Thursday, May 31, 2012

Creative Commons

There is a titanic struggle going on below the public's radar on this subject.

In the interview link below, Lawrence Lessig talks about the creative commons and the threat to reasonable, open access.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hGWnYW084FM

Wednesday, May 30, 2012

The Archimedes Palimpsest

A palimpsest is a page from an ancient text that has another text hidden beneath that which appears on the surface.

Archimedes  (287-212 BC), the immortal Greek mathematician,  is known only through two ancient texts that carried his writings into contemporary times, or I should say, was....was only known by two surviving texts.

Archimedes


Now there is a third.... a third  text, The Archimedes Palimpsest, was found hidden beneath the pages of an ancient prayer book that used recycled parchment paper, on which Archimedes' words and ideas remained hidden for centuries.


The Archimedes Palimpsest


How that third text, The Archimedes Palimpsest, was discovered and how its secrets have been revealed is a fascinating story, presented by William Noel, Curator of Manuscripts and Ancient Texts at the Walters Art Museum, Baltimore, Maryland.  

Here is the link to William Noel's  TED video presentation...

 http://www.ted.com/talks/william_noel_revealing_the_lost_codex_of_archimedes.html





Tuesday, May 29, 2012

The Age of Spiritual Machines

Ray Kurzweil is an exceptional human being.  I've been following him for a lot of years.  He is the person behind a number of important, computer related innovations.

Optical character recognition allows books to be translated into spoken words - a great gift to the blind.  The Kurzweil synthesizer took computer generated music to a new level, accurately replicating the sound created by traditional music instruments.

In 1998, Kurzweil wrote a book, The Age of Spiritual Machines, in which he predicted inexpensive personal computers would have access to all the information in the Library of Congress by 2020. By mid-century, Kurzweil thinks that humans will be hardwired to their computers, and by the end of  the 21st century, neural mapping of the brain will allow humans to occupy a machine entity, effectively making immortality possible, as least for a privileged few.





In 2005, Ray Kurzweil followed up  with The Singularity is Near. 





In this latest book, Kurzweil predicts that humans will be walking around, permanently attached to their computers, and those individual computers will be connected to each other, creating in effect a remarkable singularity.  In nature, ants and bees already appear to be linked that way.  In Star Trek, the Borg assimilate all that come their way, turning individuals into a collective of emotionless, hyper-efficient drones. 

I find Kurzweil's prognostications more fascinating than compelling, though I respect him immensely for his amazing technical innovations and his remarkable vision of the future.

The place I can't get past in Kurzweil's vision is his idea of turning an individual personality with all its quirks, memories, prejudices, etc, into a neural-mapped facsimile that can be trans-placed into a machine.  If that is truly possible, the question becomes, who is me?  Am I, as a human individual, my body, my physical essence, or am I more like a swirl of personality that exists separate from my body? Kurzweil seems to be saying the latter. 

 Conscioussness, aka self-awareness,  is the great mystery of life.  It's the nut the greatest neuro-biologists have not come close to cracking.  It's seems to be an unknowable; perhaps the ultimate elusive, unknowable.  Consciousness is the grand chasm Kurzweil glosses over.  In order for his vision to become fact, the mystery of consciousness will have to be bridged. I don't think it will happen.  I don't believe future generations of humans need be concerned about the Borg coming along, announcing, 'Resistence is futile.' 

No one on Earth seems to have a clue about what consciousness is.  As long as that is so, immortality will be an idea that will never come.

If I had my way, I would issue a mandate to Ray Kurzweil and smart people like him. I would tell them to turn their focus to the very real challenges we urgently must deal with right now - at this moment.  I'm talking about human overpopulation, global climate change, the need to transition away from fossil forms of energy, the planet's rapidly dwindling natural resources, the terrible, irreplaceable loss of biodiversity.  We need brilliant human individuals like Ray Kurzweil to focus on and find solutions to those challenges.  If we can get past those vexing issues, then we can calmly and thoughtfully take up the question of neural mapping and immortality.





Monday, May 28, 2012

Van Nuys Airport

I did my single-engine flight training at Van Nuys Airport in Southern California's San Fernando Valley. At the time, it was the busiest non-commercial airport in the world. Two parallel runways,  full time control tower.  On top of that, it is directly under the final approach for the commercial jets arriving at Burbank airport, five miles further east. .  Learning to fly at Van Nuys was an intense experience because it was busy pretty much from dawn to dusk.

I soloed in a Cessna 150, but got many of my hours, up to and after I got my single-engine license, in a citabria taildragger.  I learned aerobatics and became proficient doing loops, aileron rolls, snap rolls, wingovers, and such. 


Bellanca Citabria


Citabria cockpit


It was a very basic brand of no flap, stick and rudder flying. It was a lot of fun.

The Citabria I flew most of the time had the call sign - 36336 - painted on its tail just behind a retro, Army Air Corps ensignia. 


Me with 36336

Once I was more or less competent at taildragger flying, I was eager to learn more.  The next step was an instrument rating and a commercial pilot's license. I'll save that story for another day.




Sunday, May 27, 2012

Wisdom

Such a potent word.  Wisdom is a noun about seriously considered choices that are about a greater good.  For wisdom to be a force for good, it must be appreciated and understood. Regrettably, these days,  wisdom is more difficult to recognize and embrace because there is so much background noise and information that has little or no value that competes for one's attention.  The media, instead of being a source of worthy information for the masses, has been co-opted by people whose main interest is in selling products or manipulating public perception. 

More than ever, we need citizens who are educated to filter out the chaff so they can find and latch on to the kind of thoroughly considered wisdom that is critical for processing information and making life affirming choices.  Sad to say, the evidence suggests the trend is decidedly in the opposite direction.


Sunday, May 20, 2012

A Quirky Professor Talks about Passion

Larry Smith is an Economics Professor at the Unversity of Waterloo in Canada. 

He has a funny and thoroughly engaging way of laying out the cold facts about success and failure in life.

Here is the link to Larry Smith's  TED presentation...

http://www.ted.com/talks/larry_smith_why_you_will_fail_to_have_a_great_career.html?utm_source=newsletter_weekly_2012-05-19&utm_campaign=newsletter_weekly&utm_medium=email



Saturday, May 19, 2012

Universal Reproductive Choice

There are more than seven billion - that's billion with a B - people on planet Earth.  That's nearly three times as many as were here when I arrived. Humans are placing unprecidented and unsustainable demands on the planet's ability to provide even the minimal food, shelter, and water needed for survival.

The smartest response is also the most urgently needed response to the battle for sustainability.  The smartest response is to provide reproductive choice to all the world's people by making contraception available to every person who chooses to use it. In fact, in 200 the United Nations of the world ratified such a declaration. They just haven't lived up with anywhere near the financial committment needed to get it done. We're talking about three billion diollars a year to assure that every woman in every country has reprodecutive choice and access to contraception.  That chump change trhese days.  It's the mlost cost effective investment we could make for the sake of our families and future generations. 

Please, let's not start lumping contraception in with abortion. Every abortion is a consequence of the lack of effective contraception. That's just a simple, unimpeachible fact.  Everywhere that contraception is readily available to those that want it, the rate of abortion and infant death drops precepitously.

There is no goal of greater importance than to bring human numbers in line with the planet's ability to provide sustainably, over the long term.

It's very cool to see the Gates Foundation stepping up in a big way to lead on this issue.  Bill and Melinda Gates are courageously committed to the goal of universal reproductive choice.  They have my respect and my great appreciation for their leadership.


Melinda and Bill Gates

The following link is to a TED presentation given by Melinda Gates, in which she passionately and very effectively calls for universal reproductive freedom, and access to contraception for all the world's people.

http://www.ted.com/talks/melinda_gates_let_s_put_birth_control_back_on_the_agenda.html?utm_source=newsletter_weekly_2012-05-19&utm_campaign=newsletter_weekly&utm_medium=email




Wednesday, May 16, 2012

Curse of the Rhinoceros

The world rhinoceros population has plummeted more than 90% in just the last four decades. Why? Because traditional Asian medicine considers ground up rhino horn a cure.  Even worse, young arab males in places like Yemen and Oman traditionally carry a dagger as part of their ceremonial dress. The highest prestige goes to those who have a dagger with a handle made of rhinoceros horn, and they have proven willing to pay a fortune to have one.  When humans are willing to pay any price for an ornament that makes them feel whole - even a few people - the pressure on the world's remaining rhinos is untenable. 


A horn from one of these hulking creatures can go for as much as a quarter million dollars on the black market.  It's no wonder rhinos are in such deep trouble. 


Tuesday, May 15, 2012

Paul Hawken

This man is one of the greatest influences in my life.   I read Paul Hawken's first book, The Next Economy when I was a kid. A few years later, it was The Ecology of Commerce.

Paul Hawken
His next book, co-authored with Amory Lovins and Hunter Lovins, was Natural Capitalism.   I was so taken with this book, this idea,  that I traveled to the Bay area across from San Francisco and met with Paul Hawken.  I was hoping to do a documentary series based on Natural Capitalism. Paul is a terrific human being and he was amenable to working with me. He said get Amory and Hunter on board and we'll do it. So, I traveled to Aspen and tried to make it happen. Unfortunately, it didn't work out, but I still believe Natural Capitalism is an extraordinarily important concept, that must be embraced by the human culture worldwide as part of a transition to a sustainable relationship with the biosphere.

Paul Hawken was a principle founder of The Natural Step, a very worthy non-profit focused on facilitating a new paradigm  in corporate behavior, based on a natural kind of capitalism.

More recently, Paul Hawken wrote a book titled, Blessed Unrest. in which he identfied a powerful movement around the world of organizations and individuals committed to social justice and restoring the environment. A worthy outgrowth of Blessed Unrest is Wiser Earth, a social network for sustainability that serves people around the world.  Wiser Earth is another effort that was started by Paul Hawken.

If I was the commissar,  loaded to the gills with chutzpah - you know, the kind of guy that runs North Korea - if I had that kind of power to put somebody in charge and fix the mess we've made of human civilization, the person I would pick is Paul Hawken.



Monday, May 14, 2012

Kindness - The Best Virtue

I remember hearing that simple aphorism when I was a young child. Kindness is the best virtue. Over and over, in so many ways, I heard it. I have never been close to being a paragon of virtue, but I do have kindness close to the core of my being.  It  makes me happy.  I feel good when I see another person act kindly. I feel even better when I've behaved that way myself.   That's not to say I always get things right, but I feel no arrogance or shame in saying,... no principle beyond kindness runs deeper in my soul.

Often, acts of kindness deliver no tangible reward. Unfortunately, that fact turns a minority of  hearts to stone.  I feel sad for people like that. They miss the fact that kindness is its own reward.

All good qualities spin off nicely when you start with genuine kindness. 

"My religion is very simple. My religion is kindness"
                                               Dalai Lama, Tibetan Spiritual Leader








Friday, May 11, 2012

PETA

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. aka PETA,  is an organization dedicated to protecting living creatures and assuring they are treated with the respect and dignity they deserve.  The folks at PETA are warriors. They don't play nice when dealing with people or businesses that abuse defenseless animals.  Ingrid Newkirk, the leader of PETA, is  very tough. She and her associates don't care if some people are offended by their often hard-hitting strategies for exposing the terrible way animals are mis-treated in our society.

Literally billions of chickens, hogs, and cattle are brought into the world annually, and treated as commodities rather living beings that are just as vulnerable to pain and stress as humans. These creatures are subjected to every kind of abuse as they are raised then slaughtered, with only one thing in mind, maximum profit.  PETA shines a harsh light on the unsavory and largely hidden cultural practices that turn living, feeling creatures into cheeseburgers and McNuggets. Regretably, in our society, children are raised to recognize the food they eat as nothing more than edible tidings one buys at the store. 

PETA is not the only non-profit fighting back against animal abuse, but they are definitely one of the most aggressive. They operate fearlessly.  I admire Ingrid Newkirk and her band of change agents.  They are a force to be reckoned with, and their cause could not be more noble and decent.

Here is a link to the PETA website...

http://www.peta.org/




Thursday, May 10, 2012

Biodiversity

Of all that is happenig to the Earth as a result of human overreach, the most troubling is the loss of biodiversity.  The term refers to the amazing range of organisms, plant and animal,  that live in the air, the water, and the soil around us. Life has evolved to fill every biological niche imagineable to weave a complex living tapestry that in the best cirsumstances finds its own marvelously functional balance.

We are now seeing our planet's living fabric unravel. Of all the things we are losing as a result of our own egregious hubris, biodiversity, more than any other, is the one that cannot be recovered. When holes are blown in the amazing tapestry of life,  the structure is permanently changed.  The loss of diversity leads to more homogeneity and less resiliency in the face of natural and manmade disaster. 

Pre-Industrial indigenous cultures, in almost every instance, have a reverence for nature  as a core value. We must embrace that way of thinking. We must nurture a renewed appreciation for our planet's living biology, before it is too late.

Here is the distinguished biologist, E.O. Wilson talking about biodiversity.

http://eowilsonfoundation.org/what-is-biodiversity





Tuesday, May 8, 2012

Ernest Callenbach's Final Message

The author of the seminal novel, EcotopiaErnest Callenbach,  passed away on April 16th of this year at the age of 83.   He spent the latter part of his life writing about living ecologically and sustainably.

After Ernest Callenbach passed away, a final legacy statement was found on his computer. What this personal epistle reflects is a man who was frustrated, even pessimistic about humanity's ability to rein in its hubris and take the necessary steps to avert the looming ecological meltdown.

He also highlighted the personal characteristics that he believed are critical to moving in a sustaiinable, environmentally sensitive direction for the future.  Callenbach focused on Hope, Mutual Support, Practical Skills, Organizing, and Learning to Live with the Inevitable Contradictions that will come with a future likely punctuated by less than perfect solutions.

The final words in Callenbach's final statement were, 

"There is beauty in weathered and unpainted wood, in orchards overgrown, even in abandoned cars being incorporated into the earth. Let us learn, like the Forest Service sometimes does, to put unwise or unneeded roads “to bed,” help a little in the healing of the natural contours, the re-vegetation by native plants. Let us embrace decay, for it is the source of all new life and growth."

Monday, May 7, 2012

The Hindenburg

Seventy-five years go today, the Hindenburg airship caught fire and burned in Lakehurst, New Jersey.  It was a horrific event,  The pride of nazi Germany, the Hindenburg was 804 feet long; the length of more than three 747 jumbo jets end to end. It was filled with seven million cubic feet of lighter-than-air hydrogen.





The HIndenburg and its sistership, the Graf Zeppelin, were the two largest manmade objects ever to achieve sustained flight. 

On March 6, 1937, the Hindenburg was landing at Lakehurst with 97 people aboard, including 36 passengers. A ground crew of more than 200  was working to bring the gigantic airship to a safe docking. Suddenly, a fire broke out in the airship's tail section.




In less than a minute, the entire airship was consumed by fire. Despite the overwhelming magnitude of the fire, only 37 people lost their lives. The lighter-than-air character of hydrogen caused the burning ship to settle slowly to the ground.

Until recently, the Hindenburg disaster was blamed on the hydrogen gas used to keep the airship buoyant and aloft.   After six decades, the truth was revealed by retired NASA engineer, Addison Bain. What he discovered was that the fabric covering  the Hindenburg was painted with a dopant that was remarkably similar to chemicals used in rocket fuel. Bain showed that the fire started when static electricity in the stmosphere ignited the Hindenburg's highly flammable fabric covering. 

No question, the hydrogen on board caught fire and burned, but its character caused the flames to be carried up and away from those fleeing the fire.

I have spent a good deal of my adult life making videos extolling the virtues of hydrogen as an energy carrier. The myth about the Hindenburg was an impediment to the public's ability to trust hydrogen as a means of delivering clean energy on demand.  Addison Bain's work thoroughly discredited that troubling myth.

When asked about his revelation about the Hindenburg, Addison Bain likes to say the moral of the story is  'Don't paint your airship with rocket fuel.'

The link below is to the original video of the Hindenburg disaster, shot in 1937...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F54rqDh2mWA










More Funny Pictures

Frivolous fun.  That's what I call this video...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QpXx8kXIAnw&feature=related


Sunday, May 6, 2012

Amory Lovins

One of the world's most important visionaries, Amory Lovins has been a great teacher for me.  His perspective is always thoroughly considered and very smart. As a public voice, he has no equal in the energy arena. I am fortunate to have interviewed him twice. The last time was at his home at the Rocky Mountain Institute in Snowmass, Colorado.  What comes across when you are with Amory is his exceptional analytical capability, his intellectual integrity, and his eloquence in expressing his ideas. 



Here is a link to Amory's most recent TED talk...A fifty year plan for energy.

http://www.ted.com/talks/amory_lovins_a_50_year_plan_for_energy.html?utm_source=newsletter_weekly_2012-05-02&utm_campaign=newsletter_weekly&utm_medium=email






Saturday, May 5, 2012

A People's History of the United States

The late historian and social activist, Howard Zinn wrote a splendid alternate history of America.  The  title is A People's History of the United States.  If you want to learn how this continent has evolved, since the arrival of the first Europeans, Zinn's book delivers the goods in compelling and unvarnished fashion. It's exposes the real forces that shaped the lives of everyday people. The first chapter is titled, 'Columbus, the Indians, and Human Progress'.  I didn't know the truth about Columbus' appearance in the East Indies in 1492 and later years.  They don't teach it in school.  I can tell you, it's a horror.  If you don't know the real story of what happened when the Europeans came to North America, you should read A People's History of the United States.




Here is a link to a webpage that is focused on this marvelous and very important book...

http://www.historyisaweapon.com/zinnapeopleshistory.html




Thursday, May 3, 2012

Jihad vs. McWorld

Benjamin Barber, a political science professor at Rutgers University wrote a book titled, Jihad vs. McWorld.  It helped me to understand forces at work in the world that I had not even considered.




This book contrasts the western, industrial worldview to lessor developed, substistence based cultures in other parts of the world.  It makes the case that the West has been exploiting primitive cultures since colonial expansion began in the 17th century.  The West consumes the mineral and biological wealth of lesser developed nations and in return exports to them some of the worst aspects of our own culture, like cigarettes, alcohol, and mind-numbing TV sitcoms.

It's no wonder that people in places like Africa and the Middle East envy us and want to live like us at the same time that they hate us and want to lash out at us.  We take what they have of value and give them back little that's useful in return.

Here is a link to the original Atlantic Magazine article,  Jihad vs. McWorld...

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1992/03/jihad-vs-mcworld/3882/




Wednesday, May 2, 2012

What Would Change if Corporate Personhood Were Abolished?




Taken from the Move to Amend webpage - www.movetoamend.org

April 10, 2011 - Women's International League for Peace and Freedom



If We the People are sovereign, we must control the government. Corporations are created and chartered by the government which, acting on behalf of We the People, gives corporations privileges, not rights. Neither the government, without the consent of the governed, nor corporations have the right to rule over the people. Since corporations have gained the legal status of persons, corporations have accumulated rights and become rulers — in other words, they can tell the government what to do.

Corporate legal personhood was wrongly given — not by We the People, but by nine Supreme Court judges in 1886. Corporate Personhood is bad for democracy, people, and the planet because it has allowed an artificial entity to legally relegate people to subhuman status. We the People have the sovereign right — indeed, duty — to abolish Corporate Personhood.

When Corporate Personhood is abolished, here are some actions We the People can take that are currently “beyond our authority”:

1. Prohibit all political activity by corporations — stop all corporate political donations and all corporate lobbying. These activities are currently legal because “corporate persons” are protected under the First Amendment.
2. Prevent corporate mergers and prohibit corporations from owning stock in other corporations. Regulation of these activities was overturned because “corporate persons” are protected under the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.
3. Inspect for environmental or health violations without a warrant or prior notice. The Fourth Amendment protects “corporate persons” from search without a warrant, protecting corporate polluters from concerned citizens and regulatory agencies.
4. Revoke corporate charters by popular referendum. This is now illegal because “corporate persons” are entitled to equal protection and due process under the Fourteenth Amendment.
5. Prohibit the erection of cell phone towers and chain stores from doing business in your town, county, and state. Civil rights legislation and the Fourteenth Amendment are used to ensure that “corporate persons” have an equal opportunity to be part of our communities.
6. Stop advertising for tobacco, guns, and other dangerous products. “Corporate persons” are entitled to free speech under the First Amendment, with “commercial speech” increasingly protected by the federal courts.
7. Levy differential taxes for corporations and restrict their size. The Fourteenth Amendment protects “corporate persons” from unfair discrimination (although they don’t complain when they get big tax breaks).
8. Require labeling of genetically modified foods. This is currently prevented because the First Amendment protects the right of “corporate persons” NOT to speak.
If Corporate Personhood were abolished, none of these things would change automatically. New laws could be written and old laws could be challenged in court to eliminate the kinds of protections that have enabled “corporate persons” to amass so much wealth and power.
Remember: judge-made law is not democracy! We the People have the power to change this.

This list was compiled by the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, a coalition partner with MoveToAmend.org.


Tuesday, May 1, 2012

Catching Thermals at Pearlblossom

I always wanted to be a pilot. From the time I was a young boy, I dreamed about flying fighter jets.  I got a rude awakening one day as a teenager, when a routine test revealed that I had a genetic anomaly known as red-green color blindness.  I also had to have corrective lenses in order to have 20/20 vision. So much for going beyond the speed of sound in an F-16. 

Some years later, when I was living in Southern California,  I went up to the high desert to a remote airstrip in a place called Pearblossom and trained as a glider pilot. Kind of cool, really. I'm in this gloder with no engine. We're attached by rope to an airplane that pulls us aloft and tows us to about 3,000 feet AGL (above ground level). Then we drop the tow line and we're free. No engine noise. Just the muffled rush of air flowing over the fuselage. 



Gravity sets the tone for the glider experience. As you move along, slowly, most of the time, because of gravity, you're losing altitude. As I recall, we generally got about fifteen minutes of flying in as we slowly descended to the point where we had to set up to land. When you're flying without power, you only get one chance to get the landing right. Fortunately, it's pretty easy most of the time. 


Under tow in the Blanik



Gliders aren't just about floating inevitably back to Earth. Sometimes, the opposite happens. True real joy comes when you catch something called a thermal.  In the high desert on a hot day, it happens a lot.  A thermal is a column of air that is rising upward, Usually this happens when air warmed by heat from the ground starts to rise.  This effect is especially strong over things like black asphalt parking lots.


Me in the Blanik


After finding a thermal, the idea is to circle in it and ride it like an elevator as high as you can go.  An instrument in the glider's cockpit tells you when you were in a thermal, or the opposite, in a column of sinking air. The atmosphere doesn't just float along placidly. On high thermal days, the sky can be a bouncing burble of turbulence.  The bumpy ride can be lots of fun. It can also make you airsick. 



There are times when  glider flying is awesome. I remember dropping the tow, finding a thermal, and quickly climbing up to  nearly13,000 feet  in altitude. That's pretty much as high as we went.  Any higher, and we would have needed supplimental oxygen. 

I got my license to fly gliders at Pearblossom.  It was great fun, but also expensive, and it was more than an hour's drive each way from home in the San Fernando Valley to the glider base. My flying ambition was hardly quenched. I lived only fifteen minutes from Van Nuys Airport. At that time, it was  the busiest, non-commercial airport in the world.  I figured if I could make it there as a pilot, I could make it anywhere.  I'll save my experience flying out of Van Nuys for another blog entry.