We are developing the social individualist meta-context for the future. From the very serious to the extremely frivolous... lets see what is on the mind of the Samizdata people.
Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]
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Over at TBHN, there are two further comments from readers about modern housing, one being of particular interest because it is from an architect.
Alistair Twiname confirms an inexpert impression I have long had, which is that while the finish of modern buildings is indeed fairly tacky, because of this being a craftsmanship thing and craftsmanship now being either worse or more expensive than a century ago, anything in a building where modern industrialisation techniques can work their magic is now improving steadily.
(The above direct link seems dodgy. The blogspot archive thing again? To get there by hand, it’s www.tbhn.blogspot.com – August 22nd 2002.)
I remember, when I worked as a junior functionary for a house builder many years ago, being very impressed with how clever the hidden bits of the buildings often were, and how rapidly such things were progressing, underneath the twee and conservative exteriors, which just looked like cheap copies of past glories with added garages. That being because they were.
Any man-made, mass produceable object small enough to be moved easily is improving fast, in quality, price, cunning, everything. Why can’t houses be as good as cars and aeroplanes? Because you can make cars and aeroplanes in convenient indoor factories, and then move them easily to where they’re wanted. A house is a hell of a lot harder to move, and to make it movable, you have to build a self-supporting structure into it which will only be used once (unlike the equivalent car and aeroplane structures, which get used throughout the machine’s life). But with a house, for the rest of its life, the ground will support the house. Doesn’t work. So, the thing has to be assembled on site, in the rain, by those now reasonably well paid building workers. Thousands have tried, but nobody has cracked industrialised housing yet.
The other thing Twiname’s comments confirm for me is the enormous value of specialist blogs, and specialist debates and discussions on blogs. These draw specialist people, who might have no interest in or agreement with general pro-free-market bombast, into debates and discussions of genuine interest to them in which our questions and concerns still set the agenda. And, such people educate us.
This week is the 21st birthday of the IBM 5150 also called the IBM PC. I know it wasn’t the first personnal computer, there are quite a few contenders for that title, but it was the first computer to call itself a PC. This wonderous machine cost $3,000 came with a massive 4.77Mhz 8088 Intel processor with 16 kilobytes (expandable to 64k) of memory and ran PC DOS 1.0 which was licenced from a man called Bill Gates.
This story will gladden the hearts of lovers of the fruitful vine anywhere. Maybe I can use this technology when I jet off to California’s wine-growing region for my holiday at the end of September.
Remember when mum and dad used to get you to mow the lawn as punishment for skimping on the washing up? Well, those days of pushing a mower along the lawn while sneezing with hayfever are over, thanks to this great new development.
Proves that one of the great motivators of human ingenuity is sheer laziness.
I always enjoyed the Village Voice. It’s one of those publications that may gladden or infuriate, sometimes in the same issue, but will always tell the truth as they see it. They are invariably interesting to read, far more so than the bland uptown (well midtown: NY Times overlooks Times Square) papers. It was also my neighborhood paper for a good part of two years, so I got in the habit of reading it over a morning coffee at the Sidewalk Cafe.
Today I ran across this fascinating article. I have long wondered, and by long I mean twenty years or more, whether the city as we know it can survive the amplification of capabilities of “one man working alone”. My own suspicion is the combination of information technology and nanotechnology will allow humanity to disperse at the same time low density becomes a matter of safety.
But even under the more dire of possible future histories, I cannot see us doing without places like New York. We need the energy and creativty and well, life of it. Many cities may die, but the cultural centres will live on, even if they have to be rebuilt and repopulated once a generation.
East Village flat mate watching
Hollywood film crew
on street below
(photo D.Amon)
After many years I’ve finally ‘gotten around to’ reading Richard Dawkins famous book “The Extended Phenotype”. I’m only in the early chapters as yet, reading about his explanatory struggles. He has battled for years with those of little comprehension. They simply cannot seem to “get it” that genetic change can create conditions which modify or encourage a behavior but does not determine it.
I sat back and pondered his predicament awhile. I ran through a number of thought experiments. Rejected a few… and settled on this one. Perhaps poor Dr Dawkins will find it of minor assistance the next time he discovers himself cornered by slow learners.
Imagine an alternate world in which early Smurfs are predated upon by a rather strange alien beast. The creature is sort of protoplasmic and wimpy but hides in trees and cliffs just out of reach and sight of the average purple hunter gatherer. It likes to drop on them and kills rather quickly if it succeeds. If it misses it still has a second chance because it can move very fast and agilely for short distances, perhaps a few tens of meters.
The best strategy for our little band is to spot the beast as it peaks over the edge of its perch and bounce a good size rock off the tree trunk or cliff behind it to squash it before it drops. The second best strategy is to run and dodge like hell until it slows… and then kill it.
If we fast forward a few milleinia, we find that selective pressure has made our little tribe taller so they can see the critter first; great shots with a large rock; and incredibly fast and nimble runners with a lot more endurance than the predator. More than that, they get a great surge of endorphins and pleasure at running and jumping and throwing.
Mr Dawkins detractors would have you believe our purple Jordans have no choice but to become basketball stars. Purple Globetrotters all! To which Mr Dawkins would reply: “That is not the case”. Our 3 meter smurfs might find the game pleasurable, but their genes would not require them to play it.
As a son of a Suffolk farmer, I am delighted to see that arable crop production in the west, pressured by the lure of cheap imports from the rest of the world, could yet be saved by this rather cunning invention.
Well, it made me laugh.
Alice Bachini almost manages to scare me silly with talk of nuclear weapons in suitcases (this article must surely be in the NSA ‘Dodgy’ Inbox via the Echelon Internet System, being pored over for hidden significance).
However a few clues about the person carrying it: a decent sized nuclear weapon is going to need a twenty five kilogramme lump of Uranium 235, or a smaller piece of plutonium (I don’t know how much smaller). There are assorted devices for triggering the detonator, initiating fission and of course a very strong cradle (and heavy) to hold the whole thing together while the whole thing is carried around.
Last weekend I watched an entertaining film called “Bad Company” in which a couple of CIA agents played by Antony Hopkins and Chris Rock threw the briefcase around as if it contained only a couple of sandwiches and a copy of the daily paper. I’m no Arnold Schwarzenegger (I probably weigh more but not for the right reasons) and I’m quite sure that a forty or fifty kilogramme suitcase would be beyond my capacity to carry one-handed for any distance. I would have thought that someone struggling two-handed with an attache case they could barely lift would be a fairly indiscrete sight. It would also be a very naughty gag to pull at a station as a practical joke.
Realistically we’re looking at a device in a vehicle. It is a safe bet that no European city is safe but I would be amazed if the US government hadn’t installed radiation detection equipment on all major roads leading into the major cities. The Mayor of London is too busy trying to mess up the traffic to worry about such niceties. Even a heavily shielded lump of radioactive material can be detected fairly easily at a distance. At school we played with tiny pieces of uranium encased in lead which we could detect yards away with Geiger counters. Indeed in the movie, such a device was used to track down the bomb.
57 years ago today a mushroom bloomed in the desert at Alamorgordo, New Mexico.
That was a very long time ago. It’s almost high school science project level technology today.
From a point in the far future the 21st century may well be seen as the beginning of the end of dense “target rich” population centers.
 
Well, not really. But he does think life extension is inherently weird. But then I consider a preference for rotting as rather a run for the porcelain goddess philosophy…
The most important point to this disagreement is we can argue until the last trump (or the big crunch, or the heat death of the universe) and it need never be rancorous or threatening. As advocates of a free society neither of us believe we have a right to use force to make the other do things our way. Since I’m obviously right, and he’s wrong, if we were in a totalitarian society, I’d be using the government to stop him from pushing a cult of death and working to outlaw his desire to shove loved ones into the ground to rot or stick them in an oven to be rendered into a fine ash to be kept in an urn on the mantle. I’d have him forceably stuck into a state-mandated state-regulated state-subsidized liquid Nitrogen suspension no matter what his pre-expressed beliefs were. All for his own good of course.
Since we don’t live in that sort of slave world (well, not quite) he has no need to worry… and neither do I. We don’t have to fight. We don’t have to criminalize each other. We can just disagree and get on with living our lives as we see fit.
That is the glory of Liberty.
Usually – well often at least – the Opinion Journal email newsletter delivers interesting stories with an interesting spin on them. But today they went off the deep end with a Cryonics story. It seems Ted Williams may be an Alcor customer. For those in the know, the Alcor Life Extension Foundation is the premier organization of its’ kind. I have met and dealt with many of Alcor’s founders and customers. They are uniformly well educated, intelligent and interesting people. Fortunately none of those I know well are suspendees yet.
The silliness with which the OJ approached the topic showed a low standard of care in research. The writer shows a lack of general knowledge of the subject and uses cuteness to cover ignorance.
There are many reasonable questions that could be asked. What exactly is Alcor? Who are its’ customers? What does it stand for? Why would someone have their self frozen? I will attempt very short answers, but I suggest those who are really interested go to their web site and perhaps some others I will reference.
What is Alcor Alcor is an organization dedicated to cryonic suspension of its’ members upon a declaration of death under current medical criteria. Alcor has an experienced staff that will then do their absolute best to get the member into long term suspension in liquid Nitrogen with the minimum possible extra damage possible under current technology.
Who are its’ customers? The customer base of Alcor is drawn from the ranks of extremely intelligent and creative people. They are not fanatical believers in some pseudo-science. They are lovers of life who are taking one last gamble. If the medical technology of 100 or 200 years hence is advanced enough to fix both the original cause of “death” and the possibly severe cellular damage from the freezing process, they win. If they lose, they will never know the difference and so don’t much care.
What does it stand for Alcor believes nanotechnology will advance to a point at which repair at a cellular level will become possible. Life expectancy will then jump to hundreds if not thousands of years. The primary cause of death in the future will be accidents that destroy the brain structure. The difficulty Alcor sees is most of us will be dead long before this becomes possible. Their premise is to just “bite the bullet” now and use the best techniques we have at hand in an attempt to bridge the gap.
Some experiments have shown excellent long term tissue preservation in LN2; in one experiment a dog was taken down to freezing and brought back. It lived out a normal doggy life afterwards. Many in the cryogenics field have a political dislike for the whole concept so few have actually been doing the experiments. None expect it to be easy; none give the current techniques any more than an outside chance of working. Alcor people will tell you that up front. It’s in their paperwork and disclaimers.
Why would someone have themselves frozen???? “All things considered, I’d rather be in Philadelphia”. If you are cremated, you ain’t comin’ back. If you’re buried to rot, you ain’t comin’ back. If you’re cut up for medicine, you ain’t comin’ back. If you are frozen in liquid nitrogen for a century or two… well you might not be coming back. But… If you love life why not take a shot? You can’t take the money with you anyway; Alcor isn’t a big profit corporation, it’s a member run organization and all funds go to the purpose. Their employee salaries and benefits suck. It all goes back into keeping those dewars icey.
I first ran across the concept of Cryonic suspension a long time ago. Way back in the late 60’s or early 70’s I believe (the oldest still viable suspendee dates from that early period). I thought it was technically preposterous but somewhat interesting. Nothing about it interested me enough to dig further until after I read and commented on Eric Drexler’s drafts for Engines of Creation in the early 80’s. The penny dropped. If you can manipulate atoms, repairing or even rebuilding a body becomes technically conceivable. I have watched the field of nanotechnology grow from a handful of Eric’s friends to a globally known buzzword in less than two decades. Some of the first products of the field will be out in a couple years. It is expected to be a major economic sector within the next twenty years.
There are critics of the whole scenario. They may be right. I don’t think so, but they might be. So read the literature, take my opinions with two grains of Sodium Chloride, study the technical issues, pick your horse and lay your money down.
If you are interested in a quick education on nanotechnology, check out Foresight Institute. And oh yeah. Jim Bennett, Glenn Reynolds and myself all have ties of one sort or another to Foresight.
NASA Glenn announced today it has demonstrated high-power electric propulsion with a type of thruster known as a Hall Effect thruster. They say the test unit, known as NASA-457M is
“A giant leap toward enabling high power electric propulsion was recently demonstrated. With power levels up to 72 kW and nearly 3 Newtons of thrust, NASA’s Glenn Research Center, Cleveland, has designed, built and successfully tested a 50 kW-class Hall thruster.”
The technology will have important commercial satellite applications. The possibility of more than doubling commercial payload masses to Geostationary Orbit (GSO) is certain to impact the bottom line of the entire GSO service industry.
Work of this sort is the modern equivalent of what NACA did for the aviation industry in the early days of american aviation.
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Who Are We? The Samizdata people are a bunch of sinister and heavily armed globalist illuminati who seek to infect the entire world with the values of personal liberty and several property. Amongst our many crimes is a sense of humour and the intermittent use of British spelling.
We are also a varied group made up of social individualists, classical liberals, whigs, libertarians, extropians, futurists, ‘Porcupines’, Karl Popper fetishists, recovering neo-conservatives, crazed Ayn Rand worshipers, over-caffeinated Virginia Postrel devotees, witty Frédéric Bastiat wannabes, cypherpunks, minarchists, kritarchists and wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists from Britain, North America, Australia and Europe.
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