Functionalism In Action

Say what you want about him -- and I do -- but this is good stuff.

2008-07-31T09:58:00.001-07:00

I have never really had all that much good to say about Bob Barr. I'm no fan of his stance on homosexuality and on a number of issues. But at this rate, I believe that comparatively speaking I might just swallow my pride and hold my nose come this November, and pull the lever next to his name (proverbially speaking)

What do I mean by "at this rate"? Here's what I mean:
(H/T: Last Free Voice.

Does The Global "Thermostat" Have a Governor?

2008-04-10T10:16:00.000-07:00

A relatively recent study of the atmospheric impact of water vapor in the tropics has come to a decidedly unique conclusion: once temperatures hit a certain point, the infamously powerful greenhouse gas called 'water vapor' has a cooling effect. Read more:

During the composite oscillation’s rainy, tropospheric warming phase, the longwave flux anomalies unexpectedly transitioned from warming to cooling, behavior which was traced to a decrease in ice cloud coverage. This decrease in ice cloud coverage is nominally supportive of Lindzen’s ‘‘infrared iris’’ hypothesis. While the time scales addressed here are short and not necessarily indicative of climate time scales, it must be remembered that all moist convective adjustment occurs on short time scales. Since these intraseasonal oscillations represent a dominant mode of convective variability in the tropical troposphere, their behavior should be considered when testing the convective and cloud parameterizations in climate models that are used to predict global warming.

The full study, in PDF format, behind this link.

To rehash:

[...]the longwave flux anomalies unexpectedly transitioned from warming to cooling[...]

[...]Since these intraseasonal oscillations represent a dominant mode of convective variability in the tropical troposphere[...]

A Rant You've Heard Before

2008-03-05T12:54:00.000-08:00

Over on Accelerating Future, Michael Anissimov (whose surname I once again "insist" is almost conspiratorially close to Asimov) gave us all the pleasure of pointing out the 'joys' of one Annalee Newitz's comments about Extropianism.

Now, let me start off by saying that she got her terminology wrong; extropians are a group as a whole focused on augmenting intelligence; on creating or finding greater intelligence either in humans or in machines. Her comments were with regards to Immortalists and transhumanists in general; but poorly aimed at extropians. Honestly, even a cursory examination of the title would reveal this: extropy is defined as the 'force' that causes organization within a group of things. This is inverse to entropy, which is the increasing disorder of things over time.

It's really an extremely subtle point, but one worth making. Now, as to the nuts and bolts of Annalee's comments; near the end of the article Michael references, she makes the following "end statement" by way of justifying her entire opinion:

And let there be no doubt about it: the extropian agenda is creepy. Who wants to live forever in a world where only the richest people in developed countries will become immortal? It's not as if there's going to be a special cryogenics fund for everybody in Kenya and Chile. In order for people to live forever in the transhumanist future, some people will still have to live like trash. Sounds sort of like entropy to me.

There it is: the continued, pervasive belief that only the richest people will enjoy these technologies, so they ought not be developed or possessed at all, by anyone, ever.

And frankly, this is a lot like saying, "Ebola will kill everyone in the city. We could develop a cure, but only the richest people in the city could afford it. So we're just going to let everyone die, because that would be unfair to the poor." Nevermind the fact that once the once the cure exists -- much like every other cure that has been developed -- if given long enough the cost could be brought down to the point where everyone could enjoy it. At the end of the day, that's a simple truth; over a long enough timeline, the cost for any new technology will be reduced to the point where a sufficiently great number of people can enjoy it. It may take five hundred years, or five thousand, but that is simply not an excuse to forbid it to anyone. Should I live to be a thousand, I will never understand the objection that "only the rich and powerful will enjoy this!"

It doesn't matter what you want to look at: Originally, good food and the luxury of a warm bed every night was something only the richest of the rich could be guaranteed. Today, it takes only a moderate income -- the American poverty level -- to ensure that. And as to Kenya and the rest of Africa? The problems there are less economic than they are political. You can hardly call something the failure of the capitalist system when the capitalist system has never been applied there. But I digress.

I'll use a more modern example to once again disprove the "fixed pie" myth: rapid prototyping technology, also referred to "home manufacturing" equipment, has always been exorbitantly expensive. But thanks to the folks at RepRap and Fab@Home, that will not remain true in the very near future. All that will remain exclusive is the knowledge to use them. An exclusivity which, much like the Linux operating systems for computers, or the Wikipedia 'free' encyclopedia, is fastly vanishing: both RepRap and Fab@Home are "open source" projects: their hardware & software designs are free to the public for any purpose, licensed under multi-national GNU. More and more colleges are offering free to the public college courses on a variety of topics -- online courses, of course. But if your goal is simple self-erudition, you can achieve it for between 5 and 40 bucks a month, depending on how much your internet connection costs. (Hell, go to a public library in the US and you don't even have to pay that.)

While Corporatist-style commercialism continues to run roughshod over the promotion of human decency and liberty, there is little to no question that advances in technology will very realistically play a major part in the solution to that problem. Youtube and the Peer-to-Peer networks have already cut a chink in the armor of the "Entertainment industry"; (the adult industry faces similar 'peril' from such glamourous sites as YouPorn, and XTube) and as to reaching these outer communities, the poorest portions of the world...

India and China have both presented to the world the Will to Industry. This despite the difficulty in achieving that state. With projects like RepRap and Fab@Home being developed by a very dedicated, if minor, community there is simply no question: while the disparity between haves and have nots may not close for decades or even centuries to come, any advancement in one area will have ancillary benefits that will affect everyone.

In the end, it seems utterly selfish to complain that only the "rich" or the "powerful" will acquire access to technologies providing extended life or increased genius; for all such complaints detract from how soon they will come around at all. And if any historical analysis of technological advancement is to be our guide at all, there is one simple truth:

Once something is invented, sooner or later anybody who wants it can have it.

Bionic Knees?

2008-02-08T19:02:00.000-08:00

So, here's the deal: there is more interest today than ever before in harnessing the natural rythms of the body for kinetic-electric conversion. What you're about to see (should you choose to click "play") is a video that shows a new avenue for electrical generation which could with capacitance and battery storage provide -- assuming, of course, the bulkiness is overcome -- all the whirring joys of extended battery life for all the wearables or gargoyling that may come to pass.

Financing the Near Future:

2008-02-08T18:25:00.000-08:00

With the fears of recession calling down on the heads of Americans, and general market destabilization coming with the collapse of the sub-prime real-estate market, a lot of people have been asking themselves: how am I going to pay for all of this?

Now, there are a lot of directions you can go in to make that happen: You can get a loan; which may or may not be the route for you. It's important to know the difference between unsecured and secured loans; know your options. More likely -- as most people who need loans today don't seem to have the resources for them -- you could get a credit card; at which point you'll of course need to compare credit cards.

Now, given that the national median income is some 44,000 for all households, please consider the following: with political solutions such as Ron Paul's out of the competition, with the upcoming Presidential contest seemingly between two mild fascists (Obama and Clinton) -- "Corporatist" if the word "fascist" is still too severe for you -- the consumerist society isn't going away anytime soon. Credit isn't a bad thing; but don't forget that credit isn't the same thing as money. Use it to get your feet under you -- but don't forget that when you use credit, you always pay.

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Hulabaloo: Have Biofuels Really Failed?

2008-02-08T16:34:00.000-08:00

There has been news all over the press about how the biofuels "solution" to the 'global warming crisis' just hasn't worked out. You can find it in a number of more conservative news journals, of course, such as New Zealand's Stuff -- which is of course owned by Fox-With-A-British-Accent. But if it's also hit Wired Magazine, then you know there's something to it.

Quoth said Wired article:

Several studies have intimated it, but two blockbusters published in the lofty journal "Science" yesterday confirm that biofuels cause more emissions than fossil fuels when everything is taken into account.

Both studies take a detailed look at the effects of converting large tracts of land worldwide into cropland used to raise fuel. While it is true that biofuel crops such as sugarcane, corn, switchgrass and the like absorb greenhouse gases as they grow, they absorb far less than rain forests and even scrubland. Also, turning plants into fuel creates its own emissions, especially when transportation is figured into the equation.

The "Science" article, "Use of U.S. Croplands for Biofuels Increases Greenhouse Gases Through Emissions from Land Use Change," (subscription), maintains that the clearance of grassland for fuel releases 93 times the amount of greenhouse gas that would be saved the fuel made annually on that same land. Of course, not everybody agrees with the study.The Renewable Fuels Association, a coalition of ethanol producers, called the researchers' view of land-use changes "simplistic" and said the study "fails to put the issue in context."

[...]

This is of course a major issue. But the question is, how much of one is it, really? There are of course a number of angles -- a wide number of them -- that one could take to approach the problem that, apparently, biofuels produce more CO₂ than they pull out of the air. So what, then, are we to do? Is the world doomed to turn into a charred cinder thanks to the human contribution?

Obviously, such hyperbole answers itself: No. For one, no person who was serious about biofuels looked to corn ethanol or palm oil as even a viable solution to the fuel problem. Certainly, this author saw through that deception quite some time ago (at least, "quite some time ago" in political terms -- who remembers anything more than two years ago in that arena?):

To compare, the most effective gallon-per-acre biofuel crop right now is palm oil, which hovers around 680 gallons-per-acre. So this is more than triple the amount -- and it's good ol' fashioned gasoline to boot! Here comes the number crunching. In 2004, the US used approximately 318 billion gallons of oil. At 2,000 gallons per acre, that comes out to roughly 159 million acres of arable land -- and this is assuming that the cellulosic starch problem can be overcome -- for which there are no hypothetical solutions yet available. According to the CIA's "World Factbook", the US has 9,161,923 square kilometers of land, 18.01% of which are arable. That's 1,650,62 square kilometers. 1 acre = 0.00404685642 square kilometers, so the US has 407,739,281 acres of arable land. To maintain the energy usage levels of 2004 purely from biofuels derived from this process would require ~40% of all arable land in the nation.

For the record, the cellulosic ethanol problem has been pretty much licked -- or so the press reports would tell us, thanks to many different approaches, one of which piques this author's amusement simply because it calls on the same bacteria you'd find in the gut of a termite: moorella thermoacetica (depicted in abstract crystalline form below). The process is simple enough, yet of course that's only true if you're a science geek. From Biopact.com:

ZeaChem replaces yeast with a type of bacteria called Moorella thermoacetica, which can be found in a number of places in nature, including termite guts and the ruminant of cows, where it helps break down grass. Instead of making ethanol and carbon dioxide, the bacteria convert sugars into a component of vinegar called acetic acid, a process that releases no carbon dioxide.

To convert acetic acid into ethanol, ZeaChem turns to chemistry.

(The entire process is explained over at BioPact. H/T for this to Al Fin).

This development of course means that starchy or "woody" materials -- such as, oh say, wood) can be harvested for ethanol production. But there are easier, cheaper solutions than ethanol production: algal biodiesel is something that seems cannot be harped enough: Rather than a mere 2,000 gallons per acre, the current expected yields of the startups building factories or putting their factories into production now is 30,000 gallons per acre. This would reduce the needed landmass for energy production to .0036% of the available landmass (arable and non-arable combined).

Is it even necessary to worry at all? Well, current weather patterns would seem to indicate otherwise -- but don't expect to hear that from the mainstream media.

Tissue Engineering in Mainstream Media

2008-02-07T18:30:00.000-08:00

With the recent advances in stem-cell derivation research -- such as the use of genetically "reprogrammed" cells to create fetal stem-cells from adult cells -- it's important to recognize that there has been significant advancement in the field of tissue engineering, the "next step" from simply 'harvesting' stem-cells. The below video, however, represents something else altogether: the beginning of comprehension of this research by the common man.

Credit Repair Concerns

2008-02-07T18:02:00.000-08:00

With all the economic concerns and fears of a recession, it would be easy today to fall into fears about places offering bad credit loans or the like.

It is important, therefore, to realize that there are resources which can provide for you the ability to keep on your toes; to know what you're getting into. The site linked to above, "Creditloan.com", is one resource -- perhaps only a starting point; but a resource none-the-less.

It cannot be reinforced enough: keep your head about you -- these days, you can't get past the demand for financing in your own life, and too few people can understand it let alone use the system to their advantage. Consider that link a resource for your use.

This post paid-for via PayPerPost.

Dystopian: Pretend to Be a Time Traveler

2008-01-02T13:02:00.000-08:00

The following is, apparently, a video that is meant to be an ad for Dennis Kucinich -- though you don't discover that until the end. I find it quite entertaining, however, whom the only politician actually mentioned was. You industrial fans out there -- be prepared to be amused.

Scientists Find Source of Cosmic Dust

2007-12-23T17:38:00.000-08:00

PASADENA, Calif. (AP) -- Scientists in California have uncovered the best evidence yet that cosmic dust in the early universe mostly came from the explosions of giant stars.

The Spitzer Space Telescope recently detected large amounts of space dust, 10,000 Earth masses worth, in the supernova remnant Cassiopeia A located 11,000 light-years away.

The discovery comes two months after Spitzer found freshly made dust in the wind bursting out of super-massive black holes.

Astronomers believe both supernovae and quasars are responsible for the dust that helped seed early stars. Dust is essential in the cooling process to make stars, which are predominantly gas.

Researchers at NASA's Spitzer Science Center at the California Institute of Technology used a telescope instrument to analyze infrared light from the supernova and construct maps of the dust to determine the quantity and composition.

Results will be published in the Jan. 20 issue of the Astrophysical Journal.
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Source

Video: South Korea Clones "Glow In The Dark" Cats

2007-12-23T17:17:00.000-08:00

I am struck by the recollection that only recently the news was made that you just can't clone a calico cat. That being said, it would seem that once again our poor benighted felines are doing their part in the advancement of cloning science. Check this video for more:

The reasoning behind this act was that it was meant as a proof-of-concept for the breeding of cats, which are supposedly genetically quite similar to humans, with specific genetic disorders unique to human beings. This would qualify, then, as quite the genetic-science breakthrough.

Yes, it's unfortunate that animals need to be used for such research, but there reaches a point where you can only study genetic functions in a functioning genetic machine -- that is, an animal. Here's to hoping that the Green-Peaces and Animal Liberation Fronts of the world don't stop this vital and fundamentally important work.

Nanosolar Press Release

2007-12-18T09:49:00.000-08:00

Nanosolar Ships First Panels
December 18, 2007

After five years of product development – including aggressively pipelined science, research and development, manufacturing process development, product testing, manufacturing engineering and tool development, and factory construction – we now have shipped first product and received our first check of product revenue.

We are grateful to everyone who supported us through all these years and the many occasions where there appeared to be mile-high concrete walls in our path; the unusual intensity and creativity of our team deserves all the credit for achieving this major milestone today.

Our product is defining in more ways I can enumerate here but includes:

- the world's first printed thin-film solar cell in a commercial panel product;

- the world's first thin-film solar cell with a low-cost back-contact capability;

- the world's lowest-cost solar panel – which we believe will make us the first solar manufacturer capable of profitably selling solar panels at as little as $.99/Watt;

- the world's highest-current thin-film solar panel – delivering five times the current of any other thin-film panel on the market today and thus simplifying system deployment;

- an intensely systems-optimized product with the lowest balance-of-system cost of any thin-film panel – due to innovations in design we have included.

Today we are announcing that we have begun shipping panels for freefield deployment in Eastern Germany and that the first Megawatt of our panels will go into a power plant installation there.

As far as the first three of our commercial panels are concerned:

Panel #1 will remain at Nanosolar for exhibit.

Panel #2 can be purchased by you in an auction on eBay starting today.

Panel #3 has been donated to the Tech Museum in San Jose.

[These are obviously not the first three we ever produced – we have produced loads for testing – but these are the first three of what we consider our commercial panels.]

Take that, you vapor-ware claiming bastards!

The Amazing Vanishing Author

2007-10-24T20:01:00.001-07:00

I've been a very bad blogger.

I broke a major rule: don't abandon your blog -- especially without explanation. And to my readers, I apologize. It's as simple -- and humble -- as that. For those whom have been long-standing readers, you might have picked up that I am/was a worker in the mortgage industry. As of the beginning of this month, that is no longer the case. Between working in a temporary capacity and the effort to find full-time work, something has had to give.

And, unfortunately, you're reading it now. I promise you this, however; when my circumstances become more stable, so too shall my posting pattern.

In the meantime, please peruse the following:

The Cato@Liberty Blog

Michael Anissimov's Accelerating Future Blog

The Classically Liberal Students Blog

Al Fin's Eponymously Named "Al Fin" Blog

For humor's sake, you might consider:Diesel Sweeties. It's a Web Comic. It'll make you laugh.

In the meantime -- please, feel free to discuss recent events & technological developments in the comments of this post.

HMO's Spent $227 Million in Support of SCHIP

2007-10-17T18:28:00.000-07:00

From the examiner.com article of Oct 5, 2007: "Timothy P. Carney: Does SCHIP insure kids or subsidize savvy HMOs?"

Supporters reject the argument that SCHIP is a Trojan horse for socialized medicine, pointing out that the program is usually administered by private insurers. In short, states put “poor” children on private HMOs and let the taxpayers pick up the tab.
For the HMOs, what could be better than a customer who is spending someone else’s money? If Congress spends more money on SCHIP and states are scrambling to enroll more families, then HMOs get even more of these customers.
And so while Democrats are dragging children to the White House for photo ops, as if the children are the primary constituency of this bill, federal lobbying records tell a different tale.
Lobbying records from the first half of 2007 show that the health care industry spent more than $227 million lobbying Washington. Congressional Quarterly Healthbeat News reported last month: “What’s behind health care lobbyists’ spending frenzy? Most signs point to ... SCHIP.”
Sure enough, the biggest lobbyists in the industry all support the Democratic bill. America’s Health Insurance Plans (AHIP), the trade association for HMOs, supports the bill, as do its biggest members, such as Blue Cross Blue Shield.
The Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturing Association (PhRMA), one of Washington’s most powerful lobbyists, is also behind the bill. So is the American Medical Association.

So, here's one point that needs going back over:Supporters reject the argument that SCHIP is a Trojan horse for socialized medicine, pointing out that the program is usually administered by private insurers.

Technically this is true. Private companies being paid by the government is, in fact, a characteristic of Corporatism -- a term which is synonymous with "Fascism". Either way, however, the end result is the furthered corrosion of the purchaser/consumer bond -- already painfully tenuous in this nation -- between the person who buys the healthcare and the person who benefits from it.

It is almost tautological: when you separate the consumption from the cost, the cost skyrockets.

Scientific Literacy: More Necessary Today Than Ever

2007-10-15T22:06:00.000-07:00

It is all to easy to complain, these days, about any number of things. And it seems that where politics are concerned, all anyone is based on is what they complain about the most. Pessimism is chíc these days; optimism is considered naíve. So what, then, do we make of something that is both optimistic and pessimistic?

First; the pessimism. Much ado has been made about the fact that the Northwest Passage has been freed "for the first time ever". This video is proof of it:

Now, nobody is suggesting that this isn't going to have implications on global warming & global climate change in general. But this is used, once again, as evidence of man's fault: when NASA itself says this isn't so. Their culprit? Shifting wind patterns.

And this gets let go, by the public -- because the general comprehension of the media's representation is that "well, they did the research, so I don't have to." And that, more than anything, is the greatest threat facing society. Why? Because it means that whoever does do that research, controls society's opinions on everything under the sun. Are you comfortable with this? I certainly am not.

So where does this come from?

From the National Education Association:

A historic turnover is taking place in the teaching profession. While student enrollments are rising rapidly, more than a million veteran teachers are nearing retirement. Experts predict that overall we will need more than 2 million new teachers in the next decade.

This teacher recruitment problem, which has reached crisis proportions in some areas, is most acute in urban and rural schools; for high-need subject areas such as special education, math and science, and for teachers of color.

[...]

The statistics for turnover among new teachers are startling. Some 20 percent of all new hires leave the classroom within three years. In urban districts, the numbers are worse—close to 50 percent of newcomers flee the profession during their first five years of teaching.

Why do new teachers leave? They say they feel overwhelmed by the expectations and scope of the job. Many say they feel isolated and unsupported in their classrooms, or that expectations are unclear.

Nothing is particularly new about this. In fact, it is used as the most powerful argument for increasing teacher pay, for increasing funding to the Department of Education, and in general all sorts of interesting/curious events. But let us take a somewhat deeper examination of this plight -- one that won't exactly raise us up from this pessimism, but perhaps allow us to understand it a step or two further:

It is not in the best interests of the education lobby for education to actually improve.

It's a statement that we don't often think about, but bear with me and I will explain my logic -- or at least what passes for it. It's actually fairly simple. We'll use Washington, DC as the example for this. From the Cato@Liberty blog:

Is the problem insufficient funding? As it happens, DCPS’s total gross budget for the last school year was upwards of one billion dollars according to its own website, and its enrollment was about 52,000 students. That means DCPS had total per pupil spending of nearly $20,000 last year, or half a million dollars per class of 25 students. You’d think that would cover books.

In a previous article on this blog, "It's For The Children! ... And Other Lies My Government Told Me", I documented the fact that the national average annual cost per student for public schools was $8,701; whereas the cost per student for private schools was $3,116/yr. Almost a third the cost. So, going back to Washington, DC. How could this be so bloated over both the national average for both public and private schools? Well, the answer to that question can also be found in the public record: From The Examiner, circa August 24, 2007: "D.C. Public Schools will pay nearly $5.4 million in full-time salaries to 68 teachers and staff who won’t work full-time jobs this year, schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee told The Examiner on Thursday."

From all of the above, we have learned thus far three things:

Scholastic Acheivement is sliding continuously: This isn't much of a shocker, really: search anywhere and you'll see that there are, annually, fewer and fewer American engineering & physics graduates every year. There really isn't anybody whom is impressed with NCLB -- and that's not even if you include the people who actually study the topic.
Public schools cost more per student than private: There's not much equivocating there: $8.7k for public as compared to $3.1k for private? And let us not forget here that private schools -- even the 'average' ones -- have their impression of prestige for a reason: traditionally, private schools achieve greater scholastic results than public schools.
Washington DC schools spend millions of dollars on faculty that, literally, does nothing.: That incident reported was by no means a singular incident. It has happened before, and in larger numbers. Even so, these were actual teachers being discussed: lets not forget that schools also have administrative staffing; there have been entire studies to compare the number of non-teaching faculty members to the numbers of pupils... which says that this is a problem as well; less, one can only assume, for private schools than for public ones.

Even so; is simply privatizing all the schools the solution to this problem? (If our military security is any lesson, the answer to that question is an emphatic "NO!") Still, creating competition between schools simply couldn't hurt. Perhaps, if schools themselves were held accountable for the allocation of their resources on their students, we might see some streamlining of costs and some improvement of scholastic acheivement. And time and time again, the records have shown: the only effective mechanism for accountability is to put the fiscal survival of an institution on the line. That's called "market competition." However, there's no sign that given today's political and social climates, that honest markets can be restored to so ubiquitous and socialized -- which is what our educational system is. Should things actually turn around, however, it is effectively already too late. The day of the Renaissance man has been dead and buried for centuries.

So where do we go from here? Well, our nation's resident mad military scientist organization -- DARPA -- has already begun to aid in this:

Famous for funding futuristic technology, DARPA is spending $24 million to launch the Brain-Machine Interface Program (BMI), with the five-year research monies divided among six laboratories. High on its development wish list are mind-controlled battle robots, as well as airplanes flown and weapons or equipment operated with nothing more than thought – even from a distance – all through wireless neural interfaces.

And mind you, DARPA is not alone on this. Should true data-in BMI be developed, the problem of education and scientific literacy in particular could be resolved absolutely. Howso? Because the possibility of having a microchip -- or ten -- implanted in your head, and thus allowing you a replete factual education -- with said procedure to cost in the same ballpark as a breast augmentation does today -- between $4,000 to $10,000, USD -- would allow for wholly 'humanities'-esque education; focusing on reasoning skills and the like.

Without such a development, we are likely to face a scenario where the amount of information necessary to make an informed opinion on any given subject continues to fall further and further from the grasp of even our communities of "experts" -- but thankfully, if DARPA, Cyberkinetics, and other such organizations/companies have anything to say, we won't have too much to worry about there: the money is being spent, the effort is being made. While a complicated task, so long as the funding doesn't dry up it's essentially inevitable. (I suppose that statement makes me a functionalist -- but gee, isn't that a shocker to anyone whom has read the title of this blog?)

(Yes, for you AGI enthusiasts; the same gains can be made by AGI as can be made by BMI -- if and only if we hand over control of society to our AGI's. Which, if they are "Seed" AGIs, is entirely likely. But that is too "post-singularity" a subject for this author to be fully comfortable attempting to discuss.)

SCHIP: The Voice Of the Other Side

2007-10-15T19:53:00.000-07:00

Like it or not, those of us whom are against the SCHIP expansion have been 'corralled', somehow, into being "Bushies". I, for one, am definitely in the "not" category on this one. That being said, while our media sources, the DNP leadership, and talking heads like Bill Maher busily demonize anyone and everyone who is against SCHIP's expansion -- i.e.; in support of Bush's Veto -- get to have their way with the American public; what exactly is the thinking in the mind of the man who would defy, we are told, the nation? Well, here it is -- and in his own words:

I would pay extremely close attention to the very end -- where he calls for "negotiation, to get the money to the kids who need it". And while you're doing that, please consider: Bush wanted SCHIP to continue. What he did not want, however, was an SCHIP bill that would push kids already insured privately onto the public dole, while simultaneously those funds being used to insure childless adults. What he did not want was an SCHIP bill that has one of the most horribly regressive funding sources ever suggested in recent history.

Sometimes I wish that I were a 'regular' person who could just have an opinion about people and things and not have to worry about facts and details.

Of Laffer, Deficits, and Poverty

2007-10-14T15:55:00.000-07:00

Every once in a while, you see something that just plain makes your haunches bunch up in disgust. Apparently, this happens more to conservatives than it does to liberal, but I digress. Today, I should like to go over something that makes this happen to me every time I encounter it.

While looking into this little declaration from The Nation's Idiot, one area I thought I would start out with an examination into the continuation of Laffer-curve thinking. Whilst digging around on that, I found a piece apparently written by Laffer himself, from January of 2004. It is unfortunate, but expected, that this should appear on The Heritage Foundation's website -- unfortunate because The Heritage Foundation is as conservative a think-tank as MoveOn.org is liberal. This particular excerpt got me to thinking:

In 1913, the federal progressive income tax was put into place with a top marginal rate of 7 percent. Thanks in part to World War I, this tax rate was quickly increased significantly and peaked at 77 percent in 1918. Then, through a series of tax-rate reductions, the Harding-Coolidge tax cuts dropped the top personal marginal income tax rate to 25 percent in 1925.

That's right -- when the income tax was instituted, it's highest percentage was 7%. And within five years, it went to 77%.

This becomes all the more disturbing when we consider that not too long ago, someone took the time and effort to calculate the effective "flat tax" rate for America. And they found that this rate was ~40%:

The average marginal tax rate on incomes between $20,000 and $500,000 is 40.3%, the median tax rate is 41.8%, and the standard deviation of all of those rates is 5.3 percentage points. Basically, most of us pay about 40%, plus or minus 5.3 percentage points.

That's not a big range, particularly when you notice that it covers an income rise of 2,500%.

So I have a modest proposal: Ask your senators or representative if they have a clue about this. If they don’t, regardless of party, they shouldn't be in office. Vote accordingly.

So yes, while we discuss the FedGov deficit, what we fail to discuss is the impact on the expenditures and incomes of the average citizen; most especially the poor.

We have allowed ourselves to fall in to the fallacy of thinking that, merely because their incomes are untaxed, our lowest earners are themselves untaxed. And this simply is not so. Sadly, the practices of our government's "Glorious Leaders" seems to be equally economically inept: take, for example, the overwhelmingly under-reported fact that the most recent SCHIP expansion is based on a demonstrably regressive tax. And it is with this that this article comes full circle: While the national income tax's position on the Laffer curve is debatable, our sin-taxes are demonstrably and definitively on the right-hand side of the Laffer curve. And so, two things will result:

The nation's poor will be unfairly taxed as compared to the rich, if Bush's veto is overridden.
There will still have to be another source of revenue to cover the failure of this new, regressive, tax to generate $35 Billion.

And remember, folks -- I'm a proud, card-carrying member of the "He-Man President Bush Hater's Club". While it is arguable that this lack of economic understanding is itself understandable in the everyday man -- it's called "rational ignorance" for a reason -- the problem with making allowances for such when it comes to our leaders is that it leads, demonstrably and as evidenced above, in horribly frequent "unintended consequences".

So, then -- for those of you still paying attention, please consider the following: Rather than leaving the welfare of our nation's poor -- you can't really call them destitute; we don't have people starving to death here like still happens in other first-world nations like Japan -- wouldn't we be better off if we, you know, reduced that 40% flat tax rate to something more sane?

The poor would be able to purchase more, or have more left over -- so the actual loss in tax revenue there would, you know, go to a good cause, like upwards mobility amongst the poor. And as to the rich... well, it is still arguable that decreases in their tax rate will still generate higher revenues.

Can A Transhuman Future Survive Without Libertarian Ideals?

2007-10-12T07:43:00.000-07:00

As a transhumanist, I am all too keenly aware of the good and the ill that can come of technology. One technology, however, that seems to have only ills springing from it these days is that of surveillance technology. Consider, for example the perhaps not so infamous as it ought to be 'dragonfly spy':

The little robot you see on the fingertip is a prototype created by the Harvard Microrobotics Lab. While it does not carry any optical equipment -- there are optics of sufficiently small size to fit. More on this particular topic can be found at the Sydney Morning Herald's article, "Washington abuzz with talk of dragonfly spies". There are many obstacles to the development of such machines -- and, to be frank, they offer a multitude of uses beyond mere surveillance. For the moment, however, we'll discuss 'merely' surveillance.

There is another, perhaps more insidious, approach which has been suggested which entails literally growing insects around MEMS devices. What possible benefit to the would-be super-spy is there in this, you ask? Well, the answer to that question becomes more prevalent when one considers that researchers have already -- if crudely -- decoded the neural activity of a cat's brain into visual information.

So you see -- we may come to a point where it will literally be possible -- from a sensory point of view -- to be a "fly on a wall." This becomes all the more troublesome when we consider that -- regardless of Ray Kurzweils's 'law' of accelarating returns -- technological development is outstripping society's ability to regulate our machines. There's nothing really new about that idea -- but still; it is strongly worth paying attention to when we consider the advocates of regulation for new, 'existentially risky' technologies -- such as molecular manufacturing, or synthetic biology, or viral engineering, or... well, by now the point is clear. Surveillance, however, is the name of today's game. More and more, we are told that the new cameras being installed are for our own protection; that they are to prevent crime and the like. Now, numerous studies have shown that they really can't be said to do any such thing:

According to the information, London police solve only 21 percent of all crimes, and the rate of success does not appear to have any correlation to the number of CCTV cameras installed in each borough.
The numbers led a spokesperson for the group to say, "Some of this money might have been better spent on police officers. Although CCTV has its place, it is not the only solution in preventing or detecting crime and too often still, calls for CCTV cameras come as a knee-jerk reaction. It is time we engaged in an open debate about the role of CCTV cameras in London today."

So what, then would the impact -- let alone impetus -- of such advanced technologies as 'bug-cameras' be on society? Given the FBI's now infamous abuse of "national security letters" to bypass the 4^th Amendment (that'd be the one that protects "a bloke" from "unreasonable search and seizure"), is there any doubt that, left in the hands of government agencies, these devices would find their way into uses we could not now either imagine nor approve? But, of course -- as I already hinted at -- such devices almost never stay solely in the hands of our governments -- trustworthy or otherwise. And as technology itself becomes more and more readily manufactured by the private citizen, the question facing us is this:

How, exactly, will we adapt to the fact that legislation will be completely inadequate to the task of protecting us from our own ingenuity?

And that's a very, very serious question -- however, it doesn't seem to be one that even my fellow transhumanists recognize, which I personally find troublesome. Consider this another political screed, then: it is abundantly clear that our technologies will never be sanitized, never be made safe by bureaucracies nor by legislation. The 'kiddy porn' epidemic is only another example of this -- things that are legal and perfectly fine, such as a fourteen year old engaging in sexual acts on film, in some former Soviet Bloc countries; these things are profoundly illegal (let alone immoral) here in the 'States. This, 'once upon a time', wouldn't have been an issue -- but communications technology has changed that, as it seems everyone is now aware. As it is, it remains abundantly clear that our government is either incapable or else simply lacks the desire to react to new technologies and techniques. Much like the constant white-hat/ black-hat divide -- or the ongoing 'hacking the iPhone' saga -- bureaucratic organizations; such as religious institutions and yes, the ubiquitously mentioned yet nebulously referenced, "Government", are simply incapable of doing anything more than react to the machinations of "Progress." It's the nature of the beast. This leaves us with a simple question:

What possible solution is there to even mitigate the risks to society that new technologies and techniques present?

Yes, yes -- I know: I'm being about as subtle as a lead ingot dropped on your head from the top of the Empire State Building (how's that for a visual?) And of course the answer -- or at least the one I propose -- is equally as 'subtle'... and equally as simple.

Entrust the protection of society to... social expectations. It is my proposition that the only societies which will survive the raw power that futuristic developments represent will be ones that, much as with the advent of nuclear weapons, are possessed of powerfully strong social mores against their improper use (power plants = okay, global thermonuclear warfare = bad). And here's the catch: So long as we expect our bureaucratic institutions -- and those institutions alone -- to provide for our security and provender, we are essentially doomed to the abuse of new devices -- such as our friendly dragonfly spy cams. And that, ladies and gentlemen of my audience, is exactly the reason behind the "libertarian" argument: socializing the idea of personal responsibility, of the idea that being irresponsible is perhaps the single most immoral, or reprehensible, behavior one can engage in. To get there, we libertarians realize, will require a great deal of change in our ways of doing business and in what we believe government is "good for." It's a simplistic screed -- but it's a vitally important one, if we expect to have the best of all possible outcomes.

How Many "Breakthroughs" Away Are We From The Sex 'Droids?

2007-10-12T01:39:00.000-07:00

Perhaps there are more tasteful ways to put that point. But when you combine the American invention -- the "RealDoll" -- with this latest development from (where else) Japan, of a robot that performs facial massages, yet another advent of science-fiction seems ever more the likely.

What development is that, you ask? Why, this one:

It's a minor step -- but the idea of objects (inanimate or otherwise) performing and being used for human luxuries seems to be more and more... common nowadays. One can only imagine that it won't be too long now until some entrepeneurial spirit figures out he can rig up a -- by then -- simple machine to something like the RealDoll, and then rent 'her' (or 'his') time to johnny-on-the-street.

What makes this interesting is: will the moral crusaders see fit to try and ban such an activity, should it develop? And -- if they don't -- what, then, is the justification for telling a real flesh-and-bone woman that she can't do the same with her own body?

A Hazard of Blind Technophilia

2007-10-09T09:38:00.000-07:00

Many transhumanists are activists for what is called "mind uploading"; the idea that we can have our 'meat-brains' uploaded into computers, to live out our lives in electronic wonderlands a la today's videogames. And to be fair, with things like "Heavenly Sword" for the PS3, that's no surprise -- imagine where things will be in twenty years. It's pretty hard to imagine that, given the choice between an 'eternal' virtual playground where even the laws of physics are up for grabs, and this grubby ol' world of ours, that even the majority of people would choose the physical.

But there's just one tiny problem with this sort of thinking: electronics are vastly inferior, in terms of survivability, to biological neurons. No computer yet built has operated at full load for a year continuously; yet our bodies do this for decades. By way of example of what I mean, please consider the following video:

To be fair, this is really nothing more than a technological problem -- and technological problems tend to get solved over sufficient time -- but a bit of realism would go a long way towards assuaging the fears and doubts of those who question the realities we transhumanists propose.

Corrupting Free Society, One Child At A Time

2007-10-08T10:51:00.000-07:00

For every sequence of events, there is always more than one perspective which can be had. Another way of putting that is to say that the truth has three 'sides': your side, his side, and fact. Today, I hope to take you on a little journey through the mind of someone who hates President Bush, but loves his vetoing of the SCHIP renewal bill.

I know, I know -- it's hard to understand. How could someone want to make the children suffer, like that? How could I be such a heartless bastard? Am I truly so selfish that I'd rather have a few extra dollars than see the nation's poverty-stricken children have quality healthcare?

In a single word: No. No, I'm not that heartless -- no I'm not that greedy, and no, I don't want to see the poor suffer. And yet, I still stand against the new SCHIP bill. I understand that for the majority of you reading this, this must seem somewhat confusing, if true -- so either I'm a liar or I'm mislead. Right? It occurs to me that I'm getting somewhat ahead of myself here, so perhaps I ought to do a little bit of explanation as to what this whole SCHIP thing is really about. Take, for example, this piece from Sunday, Oct. 7^th, 2007, found in the New York Times:

Democrats believe they have Republicans — short on campaign cash, contending with a spurt of retirements and quarreling — on the run over the legislation, the State Children’s Health Insurance Program. Party leaders say the willingness of so many House Republicans to stick with Mr. Bush in the face of bipartisan backing for a $35 billion expansion of the program to provide insurance for poor children will prove costly as Election Day looms a year from now.

[...]

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee is taking on eight Republicans in competitive districts with a series of automated calls and radio advertisements that remind listeners that their lawmaker gets taxpayer-paid health care while opposing the expansion of the program administered by each state.

Beginning Monday, a coalition of liberal and labor groups will start a $1 million advertising effort, with a national advertisement to run on cable channels and local advertisements aimed at specific lawmakers. The national commercial shows a series of children beginning with a baby girl and states, “George Bush just vetoed Abby.” It says Mr. Bush puts excessive war spending over health care at home.

“The president’s ‘yes men’ in Congress need to stand up to Bush and stand up for families who work hard but simply can’t afford insurance,” said Brad Woodhouse, president of Americans United for Change, one group leading the effort.

There's so much here that there's really no way to account for it all, up front. But let's begin with a few tiny points:

1: "The national commercial shows a series of children beginning with a baby girl and states, “George Bush just vetoed Abby.”": Am I, honestly, the only person left in the world whom is disgusted by the continued exploitation of those who can't possibly understand what they're being used for, simply for cheap promotionals like this? Look, we get it: You kissed the baby; you're a good, caring guy. You can stop now.
2: "radio advertisements that remind listeners that their lawmaker gets taxpayer-paid health care while opposing the expansion of the program administered by each state.": Talk about talking out the side of your face. So, we are to believe, because our government employees are receiving healthcare from their employer (the government), they are bad people for denying public assistance to non government employees?
3: "Party leaders say the willingness of so many House Republicans to stick with Mr. Bush in the face of bipartisan backing for a $35 billion expansion of the program to provide insurance for poor children will prove costly": Once again, we are told that SCHIP only benefits the poor children of the nation. And yes, primarily, this is true. But the existence of SCHIP isn't what's up for debate here: Bush himself wants SCHIP renewed.The White House is stressing that Bush wants the CHIP program renewed and wants to increase its current level by $5 billion over five years, but Bush wants it to target poor children. The compromise includes some children in levels above the poverty line.

By way of explanation of what possible madness could be going through the nation's Idiot-in-Chief's head, that he could demand that SCHIP "target poor children", please consider: SCHIP in its current form provides insurance for those who have an income of up to 200% the federal poverty line. The expanded/renewed form will take that number to 400%; for the 'prototypical' family of 4 (2 parents, 2 children), that's an income of ~$82,600 -- For a single-parent single-child household, that number is ~$54,760. (All from the same, most recently linked, source. See Table 2.) All this number-crunching, however, is meaningless without something to compare it against. The best number to do so, the most revealing, is the median average income of the United States. That number, as of 2004, was $44,334 -- as reported by the US Census.

Now, ask yourself, people: Is the average home in America poor and in need of government handouts in order to get "quality care"? As a corollary, if it is, is a simple handout going to fix that problem? As a secondary corollary: If things are that bad, can we afford for the government to be the agency we rely upon?

By way of insight, I provide this reference to a previous article, "The Tyranny of Compassion":

Foreign aid was first put into practice almost sixty years ago, under the Truman Administration, in 1948. What has been the result of essentially six decades of attempted monetary aid in Africa? Practically the entire continent remains in squalor. Why, precisely, is this? How is it even possible? The general sentiment on this issue falls into two lines:
One: We just haven't spent enough; if only we rich Westerners would be willing to sacrifice a little more in the name of compassion, we could turn that continent around tomorrow!
Two: We are suppressing the entrepeneurial spirit and creating reliance, thus destroying prosperity and hope for a better future.

Which of these is correct? Well, six decades have taught us that there is no amount which will be the magic bullet to cure Africa's economic woes.

Now, all of this has been somewhat heavy-handed. And I can understand if you haven't followed through to the end here, but for those of you whom have, I have just one last query/insight/thought: It is said that the measure of what power we ought allow into the hands of government is to consider what the worst person possible would do with it. To those of you whom think things like SCHIP are so necessary that a little over-spending or universal healthcare under the radar concerns are simply silly, I profer this: the "Christian Right" is poising itself to exploit government compassion efforts as a tool for its takeover of American society. Considering that private agencies -- such as charities like the Christian Children's Fund -- could be established to provide for the nation's children, I ask you: is it really worth the risk of expanding SCHIP like this, if it opens the door for a fundamentalist theocracy in America?

I, for one, do not welcome our new religious overlords.

Quis Custodiet Ipsos Custodies?

2007-10-08T09:32:00.000-07:00

Tragedies can strike anywhere, at any time. There is no real pattern to be discerned from when and where mad gunmen will strike -- saving that they tend to commit their mass shootings on so-called 'gun free zones' -- but when the mad gunman is himself a policeman, we have to ask: who will protect us from the people whom are supposed to protect us?

Video: North Korea's Weapons Pledge

2007-10-04T09:22:00.000-07:00

With all the furor over Iran's roguishness over the last few years, it is worth noting that, when the current Administration's term began, there were two "major Rogue states": Iran and North Korea. North Korea was by far the most dangerous of the two. So with this thought in mind, we must now ask ourselves: which is more effective -- "Cowboy" Diplomacy, or "Regular" Diplomacy? By way of answering that question, I submit the following:

Insanity At The Gates

2007-10-02T10:23:00.000-07:00

So I admit it -- today is a bit of a slow news day. But those of us with a Transhumanist mindset also tend to keep our eyes on the future; while many also take on the label of "progressive", not all of us do. Either way, however, this eye on the prize, as it were, gives us a perspective that not everybody else can perceive. Today I will share the benefit of this perspective with you, my reader. Forgive me if you've already seen this particular item already.

What is it, precisely, that I'm talking about? That would be nothing short of the apparent revivalism of the Soviet/American "Cold War". Now, this has been discussed by this blog before, when I asked: "Could Somebody Please Tell Me What Year It Is?" So some of this is apparently just recision, or iteration, for my 'regulars'. For those of you whom are not -- consider the following:

There's more to this, of course -- a good deal more. Today, I pull -- perhaps hedonistically would be too strong of a word? -- from the AP:

President Vladimir Putin announced in August that Russia was resuming long-range bomber flights over the Pacific, Atlantic and Arctic oceans for the first time since the breakup of the Soviet Union.

Russian Air Force officials in Moscow could not be reached for comment after hours. They have repeatedly said that the planes were not violating any nation's airspace or any international agreements.

But in mid-September, British and Norwegian jets intercepted Russian military aircraft after they breached NATO airspace close to the U.K. and Finland. And on a handful of occasions this year, NATO nations including Britain and Norway have sent fighters to escort Russian bombers nearing their territory.

Now, on it's surface this is no major fiasco; no huge problem, as it were. If a nation wants to saber-rattle, a little, that's just fine. But take this into context; with the opening up of Atlantic-ocean resources, it would seem that the term cold-war could take on more literal meanings than in days past. Further, take into context the fact that Russian law-makers are voting -- unanimously -- to censure former Soviet Union countries for siding with the US over Russia. Add into that the fact that the US and Russia remain the world's largest suppliers of arms to 'developing countries' such as China, India, Pakistan, and the Middle East. It is worth noting that in the last four years -- that is, since 2002, more than 70% of all US arms deals were with Middle Eastern countries.

(Hey, while we're at it, here's a thought: If we're so miffed about Iran supplying the insurgents weapons, why don't we stop supplying the insurgents with weapons first?)

In the meanwhile, however, if the US and Russia are to renew the cold-war era conflicts between one another, which it would seem Vladimir Putin is seeking to accomplish, we have to ask ourselves: who would be cast as the totalitarian police state this time around? I don't mean to be biased -- truly I don't. But between Russia and the US, it is my country that has domestic spying programs. It is my country that wants to use SPY SATELLITES ON ITS OWN POPULACE. It is my country that has an effective real taxation rate of roughly 40% on its entire populace. It is my country that is engaging in extraordinary rendition, and it is my country that is torturing innocent civilians. (See Section IV, second paragraph.) So Again: Which of us is the totalitarian/authoritarian state? Throw in the blatant corporatism of the medical, agro, and energy companies, and the picture gets even worse. Remember; the Soviet Union was defeated due to economic collapse. And if David Walker -- the Comptroller General of the United States -- is only half right, the US isn't that far away from one of its own.

We can't afford to replay history, folks. We "plain and simple", "straight and narrow", can't afford it. At a time when we should be curtailing government spending however possible -- even if by transferring our social security, welfare, and medicare over to private non-profits (as opposed to not-for-profits) so as to benefit from the massive increase in efficiency per dollar spent (This considering that the US has a higher welfare spending rate than any other OECD-listed country save Luxembourg, on a per Capita basis), and thus avoid the need to increase spending over time -- we are instead arguing with ourselves over whether or not to expand the SCHIP program -- meant to care for the nation's poor and needy children -- to cover families which make almost twice the national median income.

Whether it be the revival of the Cold War, the selling of arms and armaments to our sworn enemies, or the spending of money we don't -- and will never -- have, this insanity has got to stop.

Video: Over-the-Phone Lie Detectors

2007-10-02T08:27:00.000-07:00

The technology is called Voice Stress Analysis. It is used extensively in insurance call-centers, and has been around for a few decades. Essentially, it detects what statements you make which you feel an unusual amount of stress about compared to your "baseline" -- and thus makes guesses or assumptions about your mendacity. Now here's a question: With the "Bush Wiretapping Scheme", what makes anyone think that this sort of technology isn't being used, to pick up the conversations that people feel "anxious" about? Observe: