Category Archives: society

Arthur C. Clarke dies (I didn’t catch it when it happened! my rss feeder only shows last 3 on Slashdot at a time)

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Parting words from one of the great masters of hard Sci-Fi, a futurist and a believer in humanity.

Hello! This is Arthur Clarke, speaking to you from my home in Colombo, Sri Lanka.

As I approach my 90th birthday, my friends are asking how it feels like, to have completed 90 orbits around the Sun.

Well, I actually don’t feel a day older than 89!

Of course, some things remind me that I have indeed qualified as a senior citizen. As Bob Hope once said: “You know you’re getting old, when the candles cost more than the cake!”

I’m now perfectly happy to step aside and watch how things evolve. But there’s also a sad side to living so long: most of my contemporaries and old friends have already departed. However, they have left behind many fond memories, for me to recall.

I now spend a good part of my day dreaming of times past, present and future. As I try to survive on 15 hours’ sleep a day, I have plenty of time to enjoy vivid dreams. Being completely wheel-chaired doesn’t stop my mind from roaming the universe – on the contrary!

In my time I’ve been very fortunate to see many of my dreams come true! Growing up in the 1920s and 1930s, I never expected to see so much happen in the span of a few decades. We ‘space cadets’ of the British Interplanetary Society spent all our spare time discussing space travel – but we didn’t imagine that it lay in our own near future…

I still can’t quite believe that we’ve just marked the 50th anniversary of the Space Age! We’ve accomplished a great deal in that time, but the ‘Golden Age of Space’ is only just beginning. After half a century of government-sponsored efforts, we are now witnessing the emergence of commercial space flight.

Over the next 50 years, thousands of people will travel to Earth orbit – and then, to the Moon and beyond. Space travel – and space tourism – will one day become almost as commonplace as flying to exotic destinations on our own planet.

Things are also changing rapidly in many other areas of science and technology. To give just one example, the world’s mobile phone coverage recently passed 50 per cent — or 3.3 billion subscriptions. This was achieved in just a little over a quarter century since the first cellular network was set up. The mobile phone has revolutionized human communications, and is turning humanity into an endlessly chattering global family!

What does this mean for us as a species?

Communication technologies are necessary, but not sufficient, for us humans to get along with each other. This is why we still have many disputes and conflicts in the world. Technology tools help us to gather and disseminate information, but we also need qualities like tolerance and compassion to achieve greater understanding between peoples and nations.

I have great faith in optimism as a guiding principle, if only because it offers us the opportunity of creating a self-fulfilling prophecy. So I hope we’ve learnt something from the most barbaric century in history – the 20th. I would like to see us overcome our tribal divisions and begin to think and act as if we were one family. That would be real globalisation…

As I complete 90 orbits, I have no regrets and no more personal ambitions. But if I may be allowed just three wishes, they would be these.

Firstly, I would like to see some evidence of extra-terrestrial life. I have always believed that we are not alone in the universe. But we are still waiting for ETs to call us – or give us some kind of a sign. We have no way of guessing when this might happen – I hope sooner rather than later!

Secondly, I would like to see us kick our current addiction to oil, and adopt clean energy sources. For over a decade, I’ve been monitoring various new energy experiments, but they have yet to produce commercial scale results. Climate change has now added a new sense of urgency. Our civilisation depends on energy, but we can’t allow oil and coal to slowly bake our planet…

The third wish is one closer to home. I’ve been living in Sri Lanka for 50 years – and half that time, I’ve been a sad witness to the bitter conflict that divides my adopted country.

I dearly wish to see lasting peace established in Sri Lanka as soon as possible. But I’m aware that peace cannot just be wished — it requires a great deal of hard work, courage and persistence.

* * * * *

I’m sometimes asked how I would like to be remembered. I’ve had a diverse career as a writer, underwater explorer, space promoter and science populariser. Of all these, I want to be remembered most as a writer – one who entertained readers, and, hopefully, stretched their imagination as well.

I find that another English writer — who, coincidentally, also spent most of his life in the East — has expressed it very well. So let me end with these words of Rudyard Kipling:
If I have given you delight
by aught that I have done.
Let me lie quiet in that night
which shall be yours anon;

And for the little, little span
the dead are borne in mind,
seek not to question other than,
the books I leave behind.

This is Arthur Clarke, saying Thank You and Goodbye from Colombo!

The Low-Hanging Fruits of Fiscally Conservative (Economically Liberal) Environmentalism

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Here are some of the more obvious things that could help combat global environmental crises like global warming in a way that doesn’t crush individual economic liberties or doesn’t increase state control of the economy. This is all leading up to something. You’ll notice that for many of these, it’s simply a case of the cost of something not reflecting the environmental cost, due to marketing controls.

Of course, the ones of these that are both obvious and easy do get implemented – slowly. Green Scissors has their influence, but that only gets the really low-hanging fruits. I’d like to see leadership in the executive branch have the gonads to implement the obvious, but politically suicidal (particularly #2!).

I’m naturally more interested in the not-so-low-hanging fruits, but that’s the subject of past (and future!) blog posts.

  1. End farm subsidies. They are the reason alfalfa is grown in the desert and meat is cheap. They only help the richest farmers, anyway.
  2. Stop making gas cheap. End subsidies for gas, oil. The government fights the creeping “problem” of gas being expensive. There are many, many creative folks working on alternatives to hydrocarbons, yet here we are artificially reducing the demand for their work.
  3. Make national parks, state recreation areas, etc. pay for themselves. Wild nature is a scarce resource. Charge for it. There is an opportunity cost in keeping these lands, and it costs money to clean up after the homo sapiens. For this matter, private corporations can do the same thing! It is unlikely a nature-enjoyment use of a land will win out against more exploitative uses in the free market often enough to preserve biodiversity, but stranger things happen (like churches being rich!) and rigging the game slightly in favor of such entities would be much less statist than so many other proposed measures…
  4. Big business, trade unions are forces to be reckoned with. Though they may temporarily work to protect the environment, they are more often foes. The government needn’t (and shouldn’t) oppress these entities, but it can stop giving them unchecked political power that isn’t afforded any individual human. If asked to donate to a club the whales fund, I think you’re answer would be “pshaw!”, yet that corporation you own stock in, or that union you’re in, may lobby time and again against your wishes – without asking you once! Businesses and trade unions’ lobbying limbs exist to maintain status quo – but status quo is precisely the cause of our troubles, no?
  5. Lower taxes. More money to donate to the Nature Conservancy. When people pay less in taxes, they donate to charitable causes, and some are bound to be environmental. Land-grabbing orgs large and small do much more using less, than the federal government.
  6. Let the private sector feed the poor. Poorige is good for you and lower on the food chain. And, it’s cheaper (unless the government artificially makes foods higher in the food chain cheaper, which they do). Food stamps give you the power to buy the laziest foods, which also require the most industrial processing. Poor people have time on their hands, not money. Let them have potatoes, not potato chips. Oh, yes, and population growth is a doozy and when you must choose between feeding yourself or having a child who will stave, just maybe you might choose the former.
  7. Enforce property rights. An industry doesn’t have any special rights to pollute my property.
  8. and much more…

How to Discover the true Political Parties

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When you listen to people talk about their political opinions, one thing that becomes immediately apparent is that they don’t fit neatly with the two major political parties (here in America). That’s to be expected, but is it reasonable to expect that, on average, people’s political values will cluster around these parties? I’m not so sure.

Furthermore, I see the important kernel of political value to be what one sees as important, relative to other things, not so much what one sees as the best solution to these problems. I see people’s jobs as voting in their own best interest. People’s ideas about how best to achieve whatever their value goals are (economic stability, social justice, etc.) are quite often wrong – most people don’t understand economics or sociology or whatever. Furthermore, it’s a good idea to separate ideology from implementation so that political activists don’t get caught up with a pet solution when what really matters is their problem, regardless of solution. This is (in theory!) what politicians are for – to be experts.

So, given that political parties should be based on political values and based on what the political values of the people really are, I propose polling people on a series of questions, allowing them to rank what they see as most important. Then, use mathematical techniques to find loci (not too much unlike those used to distinguish populations, etc.) and let these be the true political parties! This data can be used to discover the right type of voting for our nation and further to justify something other than our current system!

Is anyone aware of someone having tried this before? Anyone who could point me in the right direction for what statistical techniques to use? I’m sure I couldn’t be the first person to have come up with this idea, yet it may well be quite important in determining the future of our country. It may well stem the tide of people voting against their own interests, but then again, in the wise words of ‘tater salad, “you can’t fix stupid.”

クリスマスの歴史

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世界にアメリカの文化のクリスマス祝日が有名です。けど、人があんまり歴史のことが分かりません。けど、本当に面白いですよ！

クリスマスの本来の意味はイエスの誕生日じゃありませんでした。本当にだれもイエスの誕生日がいつだったか知りません。けど、ほかの昔の宗教のミトラ教のミトラの誕生日は１２月の２５日でした。４００年ぐらい、キリスト教の教会が初めてクリスマスの式を出ていました。ミトラ教を真似ましたね！

後は北のヨーロッパがキリスト教化されていた時、人々がとにかくペーガンの祝日のユールを祝ってた。神父とかが怒ったけど、止められなかった。だから、その祝日をイエス化しました。だから、クリスマスは今でも、いろんなヨーロッパのペーガンのものがあります。 Continue reading →

Natural Affirmative Action

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Once upon a time, a natural sort of affirmative action existed, one that has become extinct, unfortunately. When the wealthy got comfortable, their bodies became weak through disuse, overnutrition, undernutrition and cocaine. The lower-class became strong through their hard work, and this would occasionally allow them to ooze above the upper crust.

Diseases such as beri-beri, anemia and pellagra were caused by consumption of fancy polished grains (white rice, white bread, etc), which were once available only to the wealthy. The industrial revolution slowly brought the privilege of these problems to the masses (now, the FDA requires fortification of refined grains, so these epidemics have become rare). In addition to undernutrition, many of the wealthy suffered from overnutrition – becoming fat and sluggish through overindulgence. The proletariat remained lean and mean.

Cocaine (and many other recreational drugs) used to be available only to the rich. It’s use as a recreational drug (in powder form) goes back to the 1860s. It was common for nobility to grow long fingernails on their pinky fingers to snort the stuff. So, as soon as the wealthy stopped having malnutrition, they had cocaine.

But as of the 1980s, a chemical and marketing product mix known as crack came about, and now for once cocaine gained the ability to ruin poor peoples’ lives too. Oh yeah, and through farm subsidies and new technology, food is really cheap, meaning the poor are just as vulnerable as the rich of obesity. Thank you, McDonald’s!

So, are there, or will there be in the future, any natural forms of affirmative action? That is, are there phenomenon that naturally equalize situations where class might otherwise be a noose people are born in? Avoid the obvious answers (complacency). Discuss…

Pics from the Torrance natsumatsuri

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You all missed the spectacle of a White guy in a Hapi coat (me!) and all these Japanese people hauling around a mini-Shinto Shrine – ostensibly one of only two in the US, I might add. Dancing + Heavy Lifting = winning combination! CLAP CLAP CLAP CLAP HOOOOOY! And.. since I was the tallest one, I couldn’t rest the damn thing on my shoulder, so my arms are fucking sore!

Thai elections

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The current prime minister of Thailand called a vote in response to criticisms towards him, saying that he abuses his power. He got more than 50% of the vote. However, a smaller number of people (especially in the Muslim south) strongly disagree with him being in office. This seems to me a golden opportunity to adopt an alternative voting system where it is not enough for the most people to vote for you, but also that the least people disapprove of you.

Absurdity

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We can grow quintillion times again
And we can know more than the ancients many times again
And still be dwarfed by the nearest star

We can understand the universe many times more,
And still never understand our increasingly complex selves

I love the flimsy wills of men, Amor fati
We shall forget the lessons of the ancients
And the great leviathan shall rise again

We shall destroy every last God again
Become them ourselves,
And it will never become absurd

Merry Yule!

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Tonight is the longest night of the year! It is the Winter Solstice of the Northern Hemisphere, Dong Zhi on the Chinese Calendar. Yule was, and is the winter celebration for pagans and heathens (that is, goons that live in the countryside and goons that live in heaths, respectively). In ancient Persia, Yalda was the celebration of the sun-god, Mithra.

Today, Persians still celebrate Yalda, sans the Allah-angering sun god reference. Christians also stole Yule and mislabled it to be Jesus’ birthday. The true meaning of Christmas isn’t Christian but human – reconnecting with families, celebrating the season and getting fat.

この季節は世の中たくさんのホリデーがある季節である。アメリカにキリスト教徒はよく「本当のクリスマスの意味を忘れないで」と言ってる。でも、本当の意味はキリストの誕生日じゃなくて、家族と休みホリデーだよ。本当にイエスの誕生日は多分1月にある。昔はヨーロッパの北で、よく「Yule」と言うホリデーを多神教が出ていた。キリスト教徒はそのホリデーを盗んだ。今、トールとかオディンを信じる人が続いてそのホリデーを出ている。

MTV

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MTV Sux. They used to be cool*. So it is with everything. The little guy with a new idea that hasn’t the recognition it deserves pounds it out and becomes the establishment himself. In this way, a new thing to rage against appears. If MTV stayed cool, then cool would be stale. We would all be satisfied just enough to not start a revolution like the proletarian happy with their socialist reforms. So it is good that people/entities/tribes become complacent after they have done great things ~> it allows the rest of the world to catch up and take their stab.

*this is true of other MTV networks, such as Nickelodeon. Remember Ren & Stimpy? You Can’t do that on Television?