman, an asteroid colony which supplies the overpopulated home planet Earth.

Baxter, Stephen: The H-bomb Girl An alternate history look at the Cuban Missile Crisis through the perspective of a teen girl living in a gritty Liverpool in 1962.

Bear, Greg: Dinosaur Summer In a world where Arthur Conan Doyle's The Lost World actually happened, only one dinosaur circus remains on Earth. Fifteen year old Peter Belzoni sets off on an expedition to return the creatures to the wild.

Benford, Gregory: Against Infinity A coming of age story of a young man on the icy surface of Ganymede, searching for a dangerous alien artifact that haunts the dreams of humans.

The Jupiter Project A teenage boy has spent his entire life on The Can, a scientific station orbiting Jupiter--looking for signs of alien life.

Bester, Alfred: The Stars My Destination A classic of Science fiction, this is a story of revenge. Gulliver Foyle, left stranded in space, is determined to track down those responsible.

The Demolished Man Winner of the first Hugo Award in 1953. Ben Reich intends to commit murder in a world where crime is virtually unheard of, due to Espers, telepaths who can probe the inner reaches of the mind.

Bradbury, Ray: The Martian Chronicles A short story collection about the colonization of Mars, as terrestrial expeditions set off to explore the planet, often with devastatingly poignant consequences for the native inhabitants.

Fahrenheit 451 A chilling future dystopian world where "firemen" ransack houses, looking for forbidden books to burn. Often assigned reading in many classrooms.

Brin, David: Glory Season Genetic engineering has largely reduced the role of males on planet Stratos--ruled by clans of cloned females. Young variant twins, Leie and Maia set off to earn their fortunes in a world where they don't quite belong, uncovering their world's role in a wider human cosmos.

The Postman After much of America has been devastated by war, a wanderer comes across an abandoned mail truck and finds long abandoned letters...and delivers hope to isolated towns. (Okay, that's a self-plug. But lots of kids prefer the lighter tone in The Practice Effect!) )

Card, Orson Scott: Ender’s Game Boy genius Ender Wiggin trains to save the world from alien Buggers. A blatant "chosen one" fantasy that appeals to the Harry Potter "I'm a demigod" reflex.

Cherryh, C.J. : The Chanur Saga These novels tell the story of the alien races that make up The Compact, a spacefaring civilization and their first contact with a human. (Any book by this author will please a bright teen.)

Christopher, John: Tripods Trilogy Humanity has been conquered and enslaved by aliens who travel in giant three-legged machines--and control the minds of humans.

Clarke, Arthur C.: Childhood’s End Just as Earthlings are about to launch their first spaceship, alien invaders, the Overlords appear, imposing peace and a golden age. And yet...

Clement, Hal: Mission of Gravity An adventure story told from the point of view of an alien living on the planet Mesklin, venturing from the extreme gravity of the poles to the low gravity of the equator--as they encounter human visitors seeking a lost probe.

Collins, Suzanne: The Hunger Games Sixteen year old Katniss is forced to represent her district, by competing in the televised Hunger Games--a fight to the death contest for survival.

deCamp, L. Sprague: Lest Darkness Fall is the classic timeslip tale about an achraeologist who finds himself in 435 CE Rome. Can he stop the Dark Ages from coming? Terrific. Started the modern era of "Connecticut Yankee" tales.

Dick, Philip K.: The Man in the High Castle Hugo Award winning alternate history, that tells the story of life after World War II if the Axis powers had won, occupying America. For that history buff!

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? A post-apocalyptic story of the near future. Bounty hunter Rick Deckard tracks down and kills escaped androids. Served as the basis of the film, Bladerunner.

Doctorow, Cory: Little Brother After a terrorist attack on San Francisco, a group of teens are taken into custody by the Department of Homeland Security. After his release, 17 year old Marcus Dallow uses his computer expertise to take down the DHS.

Farmer, Nancy: The House of the Scorpion In the land of Orpium, an opium-producing estate between Mexico and the United States, a drug lord enslaves illegal immigrants, through chips planted in their brains. Our protagonist, Matt, has been raised as a clone for organ replacement.

Gaiman, Neil: The Graveyard Book To escape the clutches of Jack the man who killed his parents, Nobody Owens was raised in a graveyard--learning history from the ghosts among the headstones.

Harrison, Harry: The Stainless Steel Rat A great joyride fantasy for teens who like to think they're smarter than civilization or the law. Take a master thief. Turn him into a supercop. Way fun!

Heinlein, Robert: Tunnel in the Sky Teens who want jobs in space must spend a week surviving an alien world, but what if they're stranded? Heinlein's answer to Lord of the Flies.

The Door into Summer Brilliant time travel tale. Great predictions about robots. Just a super yarn--one I read aloud to my kids.

Have Space Suit, Will Travel Boy wins spacesuit in a soap contest. Winds up on rollicking interstellar adventure. A classic!

Farmer in the Sky Teenager Bill Learner and his father leave over-crowded Earth to emigrate to the farming colony on Ganymede--in the process of being terraformed. The harsh reality is not quite as Bill imagined...

The Star Beast Heinlein's mastery of point of view at its best. Lummox had been a family pet, growing increasingly cantankerous--until aliens arrive with a demand.

Red Planet Mars, Mars, Mars - done by the master.

Podkayne of Mars Podkayne Fries, a bright young woman, dreams of becoming a starship pilot. She and her genius brother travel from their home on Mars to Earth. Some female readers cringe, but others say Heinlein nailed it. You decide.

Henderson, Zena: Ingathering Henderson's classic "The People" novels--about alien refugees stranded and hiding on Earth--is a bit languid by modern tastes, but deeply moving and thoughtful. Personal and character-driven portrayals.

Herbert, Frank: Dune A Hugo and Nebula Award winner: the story of the desert planet Arrakis and its complex ecology and struggles between the House Atreides and the dreaded Harkonnen. Demanding but detailed, for bright kids.

Huxley, Aldous: Brave New World A dystopia fast becoming more likely than 1984. Also more fun, but creepy. Thought provoking and on college reading lists.

Laumer, Keith: Earthblood and Reteif's War and The Great Time Machine Hoax are all great fun.

Le Guin, Ursula: The Earthsea Trilogy If you must have imperious secretive wizards, at least make them self-consistent and well-intentioned. Le Guin's fantasy world of Earthsea.

The Lathe of Heaven A young man has effective dreams that change the world when he wakes. A doctor schemes to manipulate dreams for his own purposes.

The Dispossessed Le Guin's exploration of a non-Marxist Anarch-Socialist society, with all its pros and cons. Her best book.

Matheson, Richard: The Incredible Shrinking Man The basis for the movie of the same title, Scott Carey mysteriously begins shrinking to encounter ever-larger dangers looming in the world.

McCaffrey, Ann: The Ship who Sang A second life opens for a crippled woman, to live as a starship. But first she must choose a human partner. (Any book by this author will please a bright teen who likes a very personal-feminine style.)

Dragonsong Not fantasy! Dragons, lords, arts and crafts... all the fantasy "furniture... but genuine sci-fi about a human colony knocked flat but determined to rise up again. They want science back...while riding dragons!

McDevitt, Jack: The Engines of God Two archeologists struggle to preserve the alien artifacts on planet Quraqua before terraforming destroys all traces of the alien civilization--which may hold essential clues to humanity's survival!

Miller, Walter: Canticle for Leibowitz Must civilization fall? Brilliant stories about the few who maintain candles in the darkness after nuclear war.

Niven, Larry: Ringworld The Hugo and Nebula Award winning story of a vast habitat larger than a million earths! Stunning ideas!

Nix, Garth: Shade’s Children Evil overlords rule the Earth, and no child is allowed to live past their fourteenth birthday. Gold-Eye escapes his fate, meeting up with other refugees. Will they be able to destroy the Overlords?

Norton, Andre: The Stars are Ours No one wrote escapist adolescent adventure in space better than Andre Norton. Her Young Adult novels were legend, and SFWA's YA award is named after her.
(Any book by this author will please a bright teen.)

O’Brien, Robert: Z for Zachariah Sixteen year old Ann Burden has been left completely alone after a nuclear war, until a stranger enters her remote valley...

Palmer, David: Emergence A bionuclear war has killed over 99% of earth's population. Candida, an eleven year old girl is among the few who remain--who soon discover they are the next phase of human evolution.

Panshin, Alexei: Rite of Passage A multi-generation colony ship tests its youth by casting them out to survive for a month of Trial upon the hostile colony worlds. Truly the classic YA science fiction novel and a pioneer at the young-female point of view.

Pangborn, Edgar: Davy A post-apocalyptic novel, which follows the adventures of Davy, as he escapes life as an indentured servant in a church-based society that suppresses technology.

Piper, H. Beam: Little Fuzzy Nominated for a Hugo Award, this classic by H. Beam Piper explores the discovery of a sapient race on planet Zarathustra--previously believed devoid of intelligent life. Oh... features the cutest lil' aliens you ever met.

Lord Kalvan of Otherwhen Korean War veteran Calvin Morrison is caught up in a passing Paratime Patrol time machine, and sent to a parallel time track, the feudal kingdom of Hostigos, where he becomes Lord Kalvan, "inventor" of gunpowder and champion of freedom against the Cult of Styphon. (Any book by this author will please a bright teen who likes action adventure in space.)

Pratchett, Terry: The Color of Magic The first of Terry Pratchett's Discworld novels offers a light-hearted spoof of fantasy. (Any book by this author will please a bright teen who likes groaner humor.)

Sargeant, Pamela: Earthseed To save the remnants of humanity, Ship was launched, containing the DNA of Earth's flora and fauna, as well as children created from the genes of the starship's builders. To prepare for colonization, these teenagers are sent to a final test, a competition within the Ship's hollow--which pits friends against friends.

Scalzi, John: Zoe’s Tale A first person narrative, told from the point of view of teenager Zoe Boutin, who travels with her adoptive parents to establish a new colony on Roanoke, struggling against hostile aliens.

Sheckley, Robert: Store of the Worlds Sheckley's stories are classic, and great to read aloud to your kids.

Sleator, William: The Last Universe A story inspired by the uncertainties of quantum mechanics. Susan and her invalid brother, Gary, discover an ever-changing garden which allows them to access parallel universes.

Interstellar Pig Barney is sucked into an addictive role-playing game called Interstellar Pig--when he begins to wonder if it is a game after all..

Smith, E.E. “Doc”: The Skylark of Space A classic from the pre-Golden era of 1930's Sci-Fi. Terran genius Dick Seaton and his violinist girlfriend shake up the galaxy.

The Lensman Series Humanity rocks! We're the great hope for goodness across the galaxy. Our uber-sheriffs take on the ancient baddies from Boskone!

Stewart, George: Earth Abides In this post-apocalyptic story, most of humanity has been wiped out by pandemic. Ish Wiliams emerges from his solitary cabin to find the land deserted... almost. A gentle, thoughtful book, easy to read but very literary.

Sturgeon, Theodore: More than Human This Science Fiction classic tells the stories of six outcasts with special gifts. When they 'blesh' or blend their abilities, they can obtain superhuman powers.

Tevis, Walter: The Man Who Fell to Earth Alien Thomas Newton arrives on Earth, hoping to construct a spaceship to rescue the rest of his civilization and transport them to earth. He is discovered, setting off waves of paranoia and distrust.

Tolkein, J.R.R.: The Hobbit Classic fantasy...the tale of Bilbo Baggins and his quest. Prequel to Tolkien's Lord of the Rings series.

Varley, John: Red Thunder China and the United States are in a space race to reach Mars. Teenager Manny Garcia and friends meet a brilliant inventor who has developed a 'squeezer' that can power a spaceship. They set off to win the race to Mars.

Verne, Jules: Verne wrote brief, captivating "go there" adventure tales that still read well. Choose a direction: up, down or into the sea and Verne's intrepid adventurers head that way! But his Captain Nemo, in 20,000 Leagues under the Sea, was a character with tragic depth.

Weber, David: Mission of Honor The Honor Harrington series typifies the Space War Sci Fi genre. Other authors along this vein include Dave Duncan and Lois MacMaster Bujold.

Wells, H. G.: The Time Machine One of the earliest works of science fiction, this classic tale by H.G. Wells tells of the Time Traveller, who journeys into the far future to meet the placid Eloi who live on the surface and the oppressive Morlocks who live underground.

The Invisible Man A dark tale of a scientist who discovers a potion to render one invisible. He tries it on himself; at first he feels invincible, but the consequences eventually drive him mad.

Westerfield, Scott: Uglies A future dystopian world where everyone undergoes extreme cosmetic surgery at age sixteen to render them beautiful. But our protagonist, Tally Youngblood rebels against this imposed conformity...

Leviathan This steampunk novel presents an alternate history of World War I, pitting the Central Powers and their steam-powered war machines, against the British Darwinists, who have genetically modified animals for fighting. Our protagonist, the son of Archduke Franz Ferdinand rides into battle on the Leviathan, an enormous biological dirigible.

Wilhelm, Kate: Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang The Hugo Award winner. This post-apocalyptic novel centers on a surviving community. Finding themselves infertile, they turn to cloning, which leads to a stagnant society. Until a teenager, Mark seeks another way....

Wylie, Phlip: The Disappearance This book follows two worlds that split from ours. In one, women learn to get along without men (it's difficult in the 1950s, but do-able). In the other, men start out better but find it harder to make it alone!

When World's Collide (written with Edwin Balmer) This was huge in the 1960s. Two planets enter the solar system. One will smack Earth. The other might replace it. Can teams build space arks to cross over in time?

Wyndham, John: The Day of the Triffids A post-apocalyptic novel. Bill Masen awakes in the hospital to find he is the one of the few who can see, while most of the population has been blinded by a meteor storm. He must survive giant walking, stinging plants, Triffids, who wage war upon a collapsing civilization.

The Chrysalids (Re-Birth) In the aftermath of a devastating nuclear war, a rigid religious civilization has arisen which persecutes anyone with genetic deformities. Our protagonist, David Strorm, discovers he has unusual telepathic abilities, and escapes with others to the Fringes, where he contacts a more advanced society.

Zelazny, Roger: Lord of Light Set on a Hindi-settled world, this book introduced us in the 1960s to many eastern concepts, amid a great (if philosophical) action-packed adventure. Zelazny's "Amber" series rollicked with sword fights across countless parallel worlds.

Other very reliable authors worth a look for young adults: Nancy Kress ("Beggars" series), Octavia Butler ("Parable of the Sower"), Alan Dean Foster's "Flinx" series, David Gerrold's "Bouncing Off the Moon" series and Erik Flint's "1632" series. Look them up!

I have mostly left out fantasy, but some are epochally good! For example William Goldman's "The Princess Bride" is by far the best book to read aloud to kids. It was designed for that exact purpose. Do this at least with the first big chapter. Simply do it. Right now.

For those young people ready to transition into the really thoughtful, grownup stuff, these authors pack in mind-stretching ideas: Kim Stanley Robinson, Vernor Vinge, Robert Sawyer, Catherine Asaro, Paolo Bacigalupi, Neal Stephenson, Iain M. Banks, Charles Stross, John Varley, Kay Kenyon, Greg Egan, Russell Hoban, Frederik Pohl, James Tiptree (Alice Sheldon) and so many others.

Science Fiction and Fantasy are the twin genres that still supply the vastness of imagery and wonder that filled the tales of human cultures stretching back to Achilles and Gilgamesh. But what a pity if kids only wallow in images of faux-feudal nolstalgia-romances.

Turn their gaze down the road ahead of them! A road filled with dangers, opportunities and possibilities. Into a future they will imagine, and then boldly make come true.

Books for Younger Readers

Cooper, Susan: The Dark is Rising

Coville, Bruce: My Teacher is an Alien

Dickinson, Peter: Eva

Duane, Diane: So You Want to be a Wizard

DuPrau, Jeanne: The City of Ember

Gaiman, Neil: Coraline

Haddix, Margaret: Running out of Time

L’Engle, Madeleine: A Wrinkle in Time

A Swiftly Tilting Planet

Lowry, Lois: The Giver

Pfeffer, Susan Beth: Life As We Knew It

Pinkwater, Daniel: Alan Mendelsohn, the Boy from Mars

Pratchett, Terry: Only You can Save Mankind

Pullman, Philip: The Golden Compass

Schusterman, Neal: The Dark Side of Nowhere

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More Lists of Recommendations for Young Adults:

The Golden Duck Awards

Young adult: Speculative fiction

Science fiction & fantasy: Books for teens

From io9: List of young adult science fiction

Worlds of Wonder: Science fiction for teens

Plymouth Library: Young adult list

From Jeffrey Carver: Recommended science fiction & fantasy

Hoagie's Gifted Education: Science fiction & fantasy favorites

From Tamara Pierce: Young adult science fiction & fantasy

From Tor books: A young adult reading guide