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We live in the Future, Part N + WTF

Ben Hammersley is in Beirut right now, getting ready to report for the UK Guardian on any civil wars that happen to break out. He went off to interview some of the boys from Hezbollah- and they offered him either a mobile phone strap or a baseball cap with the Hezbollah logo on it. In the Hezbollah logo, according to Wikipedia, "The first letter of 'Allah' reaches up to grasp a rifle, likely a Kalashnikov."

Ben took the mobile phone strap, took a picture, and put it on Flickr. Welcome to the future, where the terrorist/resistance fighters (whichever) have shwag.

quinn

All things TAL

We used to do endless This American Life parodies around the house, but we only mocked because we loved. Kasper Hauser loves too, in a really funny way.

Also, you can watch the TAL tv show on the Showtime website. There's something super perverse about a TAL tv show, but it was cool to see Chance and Second Chance.

quinn

Body Hacking Talk

I've put up the slides to the most recent iteration of the Body Hacking talk, this one from my Thursday presentation at Etech.

Many thanks to the audience, and the great questions.

quinn

Miss Landmine 2007 - in Angola

Only Scandinavian aid workers could invent something like this: A beauty pageant for landmine survivors, complete with online voting. I want to, but I can't look away.

THE MISS LANDMINE MANIFESTO
(in no particular order)

* Female pride and empowerment.

* Disabled pride and empowerment.

* Global and local landmine awareness and information.

* Challenge inferiority and/or guilt complexes that hinder creativity- historical, cultural, social, personal, African, European.

* Question established concepts of physical perfection.

* Challenge old and ingrown concepts of cultural cooperation.

* Celebrate true beauty.

* Replace the passive term 'Victim' with the active term 'Survivor'

quinn

the women are strong, the men are good-looking

Miriam does a very funny little exposé on an impossible claim by a small town's economic cheerleaders.

Life is full of these little untrue utterances on which not much, really, depends. Life with Miriam is full of indignant dissections of them. But it's not every day she has custom maps made to illustrate just how imaginary somebody's boosterism has gotten.

lame duck budget from hell

Here's an angry article about the lack of media attention to the proposed national budget for 2008; it's well worth a read.

Some other notable estimate estate tax breaks, versus corresponding cuts:
Cox family (Cox cable TV) receives $9.7 billion tax break while education would get $1.5 billion in cuts

Nordstrom family (Nordstrom dept. stores) receives $826.5 million tax break while Community Service Block Grants would be eliminated, a $630 million cut

Ernest Gallo family (shitty wines) receives a $468.4 million cut while LIHEAP (heating oil to poor) would get a $420 million cut

The article is drawn chiefly from remarks by Bernie Sanders [first pdf and second pdf, third pdf] on the Senate floor. I can find two more lightweight pieces on it, neither of them as plain as the Alternet rant, but no more traction in the press that I can see. Instead, what does the press have to say about the budget? Just some back and forth about whether it will, or won't, be balanced five years from now (which it won't--why start now?). And just very little volume of discussion at all.

The Bush administration has never worried much about what anybody thinks of it; now that Bush is up against his term limit, he cares even less. Plenty of time left (and no shame) to further the one directive that matches his every action: use government power to transfer money from the public at large to the richest of the rich.

According to some, he has even less cause to worry, now that he's got a secret hideout to escape to. Who says he can't come up with an exit plan?

the state of Texas, enforcing morality, again

The excellent Belly Tales has an analysis of a new order in Texas requiring that all girls in the state be vaccinated against HPV, which is transmitted sexually and no other way. One objection is that the vaccine itself is of uncertain safety and hasn't been well studied by anybody but its manufacturers. But even aside from this, it's not a silver bullet against HPV, of which more varieties exist than the vaccine addresses. So as the student midwife argues, vaccination really shouldn't change anybody's behavior in guarding against, or detecting, infection.

Meanwhile, of course, lots of Texans are mortally offended that their governor is implying that their daughters will probably have sex.

(Right at the moment, though, Texas' preeminence as morality-enforcing state is being challenged unexpectedly by Washington.)

the end of the world as we know it

will just be followed by the world in some other guise.

I've been reading James Howard Kunstler for a year or two now--the crusty, often socially reactionary denouncer of suburban sprawl lately setting himself up as the potty-mouthed prophet of Peak Oil on the internet. He's hit or miss, often tracking energy trends with rousing clarity but almost as frequently grousing about the psychological inadequacies of Africans, women, rednecks and hippies alike to no obvious purpose. But his most recent entry is a rare gem: a quick to-do list of affirmative steps Americans (and others, but chiefly we) can be taking to soften the blow of fossil fuels' sudden scarcity when it comes, probably soon.

It's kind of exhilarating reading to the likes of me, albeit with a guilty shudder. In all honesty I'd like little better than to live to see a general return to localized agriculture, local economies, live entertainment, self-reliance, and transport by sailing ships. And there's a lot of horse sense to it, improbable as it may seem; catastrophic though a sharp decrease in the availability of fossil fuels will be, the cause of death for most of its victims will be their lack of access to viable, parallel organizations to take the place of the absurdly overextended, gas-powered supply lines they now take for granted. And the best thing any die-hard optimist can be doing about it is to create and expand such alternative systems, by participating in them, now rather than later. A smattering of useful links to this effect, gleaned from the long comments to Kunstler's entry:
http://www.energybulletin.net/25502.html
http://www.oriononline.org/pages/om/05-6om/McKibben.html
http://www.raisethehammer.org/index.asp?id=481
http://peakoilmedicine.wordyblog.com/category/survival/

He does squeeze in some of his usual grumpy-pants remarks, and I'd question his predictions in some particulars. Universities won't be able to count on near-universal attendance and won't be able to charge quite such murderous tuition, perhaps, but they weren't invented under the aegis of fossil-fuel economy, and they won't just roll over and die without it. And even if net access and electricity become unreliable, and electronic media less ubiquitous, I suspect and hope that the record of all that lovely stuff will endure a long time yet, even if it becomes a rare treat as opposed to a constant background hum. But this is nitpicking. I think his startling notion of the future is probably on point, and the chief question is when the pinch will come.

For me and some others like me, this almost begins to seem a vision of heaven. Maybe our children will live in a world where the government still does space exploration, but everybody walks to work; and you can have all the internet and recorded entertainment you want, as long as you're willing to pedal a stationary bike for it. A world where you know the people around you, and live simply, forsaking the more gluttonous uses of cheap and easy energy but without losing the more elegant achievements of technology to date, notably those concerned with the transfer of information. Ironically, it's a world we could have chosen ages ago, in theory at least, and we'd have averted catastrophe if we had.

But that's the shudder of guilt: this is all still a catastrophe. Any such reinstatement of quaint old systems of survival as I describe will only come after the poor people of the world take it on the chin, yet again. Apart from a few environmentalists and survivalists, the only people yet taking Peak Oil seriously are the selfsame amoral corporate fat cats so instrumental in bringing us to this pass, and they're only angling for the best way to cash in on the scarcity when it comes. This conversation isn't taking place on the national stage, and most people haven't heard of the problem and won't prepare. It's going to suck. Tons of people will die. Long institutions will end in flames. There's not much way around that, now.

But still we have choices, and I see no virtue in folding our hands in resignation. Even if it's too late to stave off the worst, we might as well prepare what we can, build the apparatus by which the survivors, whoever they may be, will survive. The planet can actually support the population we've put on it, if we're willing to demand less of it; and the more of us learn to accept austerity by choice, sooner rather than later, the more of us will get a look at what might yet turn out to be a rather better world.

lemme look in my manual under "customer about to die"

A man whose time is very short tried to get on a plane on Sunday, on his way to the best hope for the liver transplant he will soon die without. The Southwest agent behind the desk insisted that he buy a second ticket because he is fat (an effect of his liver condition, as it happens) and was unmoved by the passenger's predicament, citing the higher authority of the airport's policies. The plane wasn't full, or anything; the agent was just sticking to those rules, even if it meant some guy had to die.

That abdication of responsibility--the willingness to relax into the authority of one's bosses, which often shades into a belief that the sort of stuff bosses want is objectively right and good (because otherwise they wouldn't be the bosses, I suppose)--that's the same impulse that keeps a room full of students quiet as they wait for somebody else to ask a question, the same keep-your-head-down feeling of disempowerment that killed Kitty Genovese, that lets one crank caller talk half a dozen people into molesting an employee just by claiming to be a cop. Surely, even if the airport has an asinine fat-tax policy of punishing the obese with doubled fares, a given boarding agent has the authority to waive it where circumstances require? As long as there's no countervailing safety concern? I mean, come on, with or without the authority, that agent had the power to let it slide, end of story.

I say all this knowing that the same potential for groupthink lives in me. More and more, the cultural force I dread isn't that of my nominal opposites, hard-right political conservatives. Most of those guys, with their militias and freaky churches and totalitarian social agendas, would be as quick as I to scream bloody murder at a soulless display like this one. Indeed I sometimes think one becomes an "extremist" of whatever stripe mostly by making an issue out of some everyday thing the mainstream is accustomed to.

The rot in the heart of the American psyche is the corporate culture, the society of the obedient, who believe that the confidence and brazen self-praise of the powerful constitutes a meaningful authority. Even when its dictates contravene the most elementary human respect for the people one interacts with face to face.

[I should note that the page I link to above is the uttermost source of the story as far as I can see--I can't see anything about it from the usual news outlets. Not sure what that means. I'm cautiously assuming it's real, and perhaps the media hasn't heard or hasn't yet decided it's a story worth talking about. The consumerist.com account is a bit freighted with poor-me details about Brown's friends and family having no money, but the facts are sobering whatever their tone.]

whatever robot you have

this robot beats it

Also, She's Such a Geek on Neofile

RU Sirius interviewed Annalee, Charlie, and me for his NeoFiles show. Besides laughing to much, and not having much of a radio voice, and not having a good sense for when to talk, I think I did ok. Mainly listen to Annalee and Charlie's better first bit. I did get in a couple good jokes though, which is the point of life.

I completely failed to fangirl at RU Sirius, but I should have. I basically had an altar set up to Mondo 2000 in the early 90s.

quinn

Come join me and the geeks

On Thursday, the 25th at 7pm, I will be joining Annalee, Charlie, and other co-authors from She's Such a Geek at City Lights Books in San Francisco. I'll be reading a bit of my essay, Dreaming in Unison, and looking confused if anyone asks me to sign a book. This is my first reading as what I suppose you'd call an author.

I expect to see you all there. All of you.

quinn

Nerdcore Rising

The rockumentary of nerdcore- Nerdcore Rising, has a trailer on youtube. That makes me happy enough, but I also saw one of my pictures flash past while watching it. If you need it, Vaguely Qualified Productions, I officially give you a license for commercial use.

I'm dying to see it!

quinn

first three-parent ruling I've ever heard of

It's in Ontario, on the forefront again. It seems a precedent bound for challenge, and maybe an irresistible gauntlet for Canadian legislatures, but legally recognizing three parents for one child has just become thinkable to a much wider arena of people than yesterday.

As often happens with stories of this sort, the mainstream coverage is scant and ho-hum, so news.google turns up mostly a chorus of doomsaying Christians, quoting each other.

Covering 23C3

I'm in Germany, doing the Ambian/Provigil shuffle. I'm covering the event for Wired News; you can see Day 1 and Day 2.

But I've also given my first public talk on Body Hacking. Big moment for me, but it seems to have been well received, besides people complaining my pictures weren't full of enough blood and sex.

Oh well. It's been blogged in German, but I haven't found anything in English yet. I'm told the video goes online later but i have no idea where.

quinn

Catch yourself in the act

I showed scary crack shot Aaron Swartz one of my favorite books on writing, Associated Press Guide to News Writing, by Rene J. Cappon. It lists many literary sins and mercilessly tells you why you shouldn't have done them. I told Aaron; you may think this is about news writing, but it's about good writing. There's no reason to ever use most of the clauses and cliches Cappon condemns. I mentioned that I kept meaning to put together something that would highlight whenever I sin myself. But Aaron, being Aaron, just went off and did it.

Aaron Swartz's Cliche Finder

Along with the classic ftrain Passivator, it's not so much that it's getting easy to automate good writing as to automate the flaming of bad writing. Put your writing through them... if you dare!

quinn

Goodnight sweet princess

The Yangtze river white-fin dolphin known as baiji has gone extinct. First cetacean we've done in for some time, but possibly the start of a new trend.

It used to be worshiped as a goddess by the Chinese. According to legend, the baiji is the reincarnation of a princess who refused to marry a man she did not love and was drowned by her father for shaming the family.

I will raise a glass to her when I get home; I did precious little to save her while she lived.

quinn

A finer reason to blog

My article on Global Voices is up on Wired News. The idea of using blogs to bridge people of various cultures and get out non-western news isn't just not what the web or blogs were invented for, it's so far beyond what anyone had conceived the mediums to be as to be difficult to explain to their inventors, at the time. I remember Ethan starting this, and talking about how important blogs could be, at a time when I was just tired of blogs. They were talked to death to me, and the thought of using blogging to 'change the world' was lost on me. That's one of the things that makes Ethan the visionary, and me the non-creative typist.

quinn

Robots from the future

I've written a report on the KAIST Robotics lab's mind/body project around ubiquitous robotics. It's a mind bending vision, and the more you think about it, the more deliciously sci fi it gets.

The nice part is they're closer than you'd think to getting there.

quinn

Every once in a while

You stumble on something on Flickr that makes you really wish you knew more. This image is just such a case. Underneath the picture is captioned "Me in Kim Il Sung Square, Pyongyang, DPRK, two weeks after the nuclear tests" and you have to love the shit eating grin. scott_willis1999, I would totally buy you a drink for that story.

quinn