The future has arrived on our streets today

Today I had my first Segway Transporter sighting, two of them no less. Its been almost a year and a half since the first "It" and "Ginger" rumours were being bandied about. Now you can just plonk down your four grand and buy one on Amazon.

The Segway has gained a lot of notoriety for being banned from the sidewalks of many cities, most notably San Francisco. I am happy to report however, that the Segways I saw were zipping along the street and that they placed their riders high up, much higher than if you were standing in the street. The effect was the riders would easily be visible above most cars (not an SUV though), and were much more visible than a bike. That I would say, is a good thing and if bikes can be on the road then so should Segways. The only debate to be settled is whether they should be allowed to share bike lanes - I'd much rather see them there than on the sidewalk.

For the record I think the Segway is a good idea, albeit a massively over hyped one. Like Dean Kamen's self balancing wheelchair, its a great example of the appliance of science to bring a very new take on old subject - personal transportation. We've really had no great innovation in that area since the motor car at the turn of the 19th Century, and look what a disaster that was.

If people can find a convenient and relatively speedy way to make short journies at the end of a public transport ride I'm all for it. Lets have thousands of them available for rent at a llow cost and lets find a secure way to make them available without risk of theft. That's problem that has plague all schemes to make bikes available for free - someone, somwhere will place a value on the Segway to find a way to steal them. That's a sad reminder of the word we live in, but its hardly Kamen's fault and we shouldn't deride him for trying his best to get peoples butts out of their cars.

I'm a little disappointed that Kamen's many patents for innovations related to the Stiriling engine have not yet transpired. I still await fulfillment of the rumours that a Stirling engine powered version of the Segway would be available. That would be something truely worthwhile of s Nobel prize because a working, usable Stirling (external combustion) engine could really put an end to the internal combustion engine for good.

The importance of being Great

"These economic royalists complain that we seek to overthrow the institutions of America, what they really complain of is that we seek to take away their power. Our allegiance to American institutions requires the overthrow of this kind of power. In vain they seek to hide behind the flag and the Constitution. In their blindness they forget what the flag and the Constitution stand for." Theodore Roosevelt, 1936

When it comes down to it, I have decided that the overriding problem is the national arrogance that because America was once great, that it is now and will always be, great. I suppose it would depend on your definition of great as to whether you would agree. One definition is superior in quality or character; noble, another is powerful; influential. I would say the former is the kind of greatness that some of Americas leaders and founders had, and that we all might aspire too. The later is more like the great that America lays claim too now, more of a result of its military might than any great leaders.

In my previous blog entry I mentioned belligerent nationalism in the definition of fascism. One should look more closely at belligerence and nationalism as they are particularly relevant to greatness. Belligerent as it turns out, is defined as:

1. Inclined or eager to fight; hostile or aggressive.
2. Of, pertaining to, or engaged in warfare.

Nationalism is defined as:

1. Devotion to the interests or culture of one's nation.
2. The belief that nations will benefit from acting independently rather than collectively, emphasizing national rather than international goals.
3. Aspirations for national independence in a country under foreign domination.

Now I'll be the first to admit that as a kid the sheer number of words in the English language seemed to be nothing more than a waste of time, if not a big pain in the ass. Couldn't we do as Orwell did in the Newspeak language of 1984 and reduce them all to a few thousand words? However the richness of the human languages (not just English of course) is the key to our very richness of thought and human expression. When one has only "good or evil" with which to categorize the people of the world it leads to a very narrow point of view, one that does not reflect at all the reality of peoples beliefs or behaviors. The same applies to restricting our election choices to "Republican" or "Democrat", especially when they are so nearly indistinguishable in end result that it makes no difference as to which we vote for. So having spent a good deal of my life trying my best to master the confounding cornucopia of words available, it irritates me no end that there are still those who still insist on simplifying the world to the level of "good or evil" and "with us, or with the terrorist" levels.

Now given the definitions above for belligerence and nationalism, I think no one could deny the Bush Administration has been anything less than belligerent in its promulgation of American nationalism. This has lead to a very pronounced increase in America uber alles attitude in those who "are with us". That is those that believe we are #1, we are the best, we are the greatest and therefore we have to do what we do, it is our manifest destiny and responsibility to do it. There is no other way.

Unfortunately the crux of the problem is that they believe America is the greatest but do so because they choose not to find any evidence to the contrary. They have no comparison with which to judge our greatness by because they choose not to look for it, choose not to remember the past of the country, and choose not to entertain a world present or future, in which America could be anything less than great. As a result, the fact that America is merely great: powerful; influential as opposed to Great: superior in quality or character; noble has entirely passed them by.

I myself choose not to believe in America's greatness because a world view entirely based on such beliefs and such reverence for the purveyors of them that we dare not criticise them, is so close to a religion that I dare not entertain the idea. It leads one to the conclusion that the entire government is in reality being run by a believers in the religion of America. It may sound a trite point to make, but I think it is important that our leaders have a far more objective view of America grounded in fact and cold truths of our behaviour as a nation and successes and failures in our aspirations to be great. A religious zeal for greatness will never lead America to to it, only docile subserviance and blind ignorance of the truth that is now plainer to the rest of the world than it has ever been:

America is not great.

Definitively speaking II

fas-cism (fash'iz'em)

n. A system of government that exercises a dictatorship of the extreme right, typically through the merging of state and business leadership, together with belligerent nationalism.

Definitively speaking

vig-i-lan-te

member of a volunteer committee organized to suppress and punish crime summarily (as when the processes of law appear inadequate); broadly : a self-appointed doer of justice.

Crawl Grub, crawl!

Wired News featured a story on a new web search engine concept Grub. It relies on a distributed web crawling engine that anyone can download and run on their computer and also run as a screensaver, much like the famous SETI@home project screensaver. As the screen saver runs it throughs a node map onto your screen of recently crawled URLs and the statistics.

The Grub concept really makes a lot of sense to me. As the amount of material on the web increases the amount of work to crawl and index it increases too. Relying on a small but finite percentage of machines out there indexing for you is much more practical than trying to centralize a single huge collection of indexing machines.

Grub isn't actually providing its own search engine form yet (if ever), its making its crawling results available to third parties for doing searches. The first example is the WiseNutsearch engine, others will be coming soon. Crawl data is also available to users directly via an XML interface.

If all goes according to plan Grub plans to accumulate enough indexing clients to crawl the entire web every day. Compare this to Google that typically expects to take two to four weeks to crawl the web. I expect its only a matter of time before Google launches its own Google screen saver distributed web crawling engine. But much as I love Google, I'd much rather support the young upstart Grub.

Crawl Grub, crawl!

America.com - no way to run a country

Now GWB has finished flushing the American international credibility down the toilet its also time for him to resume flushing our economy down the toilet. Not that it hadn't been doing a fine job of spiraling down all of its own accord, but in yesterday's speech about his favorite tax cuts he made it amply clear that he thinks it needs an extra flush or two.

Of course he wasn't actually using those words to sell his grand plan to revitalize America's economy. Of course not, he has an MBA and lots of rich business friends who really know how to run and market a business so he truely believes that we will really buy his proposition to borrow another $650 billion to keep the country running. That is around $2500 per man, woman and child. For comparison our national debt it about ten times that figure. Now I don't have an MBA but when someone says the best way out of debt is to earn less, spend more and borrow more, well you've got to wonder if IQs didn't sharply since last century. Or maybe its that history is about to repeat itself?

"What history would that be?", I hear you ask. Well that would be the history of the dot com era during which a bunch of over financed MBA's decided that the best way to run a business (cf. America) was borrow hard (cf. deficit), spend like crazy (cf. tax cuts) on marketing and acquisitions (cf. new agencies like Homeland defense, financing war and invasions). Then all you have to do is hoodwink the rest of world that you'd just invented the proverbial golden egg laying goose and it was time for them to give up their hard earned crust (cf. rights and wages) to keep funding the pyramid (cf. corporate growth).

Yesterday I was listening to a recent episode of This American Life which was mostly about living on the edge, being in debt and making poor financial decisions. You know, the stuff like blind investing in the stock of companies about which you know nothing and then having some dot com wannabe CEO come along and destroy the whole company. Or how much it sucks to be working for 11 years as a janitor making minimum wage. Or getting into more debt than you make in a year, or owing twice in car loans than your car is worth because you wrecked it and spent the insurance money on something else.

One person they interviewed was Dave Ramsey who runs a no BS call in show for people with financial problems. So guess what he says to the people who owe $30,000 and make less than that a year? Well usually its something like, "You're going to be getting another job, working 80 hour weeks for three years, eating beans and rice, rice and beans for three years. But you can do it, in three years you can be out of debt". To the person who said they didn't want to take another job, well he said, "I can't help you, if you're not prepared to work hard to get out of debt then that's just plain lazy." What Dave? You mean if I'm $7 trillion in debt and only raise $2 trillion in taxes every year then I can't just keep borrowing to get out of debt?

Of course the sad thing is the vast majority of Americans are now working harder, for longers hours, for less pay and for fewer benefits than they ever have. And this isn't just the lower class - the 33 million or so living in poverty now. No, its the middle class too, for the most part thats you, me and pretty much everyone else reading this blog. Just read White Collar Sweatshop for all the gruesome details. In fact its pretty much everyone except the top five percent of nations wealthiest who are worse off now than they have ever been since 1970. That's over thirty years ago with no net increase in living standards for the vast majority of the American population, supposedly the, yes the number one country in the world. The country everyone else supposedly aspires to emulate, or used too...

And all those people having such a hard time, are the complaining? Are they questioning where all the nations money is disappearing to? Heck no, they are too busy spending more and borrowing more than they ever have. Just like our government we're completely buying into the "gotta spend more" to make more mentality.

Of course most people with more than a couple of brain cells now realize that the whole dot com era was one giant legalized pyramid scheme based on over inflated revenues that fueled a never ending cycle of increased capital gains taxes, increased government spending and feel good marketing that we've never had it so good. The smart sold out while the going was good, or transfered their assets to something more tangible that isn't so venerable to the way the economic winds are blowing. The naive lost most of what they never had, or lost more than they ever had and landed up in debt. That includes the State of California and many others so were in fine company. The rest, well they made out like the bandits they are.

So I wont be at all surprised when the same thing happens to America. The giant pyramid scheme scam first took the dot com-ers down, and will now most likely take the government down and maybe eventually bring the entire country down as we over extend America Inc. throughout the world for decreasing gains and increasing risk. Sooner or later the rest of the world will point at the King and realize he has no clothes. At that point the Empire will fall along with all the Kings men and all the Kings horses.

A year and a half ago when American troops were massing to invade Afghanistan my neighbour across the hall said: "The economy is in the crapper, we've gone to war, the country is back into deficit spending - hmmm, must be the Republicans in power again." Well he was right. A year and a half later the economy is even worse off, we're still at war, the deficit spending is still growing and the Republicans are still in power. The more things change the more they stay the same.

History repeats... repeats... repeats... repeats...

Dining high

Those that fly frequently may enjoy this rather niche web site that has a great line on airline meal reviews. The site comes complete with photos of dinners, menus, cabin interiors, flight crew and plenty more. If you've never dined outside of the coach (aka. economy aka. cattle) class you may not want to look at the gratuitous photos of silverware and china...

The whole phenomenom associated with this web site reminds me of an airline cuisine equivalent of train spotting. I always wondered what those people with cameras on planes were snapping at - I never thought to point mine anywhere other than out of the window.

And now for something completely different...

This morning I came across a very entertaining flash site, well its more of any art site. It uses flash animation to tell stories in text that is displayed in time with music, jazz music. Most of the content is pretty bizzare - SAMSUNG MEANS TO COME, or philosophical - ARTIST'S STATEMENT N0. 45,730,944: THE PERFECT ARTISTIC WEB SITE. Warning: the animations really take the word "flash" very seriously, sometimes too much so. If you find it irritating don't blame me, just close your eyes and enjoy the music.

On the same less serious note, today I found a new meaning for the term "convergence device". Previously reserved for PDAs that area also cameras, or phones that are also PDAs, cameras or both, now, well you can have a phone that's also a purring kitty.... Apparently its already received a thumbs up from distinguished device reviewers Good Vibrations.

Keep your filthy hands off my tax dollars...

Today I learned about someone who worked for my former employer and handed in their resignation the day the US went to war with Iraq. Although I don't believe his protest is the most effective way to change our governments policy, I do believe he is making a very principled stand against use of his tax dollars to pay for government endeavours he does not agree with. Naturally the primary use he disagrees with is the 50% or so that goes on our military spending, but the list is much, much longer than just that.

I never realised it but there is apparently quite the sub-culture of people who are finding ways to avoid paying taxes out of principle. Thats not to be confused with the sub-culture of people who are just out to defraud the government, are cheapskates, or one of the other kind of legalized tax-dodgers the million plus off-shore registered companies.

Its that latter group of tax-dodgers who I'm mostly interested in doing something about and I believe we need to do anyhting that we can to reduce the $70 billion or so they filch away from the government so that average citizens have to pay on their behalf, or the services lost because of them, out of their own pocket. Why even GWB has stated he thinks that would be a good idea, but of course he never did stand by his word (shocker) and put his money where his mouth is.

If it was up to me I'd put the entire $70 billion a year, yes every last cent, right back into education, libraries, publicly funded TV and radio, and most importantly, making elections 100% public funded. But hey, what do I know, I'm just a flaming liberal complainer, after all don't those big companies need all that money to keep paying the CEO's obscene bonus? Silly me, just what was I thinking, I must have been smoking crack.

Banging my head against the wall

I'm feeling some fatigue from blogging about the war. Poor pathetic me, can't even raise my fingers to the keyboard when the blood of thousands covers this countries hands.

When a fellow blogger announced he was giving up blogging about the war, I mentally chastised him, and vowed to continue myself. Now I'm beginning to understand how he feels. Its not that we don't care or have given up. Its just that like banging your head against a door all day to open it, its does more damage to us than it does to the door.

I wont be stopping my comments about the war, here or elsewhere, but I will be including more links to what other people are saying about the war, frequently far more eloquently than I could. That way I can save myself some pain, and let you know that I'm not just a sad and lonely blogger who's the only one how cares to say anything on the mad, mad, mad, mad world out there.

So to get the ball rolling here's one lovely rant about the "We've liberated Iraq, we rule!" BS that's going around. The rant is fast and furious with its condemnation of the whole sorry state of affairs, but hey, that's exactly how I feel too.

One in Forty Two

Its amazing isn't it? "What is?", I hear you ask. Well its amazing that while the "land of the free" is busy "freeing" another poor 24 million oppressed Iraqis we're busy locking up so many of our own. Yes, last week a tasty little news bite slipped under the radar that the American prison population had topped 2 million for the first time ever. Thats 1 in 140 Americans banged up behind bars and worse than that its twice the number who were in jail in 1990. Given what your average WASP has to do to get in jail that's a fair miracle - why these days you can be like Ken Lay and rob millions of people of billions of dollars and still get away with just a fine and stay well clear of the Federal Penitentiary.

That of course should come as no surprise when you consider a vastly disproportionate number (compared to those actually convicted of crime) of those behind bars are those of minority races. Some people care to take notice and publicise how Bush is doing everything he can to defend the lack of affirmitive action for minorities whilst sitting watch over the biggest proportionate increase in minorities behind bars since records began.

Besides the race issue it just blows my mind to think that on an average day every 1 in 140 people of this country are in jail. Its even more staggering when you consider how many are on probation or parole - over 4.7 million Americans - or one in sixty. If you add the two figures you get 6.7 million. Thats, wait for it... one in forty-two Americans who are either in jail, on parole, or on probation.

Just what does that say about our society to the rest of the world? Can Iraq soon look forward to a full taste of American pie which will include one in forty-two of their population in jail. Thats around 600,000, more than double the number of Republican Guard troops that once guarded their nation. It puts things into perspective doesn't it? Just who are we to be profligating our brand of utopian democracy (or plutocracy as it should more accurately be described) when we have such obscene numbers of our own people so out of touch with the American dream that they are prepared to risk being locked up behind bars to not tow-the-line.

And just remember, if one in forty-two Americans are behind bars, on parole or on probation at this moment, then the number who have, at any time in their life, being in that category will be much, much higher. This is to me, one of the biggest indicators that America is failing to even "Pass Go" let alone collect its $200 in the race for global respectability as a dream worth living for, or more tragically, dying for.

No place for assumption

One always assumes that the people at NASA know how to do rocket science. Goodness knows they have achieved some marvellous things in my lifetime alone. Man into space, man on the moon, probes all over the galaxy and comet intercepts. So when seven atronauts are killed and some insulation hitting the shuttle on launch is suspected as a cause, you'd assume the analysis they did at the time to discount that as a risk was done with a least a decent amount of scientific rigor. Sadly the latest reports say it was done with less of a computational model, and more of an Excel spreadsheet from Boeing.

Now I've seen some pretty amazing things done with spreadsheets and they are perfectly capable of some quiet complicated numerical calculations. But really, when you're analysing something with life or death impact you'd expect the parties involved to have done a little more than punch a few numbers, which in any case turned out to be the wrong numbers, into a spreadsheet and give a thumbs up for landing.

You can give some of the people involved with the decision credit for requesting further investigation, including actually looking at the shuttle from the ground to see if any damage could be observed. That was done before, the first time debris was observed hitting the orbiter on launch. Tragically this request was denied, largely on the weight of the spreadsheet evidence and an assumption that if it happened before and there was no damage then it will probably be okay this time.

I sincerely hope the cause of the shuttle disintigration turns out to be something else, and that whoever made such a bad judgement call can breath sigh of relief. We know there are many more predictable modes of failure that will bring the shuttle down without assumption, the mother of all fuck ups, lending a hand. Given the past experience with O-rings there really should be no room for assumption in a place like NASA any more, just rocket science.

The face of death

It is often said that a picture is worth a thousand words. So why I ask myself, during a war that has been turned into such a media spectacle one wonders if it isn't just another sick Hollywood reality TV stunt, do we see no pictures that illustrate the impact of 300,000 horribly beweaponed troops on 24 million poorly equiped civilians, half of which are under the age of 18 (due to previous wars killing off so many of the older population)?

In the past years we have become accustomed to ever more graphic and disturbing depictions of the true horrors of warfare. Even of that modern "precision warfare" that one might think leaves no blood, no innocent victims, no fields of green turned slimey red by the blood of brave and frightened soldiers. In todays recreations of war there are no more strapping boys all dressed up in nicely pressed uniforms hardly breaking a sweat as they mow down the distant, unseen enemy in post WWII romantic war dramas. We know there are US troops out there doing what they are trained to do - kill. We know they are now running scared of every civillian that doesn't have both hands in the air and is using anything more substantial than a bicycle to flee their smoldering cities. We know civilians have been killed, over a thousand now. We know many more will be killed, and tens if not hundreds of thousands will be injured and forever traumatized by the forcible invasion and overthrowing of their country.

All this we know, we read, we hear, but some how it doesn't sink in for many people, just what is going on. Its over there, in another country where the people, well they aren't people like us, they are those Ay-rabs with towels on their heads, right? They don't really know much better, everything will be okay once they have seen the light, our light, and taken the pledge. Yes, its easy for our media, government and the unthinking supplicants that follow them, to de-humanize the enemy when we have not seen and felt how they suffer - just like we do in the face of terrible deeds that cause the deaths of many innocent civilians.

So it was with some surprise that this morning I finally came across a news site in New Zealand that has been cataloging war images from Iraq that have largely slipped under the mainstream radar. The site was referenced from SF Chronicle writer, Mark Morford's daily column which today contained a stinging critique of the santized war coverage where dead civilians are now just collateral damage. So insignificant the US doesn't even count them, or want to count them. Isn't it disgusting enough that civilians are dying as a consequence of this state authorized overseas killing spree? Now we are saying we don't even care enough to tally the dead, who are still being conveniently swept under the carpet of collateral damage along with buildings, bridges, roads and other non-human infrastructure. Shouldn't the dead civilians in Iraq be every bit as important, newsworthy, heroic, and honoured as those of 9/11? Is America Inc. telling us that they just don't count? Why? For what reason? I can't answer those questions and I find it disturbing to even think about the answers, which I find are shameful to everything that America is supposed to stand for, and this war probably means it will never again have a chance to stand for those things, if it really ever did in the past.

The pictures are not for the faint of heart, as death generally isn't, but they do illustrate that a picture is worth a thousand words - every single one of them says more than I've ever managed to type on the subject of why this war is evil, unecessary and a disgrace to civilized society. They show the true face of death, no cosmetic reconstruction of a recently deceased loved one, done up in Sunday best and resting peacefully. Nor even that other acceptable view of death, the faceless, anonmyous dead cocooned in sheaths of black body bags waiting for the last flight home. No, here we see dismembered men, women and children. Pathetic frail bodies wrapped in rags huddled in a coffin as an anguished mother looks on overcome with grief. Bloody faces, twisted remains, and skulls caved in, all the hope and dreams of the living and free crushed from them.

What has become of the American people that they are now so divorced from reality that over 1000 civilians deaths are just acceptable collatoral damage, a "necessary evil" that we must endure to remove weapons of mass destruction, that probably never will be found and probably never would have been used. When all the time the US is raining down indiscriminant cluster bombs, napalm and countless billions of dollars of munitions that somehow are not achieving mass destruction in our campain of "shock and awe". Just what do people think we are killing these civilians with? A fireworks show? Harsh language? No, its ton after ton after ton of flesh shreding lead, steel, depleted uranium, shrapnel, and high explosive and the consequences are plain for all to see.

TV: your connection with consumer addiction

Those people who know me personally will be aware I don't watch a lot of TV. Its not that I think TV is inherently bad, although undeniably an alarming percentage of people are watching way too much of it for their own good. Enough that campaigns like TV Turnoff Week become a necessity and expose people really do have a TV addiction problem and have forgotten what its truely like to interact with the world other than through the medium of TV or in the context of TV. Its should be no surprise that "Reality TV" is such a hit, when TV has created the very desire and need for reality experienced through TV in the first place.

No my real problem with TV is that most American TV programming is designed to sell either the advertising that surrounds it, and sometimes in it, or exists purely to sell the medium itself thus creating a further market for advertising. Since I really do have a huge problem with advertising and what it is doing to our perspective on the world, then I really do have a problem with TV programming that is designed very specifically as a medium for advertising.

Yes, there are a few good shows out there that stand up on their own and for these I would willing pay a fee to watch them sans advertising at a time of my choosing. Cable still doesn't cut it, I'm paying for the entire package which often includes a whole bunch of content that I neither desire to watch nor to have my money fund. I'll gladly pay a buck here and a buck there to watch and hour of quality programming, but $40-$100 a month of which a significant percentage goes to support some huge media corporations political and social agendas, no way!

I really just don't understand why TV channels have not grasped the potential of broadband distribution of their content. So until that becomes a reality I remain a TV owner, but one that almost never turns it on. In fact if it was up to me I'd get rid of the thing out of principle, but my partner doesn't exactly agree. Until the day comes that we can git rid of the big black box I have to be selective about viewing only the good stuff and not get sucked in by the nessarily seductive and addictive trash that comes with it. Having grown up in a country with very little advertising on TV and a high percentage of news, current affairs and documentary programming I fortunately have a low tolerance for the trash, and hence that's not too much of a problem.

Light up the world

Tonight I attended a talk at The Commonwealth Club by the man who founded the Light Up the World foundation. This organization aims to bring low cost, low power and low tech electric lighting solutions to the 1.7 billion people who are currently without any electric lighting. Yes, that's 1.7 billion. Guess what kind of lighting they use now instead of electric lighting? Mostly kerosine lamps which range from at beast dim but reasonably safe, to dim but very dangerous with a significant risk of fire, expensive and certainly enivironmentally unsound.

Frankly I can say I was amazed at what this organization has achived in developing a solution that will give up to 20 years of lighting for a home with only $40 up front cost consuming just 1 to 4 W of power. The lower power high efficiency of solid state LED lights has allowed use of rechargeable battery solutions combined with home grown pedal, solar, wind and water recharging technologies. The only on going cost is a few bucks every few years or so to replace the batteries. The goal of LUTW is $20 for twenty years of lighting with no environmental impact. Isn't that great? There's me taking 400W or so of lighting for granted, and here's an organization that is giving homes light for four hours or more a night at only 1 to 4W per home. Frankly I say its a wonderful use of technology and one I'm going to work on getting involved with.

So it leads you to wonder what it would take to give lighting to all 1.7 billion people who don't have lighting and what the impact on the world would be. Even with their current cost structures for a relatively small effort its easy to see that just a few tens of billions would bring reliable, cheap, environmentally sound lighting to almost 1/3 of the worlds population. Now how much was it that George Bush's war against Saddam is costing the USA? Strangely the costs are almost exactly equivalent.

Its clear that if America really wanted to do something truely worthy of a great nation it should put away those $1M a shot depleated uranium filled cruise missiles and light one up for the poor, unlit masses. They might actually thank us for it...