artdiamondblog.com – Page 375 – Art Diamond's web log

One Way to Appreciate All We Take for Granted

Source of book image: http://knowledge.dsruptiv.net/en-gb/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/The-Knowledge-Full-Cover_lowres.jpg

(p. 8) Over the past generation or two we’ve gone from being producers and tinkerers to consumers. As a result, I think we feel a sense of disconnect between our modern existence and the underlying processes that support our lives. Who has any real understanding of where their last meal came from or how the objects in their pockets were dug out of the earth and transformed into useful materials? What would we do if, in some science-fiction scenario, a global catastrophe collapsed civilization and we were members of a small society of survivors?

My research has to do with what factors planets need to support life. Recently, I’ve been wondering what factors are needed to support our modern civilization. What key principles of science and technology would be necessary to rebuild our world from scratch?
. . .
. . . there are the many materials society requires: How do you transform base substances like clay and iron into brick or concrete or steel, and then shape that material into a useful tool? To learn a small piece of this, I spent a day in a traditional, 18th-century iron forge, learning the essentials of the craft of the blacksmith. Sweating over an open coke-fired hearth, I managed to beat a lump of steel into a knife. Once shaped, I got it cherry-red hot and then quenched it with a satisfying squeal into a water trough, before reheating the blade slightly to temper it for extra toughness.
. . .
. . . , it needn’t take a catastrophic collapse of civilization to make you appreciate the importance of understanding the basics of how devices around you work. Localized disasters can disrupt normal services, making a reasonable reserve of clean water, canned food and backup technologies like kerosene lamps a prudent precaution. And becoming a little more self-reliant is immensely rewarding in its own right. Thought experiments like these can help us to explore how our modern world actually came to be, and to appreciate all that we take for granted.

For the full commentary, see:
LEWIS DARTNELL. “OPINION; Civilization’s Starter Kit.” The New York Times, SundayReview Section (Sun., MARCH 30, 2014): 8.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date MARCH 29, 2014.)

Dartnell’s commentary, quoted above, has been elaborated in his book:
Dartnell, Lewis. The Knowledge: How to Rebuild Our World from Scratch. New York: Penguin Press, 2014.

Bill Clinton Says U.S. Control of Internet Protects Free Speech

(p. A11) . . . , Mr. Clinton, appearing on a panel discussion at a recent Clinton Global Initiative event, defended U.S. oversight of the domain-name system and the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, or Icann.
. . .
“I understand why the reaction in the rest of the world to the Edward Snowden declarations has given new energy to the idea that the U.S. should not be in nominal control of domain names on the Internet,” Mr. Clinton said. “But I also know that we’ve kept the Internet free and open, and it is a great tribute to the U.S. that we have done that, including the ability to bash the living daylights out of those of us who are in office or have been.
“A lot of people who have been trying to take this authority away from the U.S. want to do it for the sole purpose of cracking down on Internet freedom and limiting it and having governments protect their backsides instead of empower their people.”
Mr. Clinton asked Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia: “Are you at all worried that if we give up this domain jurisdiction that we have had for all these years that we will lose Internet freedom?”
“I’m very worried about it,” Mr. Wales answered. People outside the U.S. often say to him, “Oh, it’s terrible. Why should the U.S. have this special power?” His reply: “There is the First Amendment in the U.S., and there is a culture of free expression.”
He recalled being told on Icann panels to be more understanding of differences in cultures. “I have respect for local cultures, but banning parts of Wikipedia is not a local cultural variation that we should embrace and accept. That’s a human-rights violation.”

For the full commentary, see:
L. GORDON CROVITZ. “INFORMATION AGE; Open Internet: Clinton vs. Obama; The former president strongly defends the current system of oversight by the U.S.” The Wall Street Journal (Mon., MARCH 31, 2014): A11.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the commentary has the shorter title “INFORMATION AGE; Open Internet: Clinton vs. Obama.”)

Little Estonia Prepares Defense Against Russia’s Evil Empire

Toomis Hendrick Ilves, President of Estonia. Source of photo: online version of the WSJ article quoted and cited below.

(p. A13) Perched alone up in eastern Baltic are Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia. Their fear of Moscow propelled them to become the first and only former Soviet republics to seek the refuge of NATO. But now doubts are appearing. The West has responded tepidly to the Crimean aggression. Military budgets are at historic lows as a share of NATO economies. The alliance, which marked its 65th anniversary on Friday, has never faced the test of a hot conflict with Moscow.

In this new debate over European security, Mr. Ilves plays a role out of proportion to Estonia’s size (1.3 million people) and his limited constitutional powers. A tall man who recently turned 60, he has the mouth of a New Jersey pol–he grew up in Leonia–and wears the bow ties of a lapsed academic. Americans may recall his Twitter TWTR -0.15% feud two years ago over Estonia’s economy with economist Paul Krugman, whom Mr. Ilves called “smug, overbearing & patronizing.”
. . .
Estonia managed on Thursday to get NATO’s blessing to turn the brand-new Amari military airfield near Tallinn into the first NATO base in the country. This small Balt tends to be proactive. While European governments axed some $50 billion from military budgets in the last five year amid fiscal belt-tightening, Estonia is only one of four NATO allies to devote at least 2% of gross domestic product to defense, supposedly the bare minimum for security needs.
“It lessens your moral clout if you have not done what you have agreed to do,” Mr. Ilves says of defense budgets. His barb hits directly at neighboring Lithuania and Latvia, which both spend less than 1% of GDP on their militaries.

For the full commentary, see:
MATTHEW KAMINSKI. “THE SATURDAY INTERVIEW; An American Ally in Putin’s Line of Fire; Estonia’s president, who was raised in New Jersey, on how Crimea has changed ‘everything’ and what NATO should do now.” The Wall Street Journal (Sat., April 5, 2014): A13.
(Note: ellipsis added.)
(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date April 4, 2014.)

Edison Was Too Frugal to Buy a Yacht

(p. 148) Edison spent the weeks preceding his first Chautauqua visit at the Gillilands’ to get comfortable with the new version of himself that he was trying on: a gregarious bon vivant, uninterested in work, filling summer days with frivolous entertainments such as boat rides, card games, and a variation of Truth or Dare for middle-aged participants. He seriously considered buying a yacht, before he came to the realization that his self-transformation was still incomplete–he recognized that he still lacked the ability to disregard the frightful expense.

Source:
Stross, Randall E. The Wizard of Menlo Park: How Thomas Alva Edison Invented the Modern World. New York: Crown Publishers, 2007.
(Note: ellipsis added.)

Today Is 14th Anniversary of Democrats’ Infamous Betrayal of Elián González

“In this April 22, 2000 file photo, Elian Gonzalez is held in a closet by Donato Dalrymple, one of the two men who rescued the boy from the ocean, right, as government officials search the home of Lazaro Gonzalez, early Saturday morning, April 22, 2000, in Miami. Armed federal agents seized Elian Gonzalez from the home of his Miami relatives before dawn Saturday, firing tear gas into an angry crowd as they left the scene with the weeping 6-year-old boy.” Source of caption and photo: online version of JENNIFER KAY and MATT SEDENSKY. “10 years later, few stirred by Elian Gonzalez saga.” Omaha World-Herald (Thurs., April 22, 2010): 7A. (Note: the online version of the article is dated April 21, 2010 and has the title “10 years after Elian, US players mum or moving on.”)

Today (April 22, 2014) is the 14th anniversary of one of the darkest days in American history—when the Democratic Clinton Administration seized a six year old child in order to force him back into the slavery that his mother had died trying to escape.

Where Ideas Go to Launch Versus Where Ideas Go to Die

(p. 1) PALO ALTO, Calif. — THE most striking thing about visiting Silicon Valley these days is how many creative ideas you can hear in just 48 hours.
. . .
Curt Carlson, the chief executive of SRI International, which invented Siri for your iPhone, recalls how one leading innovator (p. 11) just told him that something would never happen and “then I pick up the paper and it just did.”
What they all have in common is they wake up every day and ask: “What are the biggest trends in the world, and how do I best invent/reinvent my business to thrive from them?” They’re fixated on creating abundance, not redividing scarcity, and they respect no limits on imagination. No idea here is “off the table.”
. . .
What a contrast. Silicon Valley: where ideas come to launch. Washington, D.C., where ideas go to die. Silicon Valley: where there are no limits on your imagination and failure in the service of experimentation is a virtue. Washington: where the “imagination” to try something new is now a treatable mental illness covered by Obamacare and failure in the service of experimentation is a crime. Silicon Valley: smart as we can be. Washington: dumb as we wanna be.

For the full commentary, see:
Thomas L. Friedman. “Start-Up America: Our Best Hope.” The New York Times, SundayReview Section (Sun., FEB. 16, 2014): 1 & 11.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date FEB. 15, 2014.)

Humans May Not Have Killed Off the Woolly Mammoth After All

“A mammoth tusk.” Source of caption and photo: online version of the NYT article quoted and cited below.

(p. D2) A 50,000 year analysis of Arctic vegetation history reveals that a change in diet may have led to the demise of the woolly mammoth, the woolly rhinoceros and other large animals, according to a study in the journal Nature. About 10,000 years ago in the Arctic steppe, grasslands began to replace forbs, a flowery plant cover. Animals may have relied on forbs as a source of protein.

For the original story, see:
“‘Observatory; Tiny Plants’ Loss May Have Doomed Mammoths.” The New York Times (Tues., FEB. 11, 2014): D2.
(Note: Sindya N. Bhanoo is listed as the author of the second “Observatory” short entry, but it is not at all clear if that is intended to imply that she also is author of the first “Observatiory” short entry on the “Tiny Plants Loss . . . ” Her name does not appear anywhere in the online version.)
(Note: the online version of the interview has the date FEB. 10, 2014, and has the title “‘SCIENCE; Tiny Plants’ Loss May Have Doomed Mammoths.” )

The study in Nature mentioned above, is:
Willerslev, Eske, John Davison, Mari Moora, Martin Zobel, Eric Coissac, Mary E. Edwards, Eline D. Lorenzen, Mette Vestergård, Galina Gussarova, James Haile, Joseph Craine, Ludovic Gielly, Sanne Boessenkool, Laura S. Epp, Peter B. Pearman, Rachid Cheddadi, David Murray, Kari Anne Bråthen, Nigel Yoccoz, and Heather Binney. “Fifty Thousand Years of Arctic Vegetation and Megafaunal Diet.” Nature 506, no. 7486 (Feb. 6, 2014): 47-51.

Gas Company Literally Tried to Short-Circuit Edison’s Lights

(p. 104) The willingness of Edison to turn his laboratory into a public theater had succeeded, only too well. When he appeared, a shout, “There is Edison!” rang out, causing a surge of bodies in his direction. One report claimed that the crowds “more than once threatened to break down the timbers of the building,” a statement that may not have been hyperbole; the lab assistants were convinced that collapse was possible and hurried outside, bolstering the floor supports below with telegraph poles and lumber. Where the realm of science ended and that of entertainment began could no longer be distinguished, judging by the printed condemnation of the behavior of a minority of the visitors who “cared nothing for science, who regarded the laboratory as they would a circus.”
In the laboratory itself, the lights were arranged on a table to resemble a miniature layout of Menlo Park, and Edison had assigned assistants on all four sides to look out for sabotage. Their vigilance was needed that day, as one man was caught applying a jumper wire that ran under his clothes and down both sleeves, deliberately short-circuiting four of the lights. He turned out to be an electrician employed by the Baltimore Gas Company and was marched out, with language ringing in his ears “that made the recording angels jump for their typewriters,” Edison later recalled.

Source:
Stross, Randall E. The Wizard of Menlo Park: How Thomas Alva Edison Invented the Modern World. New York: Crown Publishers, 2007.

In the Gilded Age Moguls Cleaned Up Their Own Mess and the Economy Was Not Hurt

Source of book image: online version of the WSJ review quoted and cited below.

(p. A13) Takeover wars seem to have lost their sizzle. What happened to the battles of corporate goliaths? Where have they gone, those swaggering deal makers? “Harriman vs. Hill” is a corporate dust-up that takes us back to the beginning of the 20th century, when tycoons who traveled by private rail merrily raided each other’s empires while the world around them cringed.
. . .
Mr. Haeg conveys a vivid picture of the Gilded Age in splendor and in turmoil. Champagne still flowed in Peacock Alley in the Waldorf-Astoria, but fistfights erupted on the floor of the exchange, and a young trader named Bernard Baruch skirted disaster with the help of an inside tip, then perfectly legal. There were scant rules governing stock trading, the author reminds us–no taxes, either. “If you won in the market, you kept it all.”
In that era, moguls were left to clean up their own mess. . . .
. . .
Though hardly a cheerleader, Mr. Haeg is admiring of his cast, nostalgic for the laissez-faire world they inhabited. Observing that the economy wasn’t upset by the stock market’s mayhem, he concludes that, “in a perverse way, the market had worked.”

For the full review, see:
ROGER LOWENSTEIN. “BOOKSHELF; When Titans Tie the Knot; Businessmen of a century ago didn’t place ‘competition’ on a revered pedestal. Merger and monopoly were considered preferable.” The Wall Street Journal (Fri., Feb. 14, 2014): A13.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the review has the date Feb. 13, 2014, and has the title “BOOKSHELF; Book Review: ‘Harriman vs. Hill,’ by Larry Haeg; Businessmen of a century ago didn’t place ‘competition’ on a revered pedestal. Merger and monopoly were considered preferable.”)

The book under review is:
Haeg, Larry. Harriman Vs. Hill: Wall Street’s Great Railroad War. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2013.

Re-Use of Plastic Bags Increases E. Coli Infections

(p. A13) Though reducing plastic-bag use might be good for the environment, encouraging the re-use of plastic bags for food-toting may not be so healthy for humans. After San Francisco introduced its ban on non-compostable plastic bags in large grocery stores in 2007, researchers discovered a curious spike in E. coli infections, which can be fatal, and a 46% increase in deaths from food-borne illnesses, according to a study published in November 2012 by the University of Pennsylvania and George Mason University. “We show that the health costs associated with the San Francisco ban swamp any budgetary savings from reduced litter,” the study’s authors observed.
Affirming this yuck factor, a 2011 study from the University of Arizona and Loma Linda University found bacteria in 99% of reusable polypropylene bags tested; 8% of them were carrying E. coli. The study, though it mainly focused on plastic bags, also looked at two cotton reusable bags–and both contained bacteria.
Bag-ban boosters counter that consumers just need to wash their bags and use separate bags for fish and meat. If only my washing machine had a “reusable bag vinegar rinse cycle.” A paltry 3% of shoppers surveyed in that same 2011 study said they washed their reusable bags. Has anybody calculated the environmental impact of drought-ravaged Californians laundering grocery bags?

For the full commentary, see:
JUDY GRUEN. “Becoming a Bagless Lady in Los Angeles.” The Wall Street Journal (Sat., March 8, 2014): A13.
(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date March 7, 2014.)

The 2012 study mistakenly labelled above as “published” is:
Klick, Jonathan and Wright, Joshua D., Grocery Bag Bans and Foodborne Illness (November 2, 2012). U of Penn, Inst for Law & Econ Research Paper No. 13-2. Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=2196481 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2196481

The 2011 article mentioned above, is:
Williams, David L., Charles P. Gerba, Sherri Maxwell, and Ryan G. Sinclair. “Assessment of the Potential for Cross-Contamination of Food Products by Reusable Shopping Bags.” Food Protection Trends 31, no. 8 (Aug. 2011): 508-13.

Very Cold January Puzzled Global Warming True Believers

“Niagara Falls in January.” Source of caption and photo: online version of the NYT article quoted and cited below.

(p. D3) At the exact moment President Obama was declaring last month that “climate change is a fact,” thousands of drivers in Atlanta were trapped in a grueling winter ordeal, trying to get home on roads that had turned into ribbons of ice.

As the president addressed Congress and the nation in his State of the Union speech, it was snowing intermittently outside the Capitol. The temperature would bottom out later that night at 13 degrees in Washington, 14 in New York, 1 in Chicago, minus 6 in Minneapolis — and those readings were toasty compared to some of the lows earlier in January.
Mr. Obama’s declaration provoked head-shaking from Congressional climate deniers, and unleashed a stream of mockery on Twitter. “As soon as he mentioned ‘climate change’ it started snowing on Capitol Hill,” said a post from Patrick J. Michaels, a climate skeptic at the Cato Institute.
The chortling was predictable, perhaps, but you do not necessarily have to subscribe to an anti-scientific ideology to ask the question a lot of people are asking these days:
If the world is really warming up, how come it is so darned cold?

For the full commentary, see:
Justin Gillis. “BY DEGREES; Freezing Out the Bigger Picture.” The New York Times (Tues., FEB. 11, 2014): D3.
(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date FEB. 10, 2014.)