My daily driver is a 2005 Honda Accord. The driver's side low beam headlight was out. I checked the fuse, no such luck. Went to the auto parts store and bought a new bulb. Came home, pulled out the owner's manual and found the section about changing said bulb. Turns out you must turn the front wheels as far left as possible so that you can (1) remove two plastic rivets that hold the fender's plastic inner lining, (2) pull out but not entirely off (because it doesn't come off entirely and if it did you would almost certainly never be able to get it back on) but open enough to locate the bulb socket, (3) reach up some ten to twelve inches with your forearm, scraping same to the point of drawing blood along various rough edged steel obstacles between you and said socket, (4) turn said socket 1/4 turn counterclockwise, (5) replace bulb, being careful not to touch the glass of the new bulb lest it burn out prematurely, (6) reinsert socket, turning 1/4 clockwise to secure it, (7) remove arm, further scratching same, tuck plastic lining back and secure with plastic rivets.
This procedure worked splendidly, especially the part that wasn't in the manual about scratching your arm all to hell. Except for the part about getting the socket out to replace the bulb. No such luck again. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn't turn it one iota, let alone the multiple iotas necessary to turn it to nine o'clock. Nor, of course, were the plastic rivets of any actual use when I finally gave up in frustration and tried to secure the inner liner as instructed.
I wondered if my fellow Accord owners had experienced similar frustrations and so I did a bit of internet surfing until I came to a forum where an alternative method of removing the bulb was described. Unfortunately, this method required removing the battery first so you could reach the bulb socket, this time reaching down from the open hood instead of up from the tire well. Removing the battery results in three bits of consequential annoyance. First, the four digit navigation system code must be entered after you've put the battery back in. Second, you must enter the radio anti-theft code, a different four digit code even though the audio system and navigation system are essentially part of the same control panel. Then you must reset your AM, FM and XM radio channels because holding such information in a flash memory chip or some such would have cost Honda at least a quarter or two more to built the car.
These codes, by the way, are written on one piece of paper that came with the car. Fortunately, I still have that piece of paper in my files. Knowing what the codes are, however, does not suffice because the method of entering the navigation code is different from the method of entering the radio code. Instructions for each is in the owner's manual.
Well, I figured, that's a bit of hassle, but better than taking the car to those blood-sucking, thieving bastards otherwise known as the nearest Honda dealership to have a light bulb changed. So I take the battery out and, sure enough, although reaching the bulb socket is still awkward, it is comparatively easier. The only problem is that the socket will still not turn. I could not turn it by hand and I could not turn it by wrench, at least with as much torque as I thought I could get away with before the plastic socket -- had I mentioned it was plastic? -- might well just break off. So I put everything back together, closed the hood, started the car and spent however long it took to enter the navigation system code, the radio code and reset the six AM stations, the twelve FM stations and the twelve XM stations.
I surrendered to the bitter recognition that I was not going to be able to change a light bulb by myself and that I would have to take the car to a shop presumably equipped with a hydraulic lift and whatever other tools and such the job apparently required. (Not, I should add, to the blood sucking, thieving bastard Honda dealership but to a local mechanic we've had reasonably good service from.) Which I did yesterday evening. And, lo and behold, the shop called late this morning with the 'good news' that the light bulb had been replaced. Total cost: sixty dollars.
I go to pay the bill and pick up the car and as I'm leaving the shop the mechanic says, "Oh, by the way, we had to take the battery out."
Showing posts with label Technology. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Technology. Show all posts
Friday, December 2, 2011
Tuesday, August 5, 2008
Patent Nonsense
One of the things that distinguishes intellectual property from the more intuitively obvious tangible variety is that the very notion of intellectual property requires a justification in the sense that tangible property almost never does. Utopians of one variety or another have tried, almost always with disastrous consequences, to abolish the institution of private property, but as far as I know there has never been a society that has denied the existence or necessity of property rights of any sort at all. Typically, their alternative has been to assert some sort of collectivist or communitarian ownership; but while it may be that the clan or the tribe “own everything in common” or the “people (collectively) own the means of production,” woe be any rival clan or tribe or people who happen by and start asserting similar property rights in the same stuff. Wars have been known to start that way even in utopia.
The obvious thing about tangible property is that, being stuff, it’s there whether we call it property or not. That is, whether ♫ This land is my land (or) this land is your land ♫, this land is here whether we say so or not, let alone whether ♫ This land was made for you and me. ♫ And so are its flora and fauna and minerals and water running through it or beneath its surface, etc.
How human society has gone from the realization that the world is filled with stuff to the notion that some of it is our stuff (or your stuff or, most importantly, my stuff) is an interesting topic, but not one with which I wish to concern myself here in any detail. If you care, I’ll merely note in passing that I reject all “natural right” theories of property, personally, especially including the so-called Lockean “labor + stuff = property” theory.
Still, I constantly run across fellow self-described libertarians who believe in one sort of natural rights theory or another and a fairly large number of them believe that their theory justifies the notion of tangible personal property (whether, forgive the legalism here, real or chattel) but not intellectual property. Intellectual property – by which I mean here the usual unholy trinity of patents, copyrights and trademarks – is on this account the equivalent of a state enforced and, worse yet, state created monopoly. To which I respond:
Yes, that’s true. Exactly like the state-created and state-enforced monopoly any owner of any sort of property whatsoever enjoys versus any non-owner. To be sure, the land would still be there with or without a state enforced legal system, but it wouldn’t be anyone’s property. Not in anything like the sense we mean by property now, that is. All of our philosophical twaddle about what should or shouldn’t or can or can’t be deemed property aside, the ownership of a patent or trademark is no different from the ownership of an automobile or a condominium. They are all creatures of the state or, more specifically, of a state enforced legal system one of the principle justifications for is the sorting out of competing claims over the same resources.
Ah, say my opposition, but land and the stuff we find and trap or kill or take and make new stuff out of on the land (and sea) are quintessential examples of real resources; namely, natural resources. Patents and trademarks and copyrights are mere fictions.
I agree. But they are highly useful fictions, and if my libertarian confrères would get off their pseudo-Kantian high horses about absolute right and wrong and concentrate instead on the far more useful questions of pragmatic good or bad, I think they’d be more inclined to agree with my perspective. Which is as follows:
(1) The state of the law of intellectual property is in need of serious reform, but (2) we would all be better served by, for example, a reformed law of patents than by the entire abolition of patents. For you theorists, I will add (3) there are no serious theoretical reasons, ethical or otherwise, precluding us from, as it were, saving the baby even as we throw out the dirty bathwater here.
By way of giving an example of the sort of unnecessary and counterproductive infanticide I have in mind here, let me quote extensively from a recent Kevin Carson piece over at Art of The Possible. Carson makes his point by quoting a commenter there, and because I am too lazy to edit extensively I will do the same, as follows:
Okay, so let’s clear the air here a bit. In the first place, whatever may be the truth about the claim that “[p]atents are often justified by the allegedly high cost of developing drugs,” the better question is whether we will have more and better drug research and development with patents or without them regardless of whether those patents go to “big pharma” or to “small start-up firms.” That is, we shouldn’t really care who the incentive of profitable patent rights is spurring on to do research, and that is true whether such research is on cancer drugs or toe fungus drugs.
If Mr. Carson or his commenter believe that there are better ways to encourage such research, they should by all means argue for them. I, however, know of no better incentive than self interest and until I am shown fairly compelling evidence to the contrary, I am not inclined to believe that removing the profit motive from drug research is likely to produce a better, more readily available or affordable pharmacopeia.
Now, that said, no one bothering to read this far should leave thinking I’m an apologist for the pharmaceutical companies. Their successful efforts some years back to retroactively extend the life of patent protection (and similar so-called “reforms” in copyright for the entertainment industry) constitutes nothing more than massive theft and the politicians who voted for such theft should all be horsewhipped. They all created and / or invented whatever they did when the state of the law provided a certain term of proprietary rights and they should enjoy the benefit of that bargain, but nothing more. If the case could be made for patents or copyrights of longer duration, whether for drugs or novels or whatever, fine. But such revised laws should take effect only prospectively. Retroactive extension deprives the public (you and me) of our rightful future expectations with regard to these properties, future expectations we have been paying for throughout the life of the original patents or copyrights. Moreover (okay, go ahead and get back on your Kantian high-horse for a moment here), fair’s fair and a bargain is a bargain.
I don’t deny that the current state of patent law should be extensively reformed (starting with repealing the patent extensions granted “big pharma” in the recent past). It is also true that, to use Mr. Carson’s phrase, patents “distort the market ... [skewing it] toward where the money is.” But, ignoring the emotive connotations of “distort,” it is true of all property schemes that they provide incentives toward certain sorts of behavior and against others.
Perhaps the current system does encourage gaming of sorts which we want to discourage, instead. Perhaps we permit new patents on new drugs that are too closely similar to previously developed drugs. I say perhaps. In fact, I don’t know whether it does or not. The point, however, is that there are all sorts of ways of changing the existing system short of simply abolishing it.
And replacing it with what? The milk of human kindness as a spur to research or, what I fear is the real intended replacement, more massive government control and funding?
Do you want more invention and innovation or less? Do you want more creative works of art or fewer? Those, I think, are the critical questions in any useful discussion of intellectual property. And at the risk of repeating myself, details aside, I know of no better means of getting more of both than by encouraging self-interest through the creation of private property interests in the fruits of such invention and creativity.
Do you?
The obvious thing about tangible property is that, being stuff, it’s there whether we call it property or not. That is, whether ♫ This land is my land (or) this land is your land ♫, this land is here whether we say so or not, let alone whether ♫ This land was made for you and me. ♫ And so are its flora and fauna and minerals and water running through it or beneath its surface, etc.
How human society has gone from the realization that the world is filled with stuff to the notion that some of it is our stuff (or your stuff or, most importantly, my stuff) is an interesting topic, but not one with which I wish to concern myself here in any detail. If you care, I’ll merely note in passing that I reject all “natural right” theories of property, personally, especially including the so-called Lockean “labor + stuff = property” theory.
Still, I constantly run across fellow self-described libertarians who believe in one sort of natural rights theory or another and a fairly large number of them believe that their theory justifies the notion of tangible personal property (whether, forgive the legalism here, real or chattel) but not intellectual property. Intellectual property – by which I mean here the usual unholy trinity of patents, copyrights and trademarks – is on this account the equivalent of a state enforced and, worse yet, state created monopoly. To which I respond:
Yes, that’s true. Exactly like the state-created and state-enforced monopoly any owner of any sort of property whatsoever enjoys versus any non-owner. To be sure, the land would still be there with or without a state enforced legal system, but it wouldn’t be anyone’s property. Not in anything like the sense we mean by property now, that is. All of our philosophical twaddle about what should or shouldn’t or can or can’t be deemed property aside, the ownership of a patent or trademark is no different from the ownership of an automobile or a condominium. They are all creatures of the state or, more specifically, of a state enforced legal system one of the principle justifications for is the sorting out of competing claims over the same resources.
Ah, say my opposition, but land and the stuff we find and trap or kill or take and make new stuff out of on the land (and sea) are quintessential examples of real resources; namely, natural resources. Patents and trademarks and copyrights are mere fictions.
I agree. But they are highly useful fictions, and if my libertarian confrères would get off their pseudo-Kantian high horses about absolute right and wrong and concentrate instead on the far more useful questions of pragmatic good or bad, I think they’d be more inclined to agree with my perspective. Which is as follows:
(1) The state of the law of intellectual property is in need of serious reform, but (2) we would all be better served by, for example, a reformed law of patents than by the entire abolition of patents. For you theorists, I will add (3) there are no serious theoretical reasons, ethical or otherwise, precluding us from, as it were, saving the baby even as we throw out the dirty bathwater here.
By way of giving an example of the sort of unnecessary and counterproductive infanticide I have in mind here, let me quote extensively from a recent Kevin Carson piece over at Art of The Possible. Carson makes his point by quoting a commenter there, and because I am too lazy to edit extensively I will do the same, as follows:
2) Eliminate drug patents. Patents are often justified by the allegedly high cost of developing drugs. But as frequent AoTP commenter quasibill observed, the main source of the expense is not developing the version of the drug that is actually marketed, but gaming the patent system. He challenged the popular misimpression, encouraged by smarmy drug company ads,that what big pharma is researching is cancer meds. It’s not. In the rare instances that big pharma produces and markets such medicines, it has purchased them from small start-ups that themselves are the result normally of a university laboratory’s work. When big pharma cites to billions of research costs, what it is talking about is the process whereby they literally test millions of very closely related compounds to find out if they have a solid therapeutic window. This type of research is directly related to the patent system, as changing one functional group can get you around most patents, eventually. So you like to bulk up your catalogue and patent all closely related compounds, while choosing only the best among them, or, if you’re second to market, one that hasn’t yet been patented.
This work is incredibly data intensive, and requires many Ph.D’s, assistants, and high powered computers and testing equipment to achieve. But it is hardly necessary in the absence of a patent regime. In the absence of patents, (and of course the FDA), you could just focus on finding a sufficient therapeutic window, and cut out the remaining tests.
Patents also grossly distort the market, leading drug companies to focus most of their research on “me too” drugs that tweak an existing formula just enough to enable it to be repatented, and use it to replace the older version that’s about to go generic. Then the drug reps hit the hospitals and clinics, drop off some free samples and pamphlets, and (most M.D.s relying on drug industry handouts for their information on drugs that come out after they leave med school) the “me, too” drug becomes the new standard form of treatment.
The license cartels and drug patents are two examples of essentially the same phenomenon: First, the government creates a honey pot by enforcing a monopoly and making particular forms of service artificially lucrative. Then the market skews toward where the money is, as practitioners adopt the more lucrative business model and crowd out affordable alternatives.
Okay, so let’s clear the air here a bit. In the first place, whatever may be the truth about the claim that “[p]atents are often justified by the allegedly high cost of developing drugs,” the better question is whether we will have more and better drug research and development with patents or without them regardless of whether those patents go to “big pharma” or to “small start-up firms.” That is, we shouldn’t really care who the incentive of profitable patent rights is spurring on to do research, and that is true whether such research is on cancer drugs or toe fungus drugs.
If Mr. Carson or his commenter believe that there are better ways to encourage such research, they should by all means argue for them. I, however, know of no better incentive than self interest and until I am shown fairly compelling evidence to the contrary, I am not inclined to believe that removing the profit motive from drug research is likely to produce a better, more readily available or affordable pharmacopeia.
Now, that said, no one bothering to read this far should leave thinking I’m an apologist for the pharmaceutical companies. Their successful efforts some years back to retroactively extend the life of patent protection (and similar so-called “reforms” in copyright for the entertainment industry) constitutes nothing more than massive theft and the politicians who voted for such theft should all be horsewhipped. They all created and / or invented whatever they did when the state of the law provided a certain term of proprietary rights and they should enjoy the benefit of that bargain, but nothing more. If the case could be made for patents or copyrights of longer duration, whether for drugs or novels or whatever, fine. But such revised laws should take effect only prospectively. Retroactive extension deprives the public (you and me) of our rightful future expectations with regard to these properties, future expectations we have been paying for throughout the life of the original patents or copyrights. Moreover (okay, go ahead and get back on your Kantian high-horse for a moment here), fair’s fair and a bargain is a bargain.
I don’t deny that the current state of patent law should be extensively reformed (starting with repealing the patent extensions granted “big pharma” in the recent past). It is also true that, to use Mr. Carson’s phrase, patents “distort the market ... [skewing it] toward where the money is.” But, ignoring the emotive connotations of “distort,” it is true of all property schemes that they provide incentives toward certain sorts of behavior and against others.
Perhaps the current system does encourage gaming of sorts which we want to discourage, instead. Perhaps we permit new patents on new drugs that are too closely similar to previously developed drugs. I say perhaps. In fact, I don’t know whether it does or not. The point, however, is that there are all sorts of ways of changing the existing system short of simply abolishing it.
And replacing it with what? The milk of human kindness as a spur to research or, what I fear is the real intended replacement, more massive government control and funding?
Do you want more invention and innovation or less? Do you want more creative works of art or fewer? Those, I think, are the critical questions in any useful discussion of intellectual property. And at the risk of repeating myself, details aside, I know of no better means of getting more of both than by encouraging self-interest through the creation of private property interests in the fruits of such invention and creativity.
Do you?
Monday, July 28, 2008
Picky, Picky, Picky!
I don’t know about the rest of you, but I’m already in August Mode, a frame of mind common among Washingtonians, New Yorkers and other pretentious pseudo-intellectuals of my ilk during which time unless, let's say, Obama is caught in fishnet stockings chasing a sumo wrestler or McCain is discovered to actually have spent the Viet Nam war in Canada making macramé bongs while his twin brother Skippy was the real POW, I simply don’t give a rat’s ass about politics. Save it for after Labor Day.
So I was surfing for non-political news earlier today at my usual haunts and ran across this story in Slate about amateur locksmithing.
This happens to be a topic about which I actually know a little something, albeit second-hand, because amateur locksmithing was the hobby of one of my oldest school friends, a fellow who shall remain unidentified despite the statutes of limitations having long since lapsed for his various youthful indiscretions.
Of which there were many. My friend, whom I’ll call here “Jimmy” after a fairly crude lock opening technique, became intrigued as a child with the inner workings of locks and keys and, more to the point, how to open the former without benefit of the latter. As skilled trades go, locksmithing is far more about brains than brawn and Jimmy has a logical mind and a meticulous temperament exactly suited to figuring out puzzles and therefore to picking locks.
By high school Jimmy had also managed to acquire a key cutting machine – don’t ask! – various tools of the trade including illegal lock picks and tension wrenches (more about which below), shims and so forth. He had also, um, ‘borrowed’ locks from schools, churches and other public and semi-public places, dismantling them and discovering in the process how to make master keys to those entire buildings or building complexes.
I hasten to point out that Jimmy had no larcenous intentions in any of this. He simply viewed a locked door or a lock of any sort as a challenge. The fun was all in figuring out how to thwart the lock owner’s desire to keep him out, not in actually entering where he wasn’t wanted. It was, in short, simply a game.
Okay, so every once in a while there were more, um, practical applications of this skill. In the late 1960s, when the suburban youth of America (1) had just discovered the pleasures of marijuana but (2) were convinced that there were millions of ‘narcs” lurking just about everywhere, having a key that could stop the elevator between floors in a local apartment building (not ours!) long enough to smoke a joint and then wait for the ceiling exhaust fan to remove the tell-tale scent before turning the elevator back on was the perfect solution to our privacy problem. Keys to the padlocked chains barring vehicular entry into public parks where a young couple might go parking at night similarly proved handy.
Of course, that was all many, many years ago and my friend Jimmy is now a respected member of one of the learned professions and a disquietingly conservative pillar of his community. My guess is that he doesn’t even smoke pot anymore, let alone take young girls parking.
Woolgathering about my salad days (“Block that mixed metaphor!”) aside, the thing about this amateur locksmithing business is that its opposition is such a classic case of vested interests trying to protect their once largely unchallenged turf and trotting out all the usual and typically disingenuous “public interest” arguments in the process.
Case in point: I could be charged in many jurisdictions with possession of burglary tool over the fact that I have, courtesy of Jimmy, a small lock picking kit I’ve used on countless occasions when I or a friend lost or misplaced a key. At least the way the law used to be written, unless you were a bonded locksmith, such mere possession was sufficient grounds for conviction of a misdemeanor. After all, if you weren’t a real locksmith, what on earth could you possibly want with such implements except to commit a crime? Right?
[Insert “possession of rape equipment” joke here.]
I wasn’t aware that amateur locksmithing was so popular a hobby as the Slate article suggests, but I’m glad to hear it. Truth be told, I misplaced my old pick set a few years ago. Hey, maybe I can just order one online these days! To be sure, there are legitimate arguments in favor of keeping some sorts of information confidential. But knowing how to open a pin-tumbler lock, even a Medeco lock, without having to use bolt cutters hardly rises to the level of legitimate state secret. And as the enthusiasts correctly point out, the first step in building a better mousetrap lies in finding out the weaknesses in the old model. That’s what we call progress.
So I was surfing for non-political news earlier today at my usual haunts and ran across this story in Slate about amateur locksmithing.
This happens to be a topic about which I actually know a little something, albeit second-hand, because amateur locksmithing was the hobby of one of my oldest school friends, a fellow who shall remain unidentified despite the statutes of limitations having long since lapsed for his various youthful indiscretions.
Of which there were many. My friend, whom I’ll call here “Jimmy” after a fairly crude lock opening technique, became intrigued as a child with the inner workings of locks and keys and, more to the point, how to open the former without benefit of the latter. As skilled trades go, locksmithing is far more about brains than brawn and Jimmy has a logical mind and a meticulous temperament exactly suited to figuring out puzzles and therefore to picking locks.
By high school Jimmy had also managed to acquire a key cutting machine – don’t ask! – various tools of the trade including illegal lock picks and tension wrenches (more about which below), shims and so forth. He had also, um, ‘borrowed’ locks from schools, churches and other public and semi-public places, dismantling them and discovering in the process how to make master keys to those entire buildings or building complexes.
I hasten to point out that Jimmy had no larcenous intentions in any of this. He simply viewed a locked door or a lock of any sort as a challenge. The fun was all in figuring out how to thwart the lock owner’s desire to keep him out, not in actually entering where he wasn’t wanted. It was, in short, simply a game.
Okay, so every once in a while there were more, um, practical applications of this skill. In the late 1960s, when the suburban youth of America (1) had just discovered the pleasures of marijuana but (2) were convinced that there were millions of ‘narcs” lurking just about everywhere, having a key that could stop the elevator between floors in a local apartment building (not ours!) long enough to smoke a joint and then wait for the ceiling exhaust fan to remove the tell-tale scent before turning the elevator back on was the perfect solution to our privacy problem. Keys to the padlocked chains barring vehicular entry into public parks where a young couple might go parking at night similarly proved handy.
Of course, that was all many, many years ago and my friend Jimmy is now a respected member of one of the learned professions and a disquietingly conservative pillar of his community. My guess is that he doesn’t even smoke pot anymore, let alone take young girls parking.
Woolgathering about my salad days (“Block that mixed metaphor!”) aside, the thing about this amateur locksmithing business is that its opposition is such a classic case of vested interests trying to protect their once largely unchallenged turf and trotting out all the usual and typically disingenuous “public interest” arguments in the process.
Case in point: I could be charged in many jurisdictions with possession of burglary tool over the fact that I have, courtesy of Jimmy, a small lock picking kit I’ve used on countless occasions when I or a friend lost or misplaced a key. At least the way the law used to be written, unless you were a bonded locksmith, such mere possession was sufficient grounds for conviction of a misdemeanor. After all, if you weren’t a real locksmith, what on earth could you possibly want with such implements except to commit a crime? Right?
[Insert “possession of rape equipment” joke here.]
I wasn’t aware that amateur locksmithing was so popular a hobby as the Slate article suggests, but I’m glad to hear it. Truth be told, I misplaced my old pick set a few years ago. Hey, maybe I can just order one online these days! To be sure, there are legitimate arguments in favor of keeping some sorts of information confidential. But knowing how to open a pin-tumbler lock, even a Medeco lock, without having to use bolt cutters hardly rises to the level of legitimate state secret. And as the enthusiasts correctly point out, the first step in building a better mousetrap lies in finding out the weaknesses in the old model. That’s what we call progress.
Sunday, June 15, 2008
It's a Bug and a Feature!
Today's (UK) TimesOnline reports "Scientists find bugs that eat waste and excrete petrol." The scientists in question are the Silicon Valley variety and the bugs in question are the genetically engineered variety. The report goes on:
So it is, or will be. How soon, however, is another question and another month is, to put it mildly, a tad optimistic.
But who knows? That's the thing about technological revolutions. While they do, indeed, build on what has been discovered or invented before, there really are "Eureka!" moments that change everything forever, too. I have little doubt that as physics, engineering, electronics and computer science were the motive forces of 20th century technology, genetic engineering and genetic medicine will be the big stories of the 21st century, certainly revolutionizing medicine and quite possibly revolutionizing energy production, too.
Meanwhile, no word so far on whether scientists have had any luck bioengineering bugs who eat politicians and excrete productive people.
Unbelievably, this is not science fiction. Mr Pal holds up a small beaker of bug excretion that could, theoretically, be poured into the tank of the giant Lexus SUV next to us. Not that Mr Pal is willing to risk it just yet. He gives it a month before the first vehicle is filled up on what he calls “renewable petroleum”. After that, he grins, “it’s a brave new world”.
So it is, or will be. How soon, however, is another question and another month is, to put it mildly, a tad optimistic.
But who knows? That's the thing about technological revolutions. While they do, indeed, build on what has been discovered or invented before, there really are "Eureka!" moments that change everything forever, too. I have little doubt that as physics, engineering, electronics and computer science were the motive forces of 20th century technology, genetic engineering and genetic medicine will be the big stories of the 21st century, certainly revolutionizing medicine and quite possibly revolutionizing energy production, too.
Meanwhile, no word so far on whether scientists have had any luck bioengineering bugs who eat politicians and excrete productive people.
Thursday, May 29, 2008
This Gives "Extra-Vehicular Activity" A Whole New Meaning
You think you have a hard time getting a plumber when you need one? Pity the poor astronauts awaiting a spare part to fix the toilet on the international space station. "Okay, that'll be $37.50 for the pump, $150 labor and $2,000,000 for the service call." (I admit it. I don't know how much each flight of the the space shuttle Discovery actually costs and just pulled a figure from my... well, never mind that.)
But my favorite quote from the story is as follows:
But my favorite quote from the story is as follows:
The space station's Russian-built toilet has been acting up for the past week. The three male residents have temporarily bypassed the problem, which involves urine collection, not solid waste.
Thursday, July 12, 2007
Rags to Riches ...
... or at least to more widespread literacy. (Not to mention -- hold your britches! -- a 13th century case of recycling that made sense.)
Sunday, July 1, 2007
Freeman Dyson's Optimistic Biotech Future
Freeman Dyson is the sort of intellectual one must take seriously even when writing what may amount to little more than a review of his own book and, along the way, a tribute to microbiologist Carl Woese. Those of us who have not read The Sun, the Genome, and the Internet (and that would include me) might well find their appetite whetted by this New York Review of Books article from one of the best minds of the 20th century.
Wednesday, June 13, 2007
Sexist Pigs Abandon Katie
Poor Katie Couric is, according to CBS chief executive Leslie Moonves, the victim of sexism.
Couric's ratings on the CBS Evening News this month hit a 20 year low, pretty amazing when you consider she took over from Dan Rather.
As I have written before, here's the real deal. Every year there are new "men over 55" who used to be men under 55. They haven't been watching network news for years and nothing is going to change that. Years ago, I used to quip that the most frightening sentence in the English language was "More people get their news from ABC News than from any other source." But whether it's from ABC, NBC or CBS, more and more people of all ages are getting whatever news they do get from the many alternatives now available. Why wait for the local weatherman when you can click on the weather any time you want (or click on the Weather Channel on TV)? It doesn't matter who's selling your product if it's a product no longer in high demand because better alternatives exist, and that has nothing to do with Couric's gender or even her modest journalistic skills.
Ms Couric has managed a 2 per cent increase in women age 18 to 49 since her September debut. However, that has been more than offset by an 11 per cent decline among men over 55, who still constitute the bulk of the evening news’ audience.
Couric's ratings on the CBS Evening News this month hit a 20 year low, pretty amazing when you consider she took over from Dan Rather.
As I have written before, here's the real deal. Every year there are new "men over 55" who used to be men under 55. They haven't been watching network news for years and nothing is going to change that. Years ago, I used to quip that the most frightening sentence in the English language was "More people get their news from ABC News than from any other source." But whether it's from ABC, NBC or CBS, more and more people of all ages are getting whatever news they do get from the many alternatives now available. Why wait for the local weatherman when you can click on the weather any time you want (or click on the Weather Channel on TV)? It doesn't matter who's selling your product if it's a product no longer in high demand because better alternatives exist, and that has nothing to do with Couric's gender or even her modest journalistic skills.
Tuesday, May 8, 2007
"But I didn't say Minnie was crazy..." (Re-Updated)
Sometimes the set-up is just too good to be true. Here's FOX News reporting that Hamas is using a rip-off of the world's most famous cartoon character as a propaganda tool on a weekly children's program.
So what's a blogger to do? Go with the obvious "This proves what a Mickey Mouse operation Hamas really is!" or the slightly more analytical "If these people think Israel or the U.S. are evil, oppressive powers, just wait until Disney gets through with them!"
I blog, you decide.
UPDATE: The AP (via Der Spiegel) reports, "On Wednesday, after this story went live, the Palestinian Information Minister Mustafa Barghouti announced that the Hamas-affiliated television station al-Aqsa TV had complied with a government request to pull the show 'Tomorrow's Pioneers' for 'review.' He said the use of a cartoon character to urge Palestinian children to fight Israel and work toward world Islamic domination was a 'mistaken approach.'"
See? I told you those Disney lawyers are enough to scare even the Palestinians! Maybe Hamas should look up those out-of-work puppets from Team America as possible replacements. They struck me as mercenaries under the veneer, anyway.
(Hat tip to memeorandum.)
UPDATE REDUX: And now the Hamas television station is refusing to cancel the show in which the "Mickey Mouse look-alike named Farfur and a little girl [not only] urge resistance against Israel and the United States [but also stress] the importance of daily prayers and drinking milk."
My money's still on Disney parachuting in combat hardened airborne lawyers to kick a little Farfur butt; but who knows, maybe a flanking action by Big Dairy is in the works, too.
Excerpts from episodes that aired last month show the squeaky voiced mouse egging on children with nationalistic fervor.
"We, tomorrow’s pioneers, will restore to this nation its glory, and we will liberate Al-Aqsa, with Allah’s will, and we will liberate Iraq, with Allah’s will, and we will liberate the Muslim countries, invaded by murderers,” Farfur says in one episode that aired in April.
The message seems to be working. Poems and songs submitted by young viewers contain violent imagery. "Rafah sings ‘Oh, oh,’" one caller says as Farfur mimes carrying a rifle. "Its answer is an AK-47."
So what's a blogger to do? Go with the obvious "This proves what a Mickey Mouse operation Hamas really is!" or the slightly more analytical "If these people think Israel or the U.S. are evil, oppressive powers, just wait until Disney gets through with them!"
I blog, you decide.
UPDATE: The AP (via Der Spiegel) reports, "On Wednesday, after this story went live, the Palestinian Information Minister Mustafa Barghouti announced that the Hamas-affiliated television station al-Aqsa TV had complied with a government request to pull the show 'Tomorrow's Pioneers' for 'review.' He said the use of a cartoon character to urge Palestinian children to fight Israel and work toward world Islamic domination was a 'mistaken approach.'"
See? I told you those Disney lawyers are enough to scare even the Palestinians! Maybe Hamas should look up those out-of-work puppets from Team America as possible replacements. They struck me as mercenaries under the veneer, anyway.
(Hat tip to memeorandum.)
UPDATE REDUX: And now the Hamas television station is refusing to cancel the show in which the "Mickey Mouse look-alike named Farfur and a little girl [not only] urge resistance against Israel and the United States [but also stress] the importance of daily prayers and drinking milk."
My money's still on Disney parachuting in combat hardened airborne lawyers to kick a little Farfur butt; but who knows, maybe a flanking action by Big Dairy is in the works, too.
Thursday, May 3, 2007
Sex in Space? Shiny!
There's good news and bad news on the Final Frontier Front. The good news, NASA plans a manned landing on Mars 30 years from now. The bad news, NASA plans to still be around 30 years from now. The AP reports:
Come to think of it, if the Earth-like planet in question is Gliese 581c, NASA plans on being around for a mission requiring traveling a one-way distance of 20.5 light years, by comparison with which a round trip to Mars and back of 110 to 200 kilometers is a walk around the block. Either we're much closer to Warp Drive than NASA is letting on, or those boys really believe in long term planning.
Based purely on anecdata, there is a surprisingly large percentage among those of us who generally oppose big government to make an exception when it comes to space. I don't think it has anything to do with economic arguments about capital investment costs, commercial viability or even funding for scientific research. I think space exploration is simply one of those exceptions libertarians are often willing to make to their principles because we grew up reading Heinlein, watching Star Trek, etc. and think space travel is just too damned nifty to let principles intrude. My basic position is that when it comes to wasting vast sums of tax dollars on failed foreign adventures, failed social welfare programs or (even failed) space exploration, I'd rather the money be wasted on space. Your mileage (or light-yearage) may vary.
Still, as fans of, for example, Firefly, realize, one of the real down-sides of humanity finally escaping our terrestrial prison via the likes of NASA is that where the government goes, government goes. Which also means that government consultants, special interest advocates and other parasitic life forms will soon be infecting space, as well.
There are, I suppose, all sorts of things to consider about life in space, though the laundry list of issues currently being considered by NASA seems to range from the sensible to the pointless to the absurd. Were you worried you might have to put in too many hours of overtime in space? Fear not, NASA has already established the 48 hour work week. Should genetic screening, currently prohibited, be used to select crews for long-term space missions? NASA's chief health and medical officer, Richard Williams, says "Genetic screening must be approached with caution ... because of limiting employment and career opportunities based on use of genetic information."
I trust the worry here is over leaked genetic information affecting the person's terrestrial opportunities and not the idiotic notion that we shouldn't screen crews because it would be prejudicial to deny someone with a high likelihood of developing a mission threatening disease or disorder during a long-term mission. But, hey, this is the government we're talking about, so you never know. Medical concerns are real enough, but chances are pretty good that medical advances will keep pace with or outdistance advances in space exploration technology as the decades roll by.
My guess is that, whatever the so-called experts are planning and predicting at this point, by the time there is significant human traffic in space, the model we will rely upon most heavily will be our history of ships at sea and how they, for example, have dealt with medical emergencies and shipboard deaths on the high seas. Unfortunately, I won't live to see much of it happen, anyway. Then again, if we leave the likes of NASA in charge, neither will my great grandchildren.
With NASA planning to land on Mars 30 years from now, and with the recent discovery of the most Earth-like planet ever seen outside the solar system, the space agency has begun to ponder some of the thorny practical and ethical questions posed by deep space exploration.
Come to think of it, if the Earth-like planet in question is Gliese 581c, NASA plans on being around for a mission requiring traveling a one-way distance of 20.5 light years, by comparison with which a round trip to Mars and back of 110 to 200 kilometers is a walk around the block. Either we're much closer to Warp Drive than NASA is letting on, or those boys really believe in long term planning.
Based purely on anecdata, there is a surprisingly large percentage among those of us who generally oppose big government to make an exception when it comes to space. I don't think it has anything to do with economic arguments about capital investment costs, commercial viability or even funding for scientific research. I think space exploration is simply one of those exceptions libertarians are often willing to make to their principles because we grew up reading Heinlein, watching Star Trek, etc. and think space travel is just too damned nifty to let principles intrude. My basic position is that when it comes to wasting vast sums of tax dollars on failed foreign adventures, failed social welfare programs or (even failed) space exploration, I'd rather the money be wasted on space. Your mileage (or light-yearage) may vary.
Still, as fans of, for example, Firefly, realize, one of the real down-sides of humanity finally escaping our terrestrial prison via the likes of NASA is that where the government goes, government goes. Which also means that government consultants, special interest advocates and other parasitic life forms will soon be infecting space, as well.
There are, I suppose, all sorts of things to consider about life in space, though the laundry list of issues currently being considered by NASA seems to range from the sensible to the pointless to the absurd. Were you worried you might have to put in too many hours of overtime in space? Fear not, NASA has already established the 48 hour work week. Should genetic screening, currently prohibited, be used to select crews for long-term space missions? NASA's chief health and medical officer, Richard Williams, says "Genetic screening must be approached with caution ... because of limiting employment and career opportunities based on use of genetic information."
I trust the worry here is over leaked genetic information affecting the person's terrestrial opportunities and not the idiotic notion that we shouldn't screen crews because it would be prejudicial to deny someone with a high likelihood of developing a mission threatening disease or disorder during a long-term mission. But, hey, this is the government we're talking about, so you never know. Medical concerns are real enough, but chances are pretty good that medical advances will keep pace with or outdistance advances in space exploration technology as the decades roll by.
My guess is that, whatever the so-called experts are planning and predicting at this point, by the time there is significant human traffic in space, the model we will rely upon most heavily will be our history of ships at sea and how they, for example, have dealt with medical emergencies and shipboard deaths on the high seas. Unfortunately, I won't live to see much of it happen, anyway. Then again, if we leave the likes of NASA in charge, neither will my great grandchildren.
Monday, April 30, 2007
Constant Viewer: A 25 Year Science Fiction Film "Top Three" Mini-Review
Next month marks the 25th anniversary of Blade Runner, one of the best science fiction movies in the past, well, twenty-five years if not the entire history of the genre. And the history of science fiction in film is practically as old as motion pictures, themselves. In fact, you can see the very first science fiction film, Georges Melies’ 105 year old Le Voyage dans la Lune, here. Okay, so the special effects weren’t so hot, but this is well before Computer Generated Imagery (CGI), after all.
So, in fact, was Blade Runner, but it holds up remarkably well compared to many of the sci-fi films that follow. Like 2001: A Space Odyssey and a handful of films in between, Blade Runner holds up today both because its effects were meticulously crafted and intended to contribute to the overall film rather than being its raison d'être, and because it was a serious film intended for serious, intelligent film and science fiction fans. Then, again, given (1) that the motion picture industry is first and foremost an industry and (2) judging from the fan ratings at the iMDB Top 50 Rated Sci-Fi Films, it would have to be said that serious, intelligent science fiction films have been few and far between.
In fact, in Constant Viewer’s highly biased view, the only movie on that list that gives Blade Runner a run for its money in the last 25 years is The Matrix. The only other great science fiction film of the past 25 years that CV can think of didn't even make the list; namely, Dark City. (That CV’s three top science fiction films of the last quarter-century are all dystopias probably says much about CV’s world view, but there it is.)
Much has been written about Blade Runner and The Matrix; little has been written about Dark City. With strong roots in German Expressionism and also considerable homage to Fritz Lang’s Metropolis, this 1998 movie by Alex Proyas (The Crow; I, Robot) actually preceded The Matrix by a year, though CV has read comments calling it a Matrix knockoff. In fact, the films are similar in some thematic respects. Both also have dazzling special effects, a genuinely interesting story to tell and a strong cast (notwithstanding CV’s general opinion of Kenau Reeves.) Dark City's great cast includes Rufus Sewell, William Hurt, Kiefer Sutherland, Jennifer Connelly, Richard O’Brien and Ian Richardson in a story about a city in perpetual darkness where sinister alien forces manipulate the lives of the city’s denizens. To tell more would be to tell too much; but if you haven’t seen Dark City, and chances are that you haven’t, CV strongly urges you to check it out at the local video store. It isn’t quite up to The Matrix or Blade Runner, but it’s a hell of a lot better than most of the sci-fi films made before or after it.
Science fiction movies have both profited and suffered from the relentless march of both film and real-life technology. It is a commonplace observation that sci-fi says more about whatever present time it is created in than about the future; hence, for example, the endless stream of radiation created monsters in the 50’s and 60’s and the various space alien surrogates for whatever terrestrial menaces we faced or thought we faced back then. Still, it is usually painful to watch even a merely 25 year old vision of the future when the now dated computer consoles and various “futuristic” gizmos and gadgets are trotted out on the screen. (And how was Stanley Kubrick or Arthur C. Clarke supposed to know that Pan Am wouldn’t even make it to 2001, let alone to the moon?)
Like real westerns fifty years ago, space westerns have been both the most popular and the least sustaining sci-fi products of contemporary films. Lucas couldn’t squeeze three decent movies out of his Star Wars franchise because there was barely enough juice in the original movie to justify a single sequel. Special effects aside, it was all white hats and black hats and shoot-em-up at the O.K. Space Corral. So, too, even Spielberg finally had to grow up and give up the sci-fi feel-good pabulum of Close Encounters and that diabetes-inducing sugar-teat for three-year-olds of all ages, E.T.
As for the sequels to the original The Matrix, the less said the better. CV doesn’t blame the Wachowski brothers for cashing in, but he does blame them for pretending that wasn’t what they were doing all along. When Dante wrote his two soporific sequels to the Inferno, at least he had the excuse that he was writing an adaptation.
CGI technology has now extended the movies’ ability to realistically bring to the screen literally anything imaginable. So far, it has largely gone to waste on superheroes and special effects for special effects’ sake. Don’t get CV wrong – he’ll enjoy taking his son to see Spider-Man 3 soon like half a gazillion other fans. But is it too much to ask that the next 25 years yields more than just a few truly great science fiction films?
So, in fact, was Blade Runner, but it holds up remarkably well compared to many of the sci-fi films that follow. Like 2001: A Space Odyssey and a handful of films in between, Blade Runner holds up today both because its effects were meticulously crafted and intended to contribute to the overall film rather than being its raison d'être, and because it was a serious film intended for serious, intelligent film and science fiction fans. Then, again, given (1) that the motion picture industry is first and foremost an industry and (2) judging from the fan ratings at the iMDB Top 50 Rated Sci-Fi Films, it would have to be said that serious, intelligent science fiction films have been few and far between.
In fact, in Constant Viewer’s highly biased view, the only movie on that list that gives Blade Runner a run for its money in the last 25 years is The Matrix. The only other great science fiction film of the past 25 years that CV can think of didn't even make the list; namely, Dark City. (That CV’s three top science fiction films of the last quarter-century are all dystopias probably says much about CV’s world view, but there it is.)
Much has been written about Blade Runner and The Matrix; little has been written about Dark City. With strong roots in German Expressionism and also considerable homage to Fritz Lang’s Metropolis, this 1998 movie by Alex Proyas (The Crow; I, Robot) actually preceded The Matrix by a year, though CV has read comments calling it a Matrix knockoff. In fact, the films are similar in some thematic respects. Both also have dazzling special effects, a genuinely interesting story to tell and a strong cast (notwithstanding CV’s general opinion of Kenau Reeves.) Dark City's great cast includes Rufus Sewell, William Hurt, Kiefer Sutherland, Jennifer Connelly, Richard O’Brien and Ian Richardson in a story about a city in perpetual darkness where sinister alien forces manipulate the lives of the city’s denizens. To tell more would be to tell too much; but if you haven’t seen Dark City, and chances are that you haven’t, CV strongly urges you to check it out at the local video store. It isn’t quite up to The Matrix or Blade Runner, but it’s a hell of a lot better than most of the sci-fi films made before or after it.
Science fiction movies have both profited and suffered from the relentless march of both film and real-life technology. It is a commonplace observation that sci-fi says more about whatever present time it is created in than about the future; hence, for example, the endless stream of radiation created monsters in the 50’s and 60’s and the various space alien surrogates for whatever terrestrial menaces we faced or thought we faced back then. Still, it is usually painful to watch even a merely 25 year old vision of the future when the now dated computer consoles and various “futuristic” gizmos and gadgets are trotted out on the screen. (And how was Stanley Kubrick or Arthur C. Clarke supposed to know that Pan Am wouldn’t even make it to 2001, let alone to the moon?)
Like real westerns fifty years ago, space westerns have been both the most popular and the least sustaining sci-fi products of contemporary films. Lucas couldn’t squeeze three decent movies out of his Star Wars franchise because there was barely enough juice in the original movie to justify a single sequel. Special effects aside, it was all white hats and black hats and shoot-em-up at the O.K. Space Corral. So, too, even Spielberg finally had to grow up and give up the sci-fi feel-good pabulum of Close Encounters and that diabetes-inducing sugar-teat for three-year-olds of all ages, E.T.
As for the sequels to the original The Matrix, the less said the better. CV doesn’t blame the Wachowski brothers for cashing in, but he does blame them for pretending that wasn’t what they were doing all along. When Dante wrote his two soporific sequels to the Inferno, at least he had the excuse that he was writing an adaptation.
CGI technology has now extended the movies’ ability to realistically bring to the screen literally anything imaginable. So far, it has largely gone to waste on superheroes and special effects for special effects’ sake. Don’t get CV wrong – he’ll enjoy taking his son to see Spider-Man 3 soon like half a gazillion other fans. But is it too much to ask that the next 25 years yields more than just a few truly great science fiction films?
Wednesday, April 25, 2007
"Honey, the babysitter has arrived."
Following yesterday's robotic servant problem post, and with a hat tip to Reason's Ronald Bailey, here's some vital public safety information on the looming threat of a Robot Uprising.
Tuesday, April 24, 2007
Would You Settle for Just Humming the Body Electric?
From the (U.K.) Daily Mail comes a report entitled “Are we safe from robots that can think for themselves?” Curiously enough, it does not concern the chances of Al Gore running again for president. Rather, we are told some scientists “predict that in the next five years robots will be available for child-minding, to work in care homes, monitor prisons and help police trace criminals.” No word, so far, on whether such robots will dream of electric sheep.
Stories such as these crop up periodically, invariably asserting the imminence of “thinking” machines of the sort we routinely find in science fiction stories and dredging up references to Asimov’s three laws of robotics. Perhaps we shall see the advent of genuinely thinking machines some day – I hope I live to see it and will even join People for the Ethical Treatment of Robots when the time arrives – but the difference between state-of-the-art artificial intelligence and human intelligence remains vast. Five years?
Still, the public debate called for in the article is a good idea. Whether “autonomous” robot “soldiers” or “caretakers” for the very young and very old are on the near-term horizon, robotics will make a substantial difference in our eventual future and we are well advised to consider the implications of that emerging technology now. Will the “soldiers” now under development soon be able to act independently of their programmed “rules of engagement” or robot “caretakers” soon be able to change diapers? Not a chance. But when the robotics boys finish beta testing and work out all the bugs in the first production model Pris, give me a call.
Stories such as these crop up periodically, invariably asserting the imminence of “thinking” machines of the sort we routinely find in science fiction stories and dredging up references to Asimov’s three laws of robotics. Perhaps we shall see the advent of genuinely thinking machines some day – I hope I live to see it and will even join People for the Ethical Treatment of Robots when the time arrives – but the difference between state-of-the-art artificial intelligence and human intelligence remains vast. Five years?
Still, the public debate called for in the article is a good idea. Whether “autonomous” robot “soldiers” or “caretakers” for the very young and very old are on the near-term horizon, robotics will make a substantial difference in our eventual future and we are well advised to consider the implications of that emerging technology now. Will the “soldiers” now under development soon be able to act independently of their programmed “rules of engagement” or robot “caretakers” soon be able to change diapers? Not a chance. But when the robotics boys finish beta testing and work out all the bugs in the first production model Pris, give me a call.
Monday, April 23, 2007
"I'm not Chevy Chase, and nobody cares."
While it may be big news within journalism circles whether Katie Couric’s job as anchor at CBS Nightly News is secure, it is no more newsworthy to the average American than the latest cricket scores from England.
I don’t watch the evening network news. What’s more, I don’t know anybody who does. I mean it, not a single person. Oh, maybe now and then. But regularly? Nope. Think about that.
As David Letterman aptly noted about his and Jay Leno’s role in the post-Carson era of late night television, it will simply never be the case again that one person can hold sway over America the way Carson did for thirty years on the Tonight Show, and the same can be said about Walter Cronkite's career for nearly twenty years as anchor of the CBS Evening News. None of the subsequent broadcast network news anchors, least of which the lamentable Dan Rather, could hope to be what Cronkite, for better or worse, became in our national consciousness.
The reasons are obvious enough. The broadcast troika lost their oligopoly status as purveyors of news first with the advent of PBS, then with cable television and finally with the rise of the internet. Even running show in a three horse race once meant that a significant part of the population was tuning in and news programming could thus be profitable or at least not a losing proposition.
Moreover, America’s first television generation was transfixed by the ability to see coverage of the major news of the past twenty-four hours, while subsequent generations take such things for granted. For that matter, twenty-four hours is an eternity in a world where technology permits initial coverage moments after a story breaks. By the time Couric or any of the other network anchors tells us what happened today we already know, or can if we wish to know, far more about the story than anything they can cover in a moment or two of broadcast time.
Ironically, network news has always been the USA Today of journalism, ironic because USA Today was founded to be the print equivalent of the nightly news. However valuable the network news organizations may be for continuing coverage of a crisis, their role otherwise cannot help but continue to decline regardless of who reads the news on camera.
I don’t watch the evening network news. What’s more, I don’t know anybody who does. I mean it, not a single person. Oh, maybe now and then. But regularly? Nope. Think about that.
As David Letterman aptly noted about his and Jay Leno’s role in the post-Carson era of late night television, it will simply never be the case again that one person can hold sway over America the way Carson did for thirty years on the Tonight Show, and the same can be said about Walter Cronkite's career for nearly twenty years as anchor of the CBS Evening News. None of the subsequent broadcast network news anchors, least of which the lamentable Dan Rather, could hope to be what Cronkite, for better or worse, became in our national consciousness.
The reasons are obvious enough. The broadcast troika lost their oligopoly status as purveyors of news first with the advent of PBS, then with cable television and finally with the rise of the internet. Even running show in a three horse race once meant that a significant part of the population was tuning in and news programming could thus be profitable or at least not a losing proposition.
Moreover, America’s first television generation was transfixed by the ability to see coverage of the major news of the past twenty-four hours, while subsequent generations take such things for granted. For that matter, twenty-four hours is an eternity in a world where technology permits initial coverage moments after a story breaks. By the time Couric or any of the other network anchors tells us what happened today we already know, or can if we wish to know, far more about the story than anything they can cover in a moment or two of broadcast time.
Ironically, network news has always been the USA Today of journalism, ironic because USA Today was founded to be the print equivalent of the nightly news. However valuable the network news organizations may be for continuing coverage of a crisis, their role otherwise cannot help but continue to decline regardless of who reads the news on camera.
Thursday, April 19, 2007
Think Locally, Act Globally
“The church of global free trade, which rules American politics with infallible pretensions, may have finally met its Martin Luther,” writes William Greider in The Nation. I wasn't aware that free trade advocates had been selling plenary indulgences, but Luther in this case turns out to be retired IBM executive and current president of the Alfred P. Slone Foundation, Ralph Gomory. Gomory wrote in collaboration with economist William Baumol, a book entitled Global Trade and Conflicting National Interests some seven years ago. As Greider puts it, the “book languished in academic obscurity and until recently was ignored by Washington policy circles.” As C. Montgomery Burns might say with a view to the latest elections, “Recently, eh?”
I haven’t read the book, but the gist of Greider’s lengthy review is an approving belief in Gomory’s thesis that the rise of multinational corporations engaged in free trade on a global level has resulted in and will continue to result in a net real loss to the U.S. economy. “If nothing changes in how globalization currently works, Americans will be increasingly exposed to downward pressure on incomes and living standards.”
Lucky for us, Gomory has a solution which Greider reports as follows:
Should we, now? And if so, can’t one make a reasonably good case that the constituencies of a truly multinational corporation include the world’s population and not merely the home nation of its incorporation?
Greider trots out the usual snippets about how other nations both protect their own economies and lure U.S. corporations to outsource primarily manufacturing facilities and acknowledges that this constitutes a win for both the emerging nations’ economies and for the corporations. But, alas, “there is another effect beyond the benefits for those two parties--high-value-added jobs leave the U.S.”
Well, yes, if your idea of a high-value-added job is working on an assembly line in a semiconductor factory. Exactly how high paying such a job can be and for how long it will remain so is another matter. Yes, various Asian nations effectively took the electronics manufacturing market and a good chunk of the automobile manufacturing market away from the U.S. over the past two or three decades. And now as the standard of living and cost of labor have risen in those nations, they, themselves, are facing essentially the same phenomenon as those very same manufacturing operations are now beginning to be outsourced to other, less developed nations. Golly, imagine the third world actually having the opportunity to work and grow its way out of poverty. Why, somebody ought to do something about this!
And, sure, the U.S. continues to import more and more goods and services as more and more goods and services at lower prices (and sometimes higher quality) become available. As a result, ignoring for a moment the lost U.S. jobs this process necessarily also entails, we nonetheless all benefit as consumers. And, sure, such benefits accrue only so long as we do, in fact, have jobs and, what’s more, jobs paying enough to be able to afford those foreign bargains.
So what about those lost jobs? Greider says, “Free-trade believers insist US workers can defend themselves by getting better educated.” Well, yes and no. On the one hand, the days of a U.S. labor force in the manufacturing sector earning salaries commensurate with that of their parents and grandparents in the manufacturing sector is probably gone for good and it is unrealistic to expect that the remaining blue-collar work force will be able en masse to educate itself to a comparable earning level in a different sector.
On the other hand, just as we are on average vastly better off economically in this post-industrial economy than we were during America’s primarily agrarian economy, it is far more likely than not that our expanding economy will continue to create a new job market as well, and not only of the burger flipping variety. (For that matter, when, oh when, is someone going to build robots to replace the largely incompetent workforce in what, once upon a time, was called the fast food industry?) Refresh my memory, how many computer related jobs were there in the U.S. thirty years ago?
But, sure, the notion that everyone is a winner all of the time in a free market is absurd and, yes, the disparity between the per capita wealth and earning capacity of the U.S. and other Western nations vis a vis the rest of the world will eventually close in a global market. Yes, also, although that is primarily because such a global market will result in an expanding economy on a world-wide basis, it is also a function to some extent of supply and demand in the labor market – more people capable of performing factory jobs or, for that matter, computer programming or any other jobs capable of outsourcing will result in downward pressures on the price of such local labor.
Which gets to the nub of what is wrong with the notion that the U.S. needs a protectionist national policy. First, it won’t work, neither here nor anywhere else. Not, at least, in the long run; and, yes, while in the long run we may all be dead, our children and grandchildren will not. Second, national protectionist policy is simply local protectionist policy writ large. Read Greider’s article and replace in your mind every mention of the U.S. and foreign nations with, oh, say, Michigan and Georgia (as, indeed, the same sort of progressives as Greider not so long ago routinely did and sometimes still do) and ask yourself if interstate commerce has turned out to be nearly as disastrous as international commerce is now supposed to become? Ask yourself, also, just how much you would have to earn to be able to afford the vastly higher prices and lower quality and choices of a truly local economy by comparison to the market you enjoy today.
These are not, I think, questions Mr. Greider takes very seriously. But if a painless global economy is a fairy tale so is painless protectionism. And only in fairy tales do we all get to live happily ever after.
I haven’t read the book, but the gist of Greider’s lengthy review is an approving belief in Gomory’s thesis that the rise of multinational corporations engaged in free trade on a global level has resulted in and will continue to result in a net real loss to the U.S. economy. “If nothing changes in how globalization currently works, Americans will be increasingly exposed to downward pressure on incomes and living standards.”
Lucky for us, Gomory has a solution which Greider reports as follows:
Gomory's vision of reformation actually goes beyond the trading system and America's economic deterioration. He wants to re-create an understanding of the corporation's obligations to society, the social perspective that flourished for a time in the last century but is now nearly extinct. The old idea was that the corporation is a trust, not only for shareholders but for the benefit of the country, the employees and the people who use the product. "That attitude was the attitude I grew up on in IBM," Gomory explains. "That's the way we thought--good for the country, good for the people, good for the shareholders--and I hope we will get back to it.... We should measure corporations by their impact on all their constituencies.
Should we, now? And if so, can’t one make a reasonably good case that the constituencies of a truly multinational corporation include the world’s population and not merely the home nation of its incorporation?
Greider trots out the usual snippets about how other nations both protect their own economies and lure U.S. corporations to outsource primarily manufacturing facilities and acknowledges that this constitutes a win for both the emerging nations’ economies and for the corporations. But, alas, “there is another effect beyond the benefits for those two parties--high-value-added jobs leave the U.S.”
Well, yes, if your idea of a high-value-added job is working on an assembly line in a semiconductor factory. Exactly how high paying such a job can be and for how long it will remain so is another matter. Yes, various Asian nations effectively took the electronics manufacturing market and a good chunk of the automobile manufacturing market away from the U.S. over the past two or three decades. And now as the standard of living and cost of labor have risen in those nations, they, themselves, are facing essentially the same phenomenon as those very same manufacturing operations are now beginning to be outsourced to other, less developed nations. Golly, imagine the third world actually having the opportunity to work and grow its way out of poverty. Why, somebody ought to do something about this!
And, sure, the U.S. continues to import more and more goods and services as more and more goods and services at lower prices (and sometimes higher quality) become available. As a result, ignoring for a moment the lost U.S. jobs this process necessarily also entails, we nonetheless all benefit as consumers. And, sure, such benefits accrue only so long as we do, in fact, have jobs and, what’s more, jobs paying enough to be able to afford those foreign bargains.
So what about those lost jobs? Greider says, “Free-trade believers insist US workers can defend themselves by getting better educated.” Well, yes and no. On the one hand, the days of a U.S. labor force in the manufacturing sector earning salaries commensurate with that of their parents and grandparents in the manufacturing sector is probably gone for good and it is unrealistic to expect that the remaining blue-collar work force will be able en masse to educate itself to a comparable earning level in a different sector.
On the other hand, just as we are on average vastly better off economically in this post-industrial economy than we were during America’s primarily agrarian economy, it is far more likely than not that our expanding economy will continue to create a new job market as well, and not only of the burger flipping variety. (For that matter, when, oh when, is someone going to build robots to replace the largely incompetent workforce in what, once upon a time, was called the fast food industry?) Refresh my memory, how many computer related jobs were there in the U.S. thirty years ago?
But, sure, the notion that everyone is a winner all of the time in a free market is absurd and, yes, the disparity between the per capita wealth and earning capacity of the U.S. and other Western nations vis a vis the rest of the world will eventually close in a global market. Yes, also, although that is primarily because such a global market will result in an expanding economy on a world-wide basis, it is also a function to some extent of supply and demand in the labor market – more people capable of performing factory jobs or, for that matter, computer programming or any other jobs capable of outsourcing will result in downward pressures on the price of such local labor.
Which gets to the nub of what is wrong with the notion that the U.S. needs a protectionist national policy. First, it won’t work, neither here nor anywhere else. Not, at least, in the long run; and, yes, while in the long run we may all be dead, our children and grandchildren will not. Second, national protectionist policy is simply local protectionist policy writ large. Read Greider’s article and replace in your mind every mention of the U.S. and foreign nations with, oh, say, Michigan and Georgia (as, indeed, the same sort of progressives as Greider not so long ago routinely did and sometimes still do) and ask yourself if interstate commerce has turned out to be nearly as disastrous as international commerce is now supposed to become? Ask yourself, also, just how much you would have to earn to be able to afford the vastly higher prices and lower quality and choices of a truly local economy by comparison to the market you enjoy today.
These are not, I think, questions Mr. Greider takes very seriously. But if a painless global economy is a fairy tale so is painless protectionism. And only in fairy tales do we all get to live happily ever after.
Sunday, April 15, 2007
[Insert "That sheep's a damned liar!" joke here]
The (U.K.) Daily Mail recently reported that Professor Esmail Zanjani, of the University of Nevada, has created the world's first human-sheep chimera, having 15 percent human cells and 85 percent sheep cells. The research is aimed at eventually being able to create sheep organs capable of being transplanted into human patients. The hoped for process is described as follows:
Excuse me, but... the brain?
[Note: An earlier version of this entry was posted at Inactivist on March 25, 2007.]
The process would involve extracting stem cells from the donor's bone marrow and injecting them into the peritoneum of a sheep's foetus. When the lamb is born, two months later, it would have a liver, heart, lungs and brain that are partly human and available for transplant.
Excuse me, but... the brain?
[Note: An earlier version of this entry was posted at Inactivist on March 25, 2007.]
Saturday, April 14, 2007
Speaking of swimming...
My friend Ron C. e-mailed me this bit of whimsy the other day from those wacky cut-ups at Google:
Go to Google Maps and select the Get directions tab. Enter “New York, NY” in the from first box and “Paris, France” in the second box. Then hit the Get Directions button. Read the results, especially Step #23.
Go to Google Maps and select the Get directions tab. Enter “New York, NY” in the from first box and “Paris, France” in the second box. Then hit the Get Directions button. Read the results, especially Step #23.
Monday, April 9, 2007
"Pick up that candy wrapper, Mr. Orwell, and dispose of it properly at once!"
Britain is increasing the number of loudspeaker equipped closed circuit television cameras, the object being to permit surveillance staff to "talk directly to anyone observed behaving in an anti-social way." At present, according to the Reuters story, "Britain is the most watched country in the world, with an estimated 4.2 million CCTV cameras, or one for every 14 people."
I suspect that the majority of these millions of cameras are private security cameras at banks and shops and private residences. Even so, they are increasingly being used as well by government agencies both in Britain and the U.S., the latter so far deploying them largely at stop lights and, in my opinion, less for purposes of prevention than for revenue generation. My cynicism aside, though, it is difficult, frankly, to mount much of an objection to camera surveillance of public spaces, even against the loudspeaker equipped version, given that the proverbial cop on the beat of yesteryear was supposed to do precisely what these cameras are supposed to do now. In Britain's case, planned national identity cards and a database of information on individuals pose a much more obvious threat to personal freedom than some government flunky tut-tutting the on-camera miscreant over a loudspeaker.
As the stop light camera experience has shown so far, it isn't the mere use of cameras, per se, but the purpose to which information thus gathered is put. While, arguably, a proliferation of government cameras could cause legitimate and serious privacy and freedom of movement and assembly issues, it isn't so imminent or serious a threat at present, it seems to me, as the visceral reaction to the Big Brother icon evokes. That's not an argument for unchecked government surveillance; only an argument for some perspective in the matter.
I suspect that the majority of these millions of cameras are private security cameras at banks and shops and private residences. Even so, they are increasingly being used as well by government agencies both in Britain and the U.S., the latter so far deploying them largely at stop lights and, in my opinion, less for purposes of prevention than for revenue generation. My cynicism aside, though, it is difficult, frankly, to mount much of an objection to camera surveillance of public spaces, even against the loudspeaker equipped version, given that the proverbial cop on the beat of yesteryear was supposed to do precisely what these cameras are supposed to do now. In Britain's case, planned national identity cards and a database of information on individuals pose a much more obvious threat to personal freedom than some government flunky tut-tutting the on-camera miscreant over a loudspeaker.
As the stop light camera experience has shown so far, it isn't the mere use of cameras, per se, but the purpose to which information thus gathered is put. While, arguably, a proliferation of government cameras could cause legitimate and serious privacy and freedom of movement and assembly issues, it isn't so imminent or serious a threat at present, it seems to me, as the visceral reaction to the Big Brother icon evokes. That's not an argument for unchecked government surveillance; only an argument for some perspective in the matter.
Is It Just Me, Or Is It Getting Warm In Here?
From Newsweek, via MSNBC, comes an article by MIT meteorologist Richard S. Lindzen arguing that alarm over global warming remains unjustified. That’s not to say Lindzen denies global warming or that human generated greenhouse gases are contributing to some extent to that warming trend. Indeed, he readily acknowledges both to be true.
In fact, Lindzen almost exactly mirrors my own entirely inexpert opinion on global warming, which is as follows: (1) it is almost certainly occurring, (2) there is increasingly good evidence of a human contribution to global warming, though estimates of the extent of that contribution are hard to come by, (3) it remains unclear what, if anything, humanity either can or should do about it.
The problem, as my former co-blogger Thoreau has pointed out on a number of occasions, is that discussion of global warming tends to confuse scientific and policy issues. Not being a scientist, I lack credibility to speak to the scientific issues first hand, so I have tended to ground my own guarded skepticism about those issues in the work of fellow skeptics whose intellectual integrity I trust and who have taken the trouble of investigating those issue with some care. You need not be a scientist to understand scientific findings any more than you need to hold a doctorate in philosophy to understand or evaluate ethical arguments. You do, however, need to be reasonably intelligent, thorough and open minded.
Critics of global warming skeptics have tended to attack them on one of those three grounds in roughly ascending order; that is, the skeptic is stupid, cherry-picks the data and / or has some conflict of interests undermining his credibility. One of the more amusing things about the Lindzen piece is its disclaimer at the end stating “His research has always been funded exclusively by the U.S. government. He receives no funding from any energy companies.” This, in turn, was challenged by several comments, though perhaps tongue-in-cheek, claiming that because the U.S. government allegedly has vested interests in the issue, Lindzen’s views are suspect. So it goes.
I receive no funding from any source, more’s the pity, but I do definitely have prejudices, not so much on the issue of global warming but on the issue of global warming policy. They’re really two entirely different issues and should be kept separated as much as possible. More importantly, rhetorical flourishes should be kept to a minimum. The heat-to-light ratio in the global warming debate is already bad enough.
Unfortunately, Lindzen himself doesn’t do this. On the one hand, he lays out in general terms some of the problems with some of the possibly more exaggerated scientific claims of global warming activists. On the other, he writes about the economic impact of attempts to redress global warming including the mandated use of ethanol and the likely effect of carbon caps on energy prices.
Of course, Lindzen doesn’t need to be an economist to write about economic policy any more than I need to be a meteorologist to write about global warming. But when he writes “There is no compelling evidence that the warming trend we've seen will amount to anything close to catastrophe,” my sensors start to alarm. “Compelling” is a pretty damned high standard. Wouldn’t the better, more useful adjective here be “sufficient”? And don’t we need a better sense from both sides of the debate as to what exactly would minimally qualify as a catastrophe? I think so.
In fact, Lindzen almost exactly mirrors my own entirely inexpert opinion on global warming, which is as follows: (1) it is almost certainly occurring, (2) there is increasingly good evidence of a human contribution to global warming, though estimates of the extent of that contribution are hard to come by, (3) it remains unclear what, if anything, humanity either can or should do about it.
The problem, as my former co-blogger Thoreau has pointed out on a number of occasions, is that discussion of global warming tends to confuse scientific and policy issues. Not being a scientist, I lack credibility to speak to the scientific issues first hand, so I have tended to ground my own guarded skepticism about those issues in the work of fellow skeptics whose intellectual integrity I trust and who have taken the trouble of investigating those issue with some care. You need not be a scientist to understand scientific findings any more than you need to hold a doctorate in philosophy to understand or evaluate ethical arguments. You do, however, need to be reasonably intelligent, thorough and open minded.
Critics of global warming skeptics have tended to attack them on one of those three grounds in roughly ascending order; that is, the skeptic is stupid, cherry-picks the data and / or has some conflict of interests undermining his credibility. One of the more amusing things about the Lindzen piece is its disclaimer at the end stating “His research has always been funded exclusively by the U.S. government. He receives no funding from any energy companies.” This, in turn, was challenged by several comments, though perhaps tongue-in-cheek, claiming that because the U.S. government allegedly has vested interests in the issue, Lindzen’s views are suspect. So it goes.
I receive no funding from any source, more’s the pity, but I do definitely have prejudices, not so much on the issue of global warming but on the issue of global warming policy. They’re really two entirely different issues and should be kept separated as much as possible. More importantly, rhetorical flourishes should be kept to a minimum. The heat-to-light ratio in the global warming debate is already bad enough.
Unfortunately, Lindzen himself doesn’t do this. On the one hand, he lays out in general terms some of the problems with some of the possibly more exaggerated scientific claims of global warming activists. On the other, he writes about the economic impact of attempts to redress global warming including the mandated use of ethanol and the likely effect of carbon caps on energy prices.
Of course, Lindzen doesn’t need to be an economist to write about economic policy any more than I need to be a meteorologist to write about global warming. But when he writes “There is no compelling evidence that the warming trend we've seen will amount to anything close to catastrophe,” my sensors start to alarm. “Compelling” is a pretty damned high standard. Wouldn’t the better, more useful adjective here be “sufficient”? And don’t we need a better sense from both sides of the debate as to what exactly would minimally qualify as a catastrophe? I think so.
Sunday, April 8, 2007
Have You Blown Up A Ford Lately?
Ford Motor Co. CEO Alan Mulally came to the rescue of better known but lower paid CEO George W. Bush last week by preventing the president from plugging an electrical cord into the hydrogen tank of a Ford hydrogen-electric hybrid vehicle being demonstrated at the White House. Said Mulally, "I wanted the president to make sure he plugged into the electricity, not into the hydrogen. This is all off the record, right?"
Now we know why Mulally makes the big money. He's been in Job #1 at Ford for four months now, pulling down a tidy $28.2 million a year to try to salvage the auto maker from itself. Ford managed to post a record $12.7 billion loss in 2006.
No word so far on whether Mulally will personally accompany other Ford hybrid users to ensure their safety or why, for that matter, plugging an electrical cord into the hydrogen tank is even remotely possible even for the likes of President Bush.
Now we know why Mulally makes the big money. He's been in Job #1 at Ford for four months now, pulling down a tidy $28.2 million a year to try to salvage the auto maker from itself. Ford managed to post a record $12.7 billion loss in 2006.
No word so far on whether Mulally will personally accompany other Ford hybrid users to ensure their safety or why, for that matter, plugging an electrical cord into the hydrogen tank is even remotely possible even for the likes of President Bush.
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