Watson 2: More on Machines That Think

Okay, you’ll recall that I’m in the middle of one of my infamous series—this one on the impact of our increasingly sophisticated machines on the white-collar professions. Last time I talked about Watson, the IBM computer that competed on Jeopardy a while back…competed, and won.

And, also last time, I argued that Watson and Watson-like devices will never threaten the human race. They are impressive, but they don’t genuinely think. They can and do sort a lot of data in a hurry, but, at least as yet, they can’t do what comes easily to any child, like being creative or innovative. They are not self-aware nor are they sentient, and so remain simply tools.

But, tools are mighty things in their own right. Last time I also argued that Watson-class systems and software will remake our economy and society. That’s because a single executive with access to such machines will be able to do the work of a hundred people. Which means that corporations, law firms, government agencies, universities, and even hospitals will employ far, far fewer MBAs, lawyers, administrators, specialists and other highly-trained white collar professionals.

Or, to put it all another way, we’re in for a cultural revolution. For the last century we have assumed that the way to wealth, well being, self-respect, status, and all the other aspects of a full life would come from being a “professional”—a doctor, a lawyer, a manager, and preferably a manager who did not soil his/her hands with anything vulgar like actually going into the field and touching things.

But, now…that’s not so true anymore. And our society is going to change to reflect with that.

How much will it change? Well, let me tell you a couple of stories. The first: there’s a man in my town who was a vice president at a large corporation. He had a seven figure salary, at least. He owns a huge house in an elite neighborhood, and sent his kids to private school and an Ivy League college. He was respected and admired, not to say envied by many of us in the area.

The kicker? Last year, his company was purchased by another. The new corporation then rationalized and downsized. It already had a marketing department. It didn’t need another one.

So, he was laid-off.

He got a very generous severance package. But, let’s face it, he’s probably never going to find a similar position. He’s middle aged. The corporate culture, like the corporation, into which he fit, is gone. The very industry in which he participated is changing beyond recognition. There is no room for him anymore.

Okay, now let me tell you my second story. It, too, is about a man in my town. But this is very different man. He will not in his entire life earn what the vice president was paid in a single year. He works down at the grocery store. He is a bagger. He suffers from a variety of physical problems, including violent and debilitating epileptic seizures. He has to wear a helmet at all times, so that if he falls his head will be protected.

His life is probably Spartan. Yet, he is intelligent. In fact, he is a talented potter. I see him and his wares at craft fairs around the area. I suspect he gets health insurance through the store, and then makes money on the side through his ceramics. His income may be low, but his wants are few.

Now, consider these two…

The second man is never out of work. If the store that employs him now should vanish, he could find another spot in an hour. Indeed, if he wished, he could go anywhere in the country and get a job.

The first man, though, the VP…he confronts the reality that he may never work again. He is too expensive, too specialized, and (though he is only in his 50s) too old for the corporations to hire again.

I submit that of these two men it is the second, the bagger, who is economically viable. The first man, the vice president, is not.

That is a fascinating and a terrifying thing.





We need to prepare for what is coming. We are going to have to come up with new ways for people to make their livings. And we’re going to have to learn to value different skills than we did before. We’ll have to figure out what we, as human beings, can offer the world that Watson and his children cannot.

And what’s that? What can we do that machines will never be able to do?

We can be inventive, empathetic and creative. We can have vision and purpose. We can understand the needs, wants, and motivations of our cohorts and customers. We can produce things which have never existed before.

We can be the anti-Watsons of the world.



But more on that, and how we’ll train our children for it, next time.

Onward and upward.


Copyright © 2011
Michael Jay Tucker

WWII

Another of my little video lectures for my class in basic American history.

cheers
mjt

Watson 1: Thinking About Machines That Think

Okay, a while back I posted a link to a story on the New York Times webpage, “Armies of Expensive Lawyers, Replaced by Cheaper Software,” by John Markoff. I said that it was very important.

You may have wondered why. I meant to explain myself quite a while back, but then, Gadhafi and Japan intruded. They were so much more important than any thoughts of mine.

But, now, I’ll get back to my point.

The software that is replacing legions of lawyers is a part of a much, much larger trend—that is, the development and application of technology which can largely automate certain aspects of white-collar work. The products mentioned in the piece allow one lawyer to do the work of many.

And it’s just beginning. Did you watch IBM’s Watson on Jeopardy? That machine’s performance was very much a sign of things to come.

Oh, don’t get me wrong. Watson isn’t going to take over the world. He’s harmless.

That’s because Watson isn’t really intelligent in a human sense. Watson’s showing was impressive. His ability to understand human speech was a technical triumph, and his capacity for seeking commonalities in huge collections of data was astonishing. But, I am not at all certain that he really understood his answers.

For instance, in one particularly amazing exercise (later highlighted on PBS’s NOVA), he was able to answer a question about Keanu Reeves and the movie, The Matrix. The way he did it was to identify “Reeves” as a noun and “movies” (or, actually, “flick”) as a category. He was then able to scan the Internet Movie Database in all its vastness for combinations of “Reeves” and some other qualifiers from the question.

As I say, impressive. But, ultimately, his answer wasn’t complete. I’m not sure he knows what a “movie” is. And I’m certain that his conception of a movie, should he have one, is not in any way human. He knows a “movie” is a “flick,” and that The Matrix is both of those…but he has no conception of what it’s like to see a film. He has no image of being in the warmth of a darkened theater, the air redolent with the scent of popcorn and butter, while your young son and his friends are in the row before yours, and you watch them tense and leap and cheer as villains are defeated and heroes triumph.

So that, I think, should be reassuring to anyone who fears that intelligent machines are taking over the world. Watson is amazing, but he cannot genuinely understand the human experience. It will be many long years before machines can do those things, if they ever do. (Sorry, gang, Skynet and Robby the Robot remain as distant as ever).

That’s the good news.

Now, the bad news. Watson and similar technology will engender a revolution in the workplace.

Let’s look at what Watson does really, really well. He—like all computers—excels at performing a number of small, tedious tasks over, and over, and over again. And, he is really good at shifting oceans of data in search of details and connections, no matter how trivial. And, finally, he obeys rules, inflexibly and tirelessly.

That was why he was so good at answering questions. He looked at millions upon millions of records in a thousand different databases, checking each and every one of them for certain qualities, and doing it all in nanoseconds. A human could never dream of doing the same, nor would any of us want to. It would be exhausting, and, bluntly, boring as hell.

But here’s where things get sticky. Consider what most high-powered, high-paying “professional” jobs entail. Sure, there are moments of insight and creation, but, let’s face it, most of what lawyers, business professionals, research-oriented academics, and even doctors do is pretty much what Watson does. They look at a lot of information and seek connections within an ocean of small, possibly relevant details. They do it according to a fairly limited set of rules. They do it as quickly as they can, and, if possible, do it 24/7 because that means they’re being more “productive.”

In other words, most of our white-collar professions, the jobs we value the most, are made up rote tasks.

And there’s the rub. Watson is far better at rote tasks than we can ever dream of being. His software and circuits are tireless. He is never bored or depressed. No operation is too mundane to excite him. No amount of data is overwhelming.

And better still, he is a perfect employee. He is without ego and need. He will happily work around the clock and back again. He is never on vacation. He never requires a sick day. He has no family to distract him from his tasks. He does not ask for a raise or a bonus. When the time comes to retire him, he demands no pension. You simply toss the body into a dumpster.

No, I’m not saying that Watson’s heirs will take over the corporation. Bill Gates and Tina Brown will not be replaced by a Terminator in the corner office. (At least not yet.) But the inescapable fact of the matter is that Mr. Gates and Ms. Brown will need fewer and fewer people to carry out their commands. A single executive, armed with one Watson, can do the work of a hundred MBAs.

And make no mistake, the world’s corporations know that. Watson is unique today, but he’ll be ubiquitous tomorrow. Even if he never sits on your desk like a PC or Mac, he’ll be available by subscription through the ‘Net. (And isn’t that what Google’s search engines are actually evolving toward?)

Which means that the white-collar professions (including the service professions which were supposed to save us in the postindustrial age) are going to employ fewer and fewer people. Just as the tractor removed the need for legions of field hands, and the industrial robot replaced a million men on assembly lines, so too will Watson and his children allow corporations, government agencies, and just about every other sort of organization to shed thousands of all too human professionals.

That, in turn, means that things are going to change. And big time.

But more about that next time.

Onward and upward.

Gadhafi...and Frantz Fanon

Right now, I’m reading Frantz Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth. If you don’t know who he was, don’t worry. A lot of people don’t anymore. I’m not sure that’s a good thing or a bad.

Anyway, Fanon was a French psychiatrist, philosopher, and revolutionary. He was of mixed race (he was born on Martinique) and had experienced racism at its worst. He then worked for a time in Algeria while France was fighting its war there. He became radically anti-colonialist, joined the Algerian nationalists, and, wrote a series of books advocating the violent overthrow of European imperialism. He died young (1961, still in his 30s), but his books lived after him. He was read all through Africa and the Arab world, and young radicals quoted him as often as they did Mao or Lenin.

When I was a boy, even we read him…Americans, I mean…partly because Sartre promoted him, and partly because the Viet Cong also read him.

But, now, all these years later, I look at his works and I wonder what he would have thought about what’s going on today in the Arab world. I wonder if it would have confused him. It certainly doesn’t fall into his neat models of revolutions. The Egyptians, the Tunisians, the Libyans are not his “wretched of the earth,” i.e, the oppressed “natives” exploited by imperialism and white settlers, but rather local militants at war with local tyrants.

I suspect that, in the end, the present age would have proved beyond him. He was, in spite of his antagonism toward West, very much part of the Western tradition. He was a romantic, far more at home with Goethe or the European revolutionaries of the 19th century than he was with the Third World peoples he idealized.

And I suspect, too, that his Romantic’s soul would have found today’s revolutions incomprehensible, perhaps even repellent, for there is little place within them for his cult of violence, his loathing of the West which had humiliated him, and his love of the “People”—always with that upper case “P,” always an abstraction, never quite subject to analysis.

Most of all, I think, he would have been pained by the fact that this revolution contains no utopia. The People Power activists hope for better things, but I believe they lack the illusion that their actions will create heaven on earth.

Which would have hurt him. Quite a lot. For, surely, nothing is more agonizing than to be reminded, once more, that the gates of paradise remain firmly shut, and cannot be forced…

Not even with National Consciousness and high explosives.

Gadhafi...and once more I make a guess

I keep watching the situation with Gadhafi. I’m no expert, obviously. And every time I’ve made a prediction about him for the last few weeks I’ve proved wrong. At least in the short run.

But because I’m not too bright and I don’t learn from my mistakes, I’m going to make another guess at his future. This particular stab in the dark is that he is, in the long run, doomed. I suspect that the Europeans and Americans will eventually take him out of the game. They’re in so deep now…they’ve already sent in the fighters and the missiles, that I don’t think they could get out again if Gadhafi were still on his throne.

For one thing, this is the chap who gave us Lockerbie Bombing. Can you imagine what he’d do if were back in full control of Libya, and lusting for a little revenge on the Western Nations who opposed him?

Gadhafi Again, and once more I am humbled

Once again I return to Gadhafi. And once more I am made humble.

A few weeks back I confidently predicted that he would fall. (At least I wasn’t alone in that. Half the world seems to have assumed it.)

But, now, he may be winning. Those Who Know Best in political science departments, embassies, and European capitals are beginning to rethink their projections. China and Iran breathe a little easier. People Power is not, after all, invincible. If you are willing to bomb and strafe, and use mercenaries, and leave bodies in the streets...you can remain on the throne, no matter how despised you may be.

So, I am humbled. My predictions are shown to be nonsense. My only defense is that it never occurred to me that the West would not support (at least passively) the rebellion. I never considered the vast resources that oil had made available to the Gadhafi family over the last few decades. It never occurred to me that they would use those resources to pay for an army of foreigners to slaughter their own people.

And, maybe most of all, I never dreamed that something like the Japanese earthquake and tsunami would occur. The world, you see, is finite and interlinked. When something of this magnitude occurs, we focus our attention on it. Which is good, and speaks well for our humanity…but it also means that other actors are now free to do as they like without scrutiny. The cat is away, and the rat, as they say, well, you finish the sentence.

So, it may be that I was abjectly wrong and Gadhafi will win his war on Libya.

Yet, I will argue still that, on one level, I will be vindicated, and Gadhafi’s triumph will, in fact, be pyrrhic.

You see, here’s the thing: he may “win,” but only through massacre. And he will have expended much in the way of time, effort, money, and political capital in his struggle. It could be that eventually another rebellion, another crisis, will strike, and this time he (or his heirs) may not have the wherewithal to respond.

More...he is now revealed.

He came to power, and kept it, as a Man Of The People. He was a populist revolutionary. Like Nasser, and Peron, he was the man of action who took power in the name of the common folk, who would protect them from foreign imperialists and homegrown elites. He was tolerated because of that. Yes, the world said, he was a little strange, a little bloody-minded, and he funded terrorists…but, well, his heart was in the right place.

But, now, that’s gone. The world sees him as he really is: a tyrant, ruling with naked force over a seething people who would destroy him if that were possible. And, if he is remembered at all by history, it will be as that, illegitimate and foul, united in spirit with the Greek colonels, and the Argentine Junta, and Mobutu with his private Zaire…like them ruling exclusively for personal gain, like them kleptocrats, like them brutal and crude, like them kept in place only by the gun, the bullet, and the whip.

And, in the long run, that perception will matter. It will matter more than bombs and mercenaries. It will matter more than his “victory,” should that occur.

For, you see, truth is invincible. And once unleashed, as it is now unleashed, it can be deadly. At least to those who live by falsehood.

And this, Gadhafi and his heirs will discover. This they will learn, too late, as it twists and disfigures them...as it destroys them… as truth, for them, proves more toxic than poison, more fatal than plague.

Progressivism

Just posted another of my history lectures to Youtube. Honestly not sure how much my class uses or wants them. But, what the heck? It keeps me off the streets.

We are so small...

And let us always keep in mind…always recall…our aims, our goals, our struggles for dominance…nation versus nation, faith against faith, man against man, or woman…

All these are revealed to be so small, so tiny, compared to the forces that may be unleashed upon us at any moment.

We must, therefore, remember to stand together.

For all too clearly, the alternative, is that we will not stand at all.

Prayer...

I have met believers whose prayer is, at the moment, “God grant me understanding of this tragedy, and the ability to accept Your works.”

I do not join the prayer. It isn’t that I doubt its wisdom. My motivation is that I am, alas, too human. I do not want to understand. I do not want to accept these works of the ineffable and the unfathomable.

I want instead to stare in horror and mute incomprehension. I am not ready for serenity. Sainthood elutes me. But, at least, a small thing: mere humanity is fallible, but it possesses the power of empathy. Some saints, it seems to me, do not.

memento

Like everyone else, I am watching the news as the full extent of the destruction becomes clear. As of this morning, they are saying that at least 10,000 people have died. At least. They still have not found four trains…four whole trains…of commuters that simply vanished.

It is the power of it all that amazes me. The sea, the earth, they reached out, scattered our works like litter, broke bodies, possessed no concept of remorse. It was force incarnate. Strength incarnate. As vast and merciless as ancient gods.

We must remember, now, why once we feared the storm, the sea, the mysteries of caverns and the dark.

Or, to put it all another way…

Memento mori.

Japan...where to go to help

Where to go to help…

Yahoo has done the world a great service by posting a list of agencies and organizations providing aid to the survivors. You can even donate online. If you haven’t already seen it, go here:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/yblog_newsroom/20110311/wl_yblog_newsroom/japan-earthquake-and-tsunami-how-to-help

Japan...

Oh, the horror of what has happened in Japan…

It reminds us. We think we rule the world. We humans…masters of the universe.

And, then, in a flash, the universe reminds us.

How delicate, how vulnerable, how easily crushed…we are.

Found Photo

The following is based on my piece, "Found Photo." It was published in the October 2009 issue of Shoots and Vines.

You may see the original here:

http://issuu.com/shootsandvines/docs/shootsandvines4

(dedicated to a friend and former student…the daughter whose devotion the parent did not merit.)

another story in print

Just had another story in print -- Heliogabalopolis, at 5923 Quarterly. You can see it here:

Heliogabalopolis

The shape of things to come

This is pretty important. More to come on this subject shortly....


Armies of Expensive Lawyers, Replaced by Cheaper Software

unlisting a video

Just "unlisted" one of my experimental videos from Youtube. It scared small children and large dogs.

Me, too, actually.

More on Gadhafi’s Children

I’m really quite fascinated by how “western” and familiar the Colonel’s children really are. They could show up at any party of Charlie Sheen’s and no one would notice the difference.

And it is amazing how common it is among the children of the mighty. Consider the sons of Kim Jong-il and Saddam Hussein. (One of the former, Kim Jong-nam, famously lost his father’s favor by sneaking into Japan to visit Tokyo Disneyland. They say that when he was stopped by the Japanese authorities, he was dressed in universal-world-kid fashion, with a gold chain and black slacks.)

One wonders if it isn’t inevitable. Given the temptations of the world, we succumb. Or, to put it another way, Baron Acton was right, but incomplete. Power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely.

But consumer goods… those too have power, and those too can be corrupting. And just as absolutely.

Libya 2: The Dictator’s Children, and What They Teach

(Now that I have confessed my own failures, let me turn to our national, American elites…)

I am going to argue that our American elites—the bankers, the lawyers, the Wall Streeters, all the rest—should be paying very close attention to Libya. Or, more particularly, to the Children of Colonel.

I confess, I knew almost nothing about Gadhafi’s children prior to the current revolution. I suspect that very few of us did. For a long while, they were sort of invisible. Oh, I’m sure Gadhafi’s sons, daughters, and potential heirs were known in governmental and diplomatic circles, but to the average American they were as little visible as ghosts in the noonday sun. One simply didn’t think of them.

But, they existed all the same. And now, we learn that they’ve been playboying it up around the world for decades. We get stories of champagne parties on Caribbean islands where big name entertainers are paid millions for a song or two. Like the sons of Kim Jong-il and Saddam Hussein, they have lived the lives of princes, consuming much, and producing little.

And the frightening thing is how familiar they seem. When you look at Gadhafi and his family, and you look past the trappings of revolution, the uniforms, the colorful “native” garb displayed at ceremonies, and all the rest of it…you find they look pretty much like our own privileged classes. You watch them on TV or the net, and they are in the same business suits and corporate casual attire. They have the same fashionable hair cuts. They drive the same expensive cars. They attend the same schools. They party on the same islands and sleep with (or try to, anyway) the same models and movie stars.

They are, we belatedly discover, simply one more variety of the global, international, jet-setting, rootless, world elite.

Something which, by the by, may explain much of how and why it was so easy for our leaders to forgive Gadhafi for so much, so quickly. It explains why a short few years after the Lockerbie massacre, Tony Blair stood smiling beside him, George W. Bush sent Condoleezza Rice to woo him, and our companies and corporations pressed in upon him almost hysterically, like Teenyboppers around a rock star.

It was because they recognized one of their own.

Which brings me to my point …to why I say our elites should be paying very close attention to international affairs.

Gadhafi is falling.

He may not be dead yet. In the end, he may manage to turn Tripoli into a kind of fortress city-state, separate from the rest of Libya. There, he and his heirs might hang on for a while yet.

But, in the end, he’s finished. The expense of holding on to power will vastly exceed his revenues. The very best he can hope for is to be a marginal figure, squatting Hitler-like in his bunker, and watching the empty hours pass.

Why do I stress that? Why do I say that our own privileged classes should note well his passing? Because they should keep in mind that if he can go, they can go.

Of course, no one in America is in Gadhafi’s league. No one has shot protestors recently, nor bombed and strafed innocent civilians. But, still our elites have not behaved well of late. They have done much to bankrupt the nation. They have outsourced and off-shored. They have been indifferent to the fate of their countrymen.

And if they keep on as they have done…laying off and cutting back, reducing men and women to drones and drudges, pretending that they do this only because of the inevitable laws of economics and that they have no choice in the matter … then, ultimately, they, too, will face consequences.

Like Gadhafi, they may survive. But they must ask themselves, now, before it is too late…will accounts received be equal to expenditures? Will it really be profitable to practice repression when a few compromises might defuse the ticking bomb?

Or, to put it another way, how comfortable are they, really…

In the bunker?

Libya 1: Gadhafi, Me, and My Fellow Liberals

This is the first of two related postings …

I have, like everyone else, been watching with bated breath while Libya fights its civil war. I, like most people, am of course rooting for the revolution. I hope that Gadhafi is gone before too much longer. (Although, alas, it is possible that he will endure for quite a while yet, hanging on, like a disease that cannot quite be cured, or a wound that will not heal.)

Yet, I must confess, Libya’s war has forced me to rethink some of my ideas. It has forced me to confront a few of my own failings…

Specifically, I have been watching while populist despots around the world—Fidel Castro, Hugo Chavez—have stepped up to the plate to defend their friend and contemporary, Gadhafi, that hero of the revolution, who blew up airplanes and machine gunned his own people.

Castro, Chavez, etc. have said they will not abandon him in his hour of need. When pressed, they trot out the old creaking clichés about American and Western imperialism. (Perhaps only Gadhafi’s delusion that his people “love” him, and that the revolt is fueled by drugs and Osama Bin Laden, exceeds the sheer lunacy Castro’s proclamation that the crisis was an American invention meant to prepare the way for a NATO invasion of the Middle East.)

Which means that they are, indeed, birds of a feather. Which means, in turn, that those of us who are or were liberals… like me…have to wonder a bit about our support for such figures. And let us face it. We did support them. In our heart of hearts we admired the man on the white horse who came in the name of The People and turned out all the rascals.

But what if the man on the horse himself proves a rascal? Or, worse, a monster? And The People hate him more than words can say? Are we not somewhat guilty of supporting evil?

I am, thus, made uncomfortable. I am, thus, humbled.

InvisibleIsland

This video experiment is based on a short piece of mine, "on an island otherwise invisible,” which appeared in Chapter Seven of The Anemone Sidecar. You may see the original here: http://ravennapress.com/anemonesidecar/chapters.html

I don't know why, but the video seems a little cropped to one side here on blogspot. To see it in full, you might want to go to full screen mode, or hop over to my Youtube account at

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1W80011fHKc

my various short fiction publications

I realized I ought to post links to some of short fiction publications.

here's one:

Ghost. Dog. Virgin.

http://751contents2.wordpress.com/issue-2/tucker/

I get nominated for an award...that I can't get

Interesting development.

As you know, I teach at Northeastern. Well, the other day, one of my students past or present (I don’t know which one), nominated me for the school’s Excellence in Teaching Award.

(Cheer!)

Except, it turns out that the award is only open to full time employees. I, like most of the people who now teach at Universities, am a part timer, or, as they say, “a member of adjunct staff.”

(Argh!)

So, if you’re reading this, and you’re the student who nominated me, thank you humongously.

If, however, you’re reading this, and you’re the official who aced me outta the running for being a part time employee…well, gee, golly..

Would you mind terribly if I admitted to hoping you get rectal Gonorrhea? In your left nostril?

Just saying…

Tiger Mothers...

I’ve not said anything yet about this new book on “tiger mothers.” I don’t plan to do so now, either.

Except for one little observation.

You know…and I know… everyone knows…

If the same book had been written not by a rich, successful, female Asian-American Yale Law professor but rather by a working class white woman in a trailer park…

She’d be in jail for child abuse before you could hum three verses of "Rednecks, White Socks, and Blue Ribbon Beer."

Happy Birthday to me

It was my birthday on Thursday. I’m now officially 54 years old.

And I still don’t know what I want to do when I grow up.

People Power in the Middle East...and the world

So, like everyone else in the known universe, I’ve been watching with real fascination while the peoples of the Middle East suddenly began turning out their dictators. First, it was Tunisia, then Egypt, and now half the nations of the Arab world (plus Iran!) are in the midst of People Power-style rebellions. Some will succeed, others will doubtlessly fail, but that the rebellions are happening at all is amazing.

Also, like everyone else, I’ve wondered what it all means. I’ve come up with a few random thoughts, which (out of the goodness of my heart) I’ll share with you…

1) People Power rocks. We’ve seen it, now, in the Philippines in '86, Eastern Europe '89, and Russia after that....now the Arab world. (Of course, Russia is now fairly authoritarian, but it is still a far cry from Stalin's USSR.)

So, could this be the beginning of an age of People Power? An age when states the world over will be shaped, re-shaped, and then re-re-shaped by exactly such manifestations of the popular will? If so, is it a new form of democracy? One in which the population really does "vote with its feet"?

So far, these have been genuine revolutions. Most revolutions aren't. Most of the time they are disguised coups in which one segment of the elite seizes power from another segment of the elite (even Lenin's revolution was just exactly that. A group of middle class and upper class intellectuals moved into a power vacuum).

But not so here. In Tunisia, in Egypt, and now in Libya, this really is the people in the streets. That suggests we are entering an age when ordinary folk the world over will increasingly be the significant political actors, at least in moments of crisis. Yes, the elites and their administrators will always run things, but they will have to do so with at least one eye on the public. In other words, a lot of places will be less like Greece under the colonels, and more like France after '68.

2) Our own elites need to be paying attention. That's not because I expect a People Power revolution here (although, if we don't get our jobless rate down below 10%, and soon, there may be one). But, even so, the Middle Eastern revolutions are important because they are going to reshape the way our "allies" and dependents will behave. We, or, rather our elites will have to learn to treat them with respect rather than as banana republics.

3) Also, sort of on the same note, there are potentially three big losers here. The first two are obvious, the US and Israel. The US will never have quite the same sort of leverage in the Middle East again. Israel is losing important (if usually covert) connections. But, in the long run, I don't think it will hurt the average American much. It might even improve relations with the Arab world once we're no longer backing tyrants. (Israel...I'm not so sure about.)

The third big loser might be unexpected: Iran. I am convinced that this is going to wound the dominant parties there rather badly.

Egypt's was a secular revolution, just as was the one in Tunisia. Which means that it is no longer just the Islamists who are fighting the system. In fact, the Islamists have failed time and time again to topple even one Arab government. Now, the secularists have brought down the biggest of all.

This is not to say that the Islamists couldn't seize power in Egypt. However, they have lost forever the image of being the only effective popular force in the Arab world.

5) When I say that the US could suffer because of the Revolution, I mean it. This might spell the end of the age of cheap (or, at least, less expensive) oil.

On the other hand, that might also mean that we finally have to sit down and come up with alternatives to the oil-economy. That wouldn’t be such a bad thing.

6) And finally…

Another reason our elites should be watching closely: the rich and powerful have acted in recent years as though they didn’t need to bother their pretty little heads about old fashioned things like nations. They were the new Global people who went wherever profits were highest and the hotels were most luxurious. If America got difficult, no problem, they'd just head for somewhere else -- which is why expats pack the beaches of Dubai, and companies like Halliburton fill its office towers.

But, guess what? Dubai is now shaking in its Guccis. Increasingly, there is no high ground, no favored place where the rich and powerful can go when things get hot elsewhere. Trouble will follow them. They can neither run nor hide.

If we're lucky, they'll be bright enough to see that.

Civil War

And another of the video lectures I'm giving my US History class.

thoughts on motion comics

Something else on my mind. I've recently run across the concept of the "motion comic." This is a new thing. It is like a comic, but electronic. It includes graphics, but also some "limited" animation, plus voice and music.

The big names, as you would expect, in motion comics are the major comic book companies -- Marvel for example. Though, I suppose that could change. New players always coming into the world.

What confuses me, though, is that motion comics are being sold as a completely new medium -- not cartoons, not graphic novels, but something alien and new,

Yet, when I look at them (and there are a bunch on the web), I'm struck by the fact that their "limited" animation looks pretty unlimited to me. Yes, they don't move all the time, but they boast at least as much animation as a lot of the TV cartoons I watched in my long lost boyhood. They have at least as much some of the Hanna-Barbera productions (take a look at Space Ghost) and a 'ell of a lot more than, say, "Space Angel."

If you haven't seen Space Angel, by the way, it is worth a glance, if only for the sheer weirdness of it (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Angelf). The Angel is sort of an interstellar policeman and secret agent who's always rushing about saving the universe.

A product of Cambria Productions, the show was a mix of cartooning and live action. So, for example, rather than drawing a moving mouth when a character spoke, the animators filmed an actor's lips and then pasted those on the face of the cartoon.

It was truly bizarre, and in retrospect, one of the creepier things I've ever watched on TV. Yet, I'm embarrassed to say I was a big fan at the time. Of course, I was four years old, but, still…

Anyway, my point is that I wonder if motion comics are really a separate art form, or merely the first step toward animation. Meaning that, eventually, the graphic novel and the comic, per se, will ultimately merge completely with full motion cartoons.


motion comics at Marvel

Space Angel on Youtube

"The Gathering Storm"

The Mexican-American War

lectures for classes

Hello, Everyone,

Haven't posted much recently. Usual reason. Life is ...complicated. We run and run and run and, like Alice's Queen, just stay in the same spot.

But, if you're interested at all, I'm still posting my class lectures to youtube. I'll try to post a couple of them.

cheers
mjt

Karl Marx (oh, hell)

On China

Another Note To the Rich and Powerful

Note to the Rich and Powerful

Two questions for the Rich and the Powerful. Plus a comment.

The comment: in case you’ve missed it, there’s a new genre out there…in film, and TV, and books. I call it “Tales of Off-Shoring Blues.”

These are stories of ordinary, average Americans who find themselves without jobs, without hope, and without dignity when suddenly some CEO or corporate executive decides that it will increase his or her bonus by a few cents more if they move the factory or the office to India, or China, or Mexico.

Right now, for instance, there’s a new movie in the theaters. It’s called “Company Men.” It’s all about a bunch of guys who get downsized, and then we watch as they wither, as their self-esteem collapses, their sense of themselves of as men declines, and they struggle to find a place in a new and alien world which holds them in contempt.

It’s supposed to be quite good. The critics all love it. I’m told the men in the story do come to terms with their plights. Or at least some of them do. Sort of. But I don’t think I’ll be able to go see it. It would cut a little close to the bone for me. I’m employed (if somewhat underemployed) at the moment, but I’ve been there. And I know a lot of other people who are there still.

What interests me about this new genre, though, is that it succeeds because it taps into something deep and powerful in the culture. It resonates with people because they know it is saying something true.

Specifically, they know that they are being hurt. They know that they are being stripped of their dignity. They know that their increased rates of suicide and heart attack are not accidental. They know that, in some place, even in middle class suburbs, children are starting to go hungry.

Or, to put it another way, they know they are being murdered. Not with guns and knives. Not quickly. But murdered all the same. Slowly. With a thousand, thousand humiliations and deprivations.

So, now my two questions to the Rich and Powerful.

First, if you continue your present course of action…if you keep downsizing and off-shoring and not making any effort to create jobs for Americans…if you keep letting them die…

What do you think will happen when Americans then quite rationally decide that it is either you or them? That they cannot survive if you continue to rule?

And, second, if that should occur…

How long do you think you can run? How well do you think you can hide?

Just asking.

Giffords2.mov

This Xcargo is a video.

Material from Politico.com, The Boston Globe, the New York Times, the Washington Post and other news sources may be found on the websites of the respective publishers. It is used here solely for illustrative purposes and is reproduced under the doctrine of fair use.

Once more, violence

And while we're on the subject...another New York Times article. This one headlined, "Rep. Giffords Critical After Ariz. Attack."

By this time, you know all the details so I won't go into them. But, what interests me most about this story is that Giffords had been subject to considerable abuse from the Right. If people in the Tea Party and people in GOP didn't exactly call for her to die, they didn't exactly go out of their way to suggest otherwise. They branded her a traitor, and a villain, and a conspirator, and more...

And, as one would expect, eventually, a lunatic took them seriously. And used a gun.

Now, of course, the GOP and others will say, Oh, My, How Terrible. And Extend their Deepest Sympathies. And maybe suggest that the shooter was, in fact, driven mad by growing up in a liberal America.

But, in the end, in the end...

You cannot call for violence, and then act shocked and surprised when it happens.



Rep. Giffords Critical After Ariz. Attack.

And we decline still further...

Fascinating article at New York Times which asks the question "Corporate Profits Are Booming? Why aren't jobs?"

Answer: because it is not in the short term interest of certain members of our national elite to let them bloom.

But the kicker is "short term." In the long...well, that's another story entirely.

The line in this article which says it best, I think, comes near the end. It reads, "Some economists, conservative and liberal, divine forbidding portents in all of this. If profits and employment no longer rise and fall together, they worry, then an already strained social compact will grow yet more frayed."

Who can doubt that they will be frayed, indeed?

Link to story is below:

Profits Are Booming. Why Aren't Jobs?

Schools, and automated CEOs

Everyone says our schools are broken.

And everyone seems to have a fix to flog—more money or less, crush teachers unions, merit pay, charter schools, and on, and on, and on. A hundred different solutions battle it out. Some, like the libertarian proposals to abolish the Department of Ed, will probably always remain in the realm of fantasy. Others actually have money behind them. Thus, the Republicans had their "No Child Left Behind." The Democrats have their "Race to the Top."

In theory, all these are very different. However, at least as I read the various proposals, they actually have a lot in common. They hold as an unstated but dominant belief that schools should prepare children to be white-collar employees of some large business entity.

But is that wise?

Let's think about how hiring has changed over time. In the 1950s, the norm was the massive industrial corporation with large numbers of workers on an assembly line and a smaller but still respectable number of white-collar employees in "the office."

Except that's not the way it stayed. All businesses seek to reduce their operating costs. One way to do that is to cut staff. So, in the second half of the twentieth century and the first years of this, American corporations did just that. They automated. Or, they went offshore. And we had a wave of blue-collar layoffs.

But, we reassured ourselves, there'd always be white-collar jobs. Surely, corporations would always hire managers, clerical workers, and accountants.

Except they didn't. Starting in the 1970s, corporate America famously flattened and mid-level staffers became an endangered species. Today we've got far fewer white-collar employees, and those who remain are working much harder.

And now… it's Upper Management's turn.

I predict we'll see the same process there. Some of the functions of top management are going to go offshore, or, believe it or not, be automated. If you don't think that's possible, then consider the following: the majority of trades on Wall Street today are carried out not by brokers, but by computers. It's called "Algorithmic Trading."

I'm not saying that we'll have a business version of the Terminator taking over the world. Corporations will always be run by human beings. But, it is also true that the natural evolution of corporations is away from employees. It is always in their interest to hire as few people as possible.

If so, then teaching our children to be cubicle denizens is idiotic. It is more likely that they will find jobs in small businesses and/or be self-employed. Which means we need to be training young people to be small-scale entrepreneurs. They don't need MBAs. They need basic business skills, like bookkeeping and salesmanship.

And we ought to re-value the trades. Let's face it, right now, it is lot easier for young people to make money repairing cars or fixing plumbing than it is for them to get entry-level positions in big companies.

Finally, maybe most of all, we ought to promote creativity in students—a proven business advantage, and something that will be difficult or impossible to automate or outsource any time soon.

And to make this happen, our schools are going to have to change—root and branch.

But we're going to have to change with them. We've got some major values to shift. We've got to do some re-defining of the word "success." We're going to have to get used to the idea that being a solvent plumber is better than being a bankrupt white-collar worker.

Until we do that, education in America will continue to be a problem. All the reforms proposed by Right, Left, and Center will fall short.

And our Race to the Top? All too likely a mad dash, confused and stumbling, without a goal, without a map…

Into the abyss.


*

Special Note: I'm off to New Mexico in a couple of days. So, I won't be posting an Xcargo next week or the week after. But, in the meanwhile, have a great holiday, and I'll see you in January 2011.

Twenty-eleven? Oy. How did that happen? Wasn't it just yesterday that 1975 was impossibly far away in the future?

Ah well…

Onward and upward.

Thoughts on Wikileaks and Evil Empires

So I see that Wikileaks is now under attack from many different vectors. PayPal (among others) is now refusing to work with the group. Meanwhile, its founder, Julian Assange, has arrested for rape.

Not good news for Wikileaks. But, come, let us confess, if that's the worse that happens to the organization and its members, then they will be almost impossibly lucky. The simple fact of the matter is that they have seriously angered governments the world over. Not just the US, but everyone from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe is gunning for them.

If anything, this is a lesson in the realities of great power politics. If Wikileaks had confined itself to embarrassing the United States, and a few other liberal democracies, the group would have been relatively safe. Oh, there is a certain danger in tweeking the nose of Uncle Sam, but you can usually get away with it. Americans (ditto Brits, Scandinavians, Germans, the Swiss, and so on) hate it when you say bad things about them, but they'll tolerate it because of their own traditions of fair play and free speech.

Besides, they are subject to much scrutiny from the world. If they should do anything… shall we say?... untoward, then the globe fairly quickly spots the "made in USA" label on the side of the box. Thus, even if they wanted to take serious action against you, they may think twice just because of the PR angle. (The Bay of Pigs was bad enough the first time around.)

This is not true, however, for most of the rest of the world. Many is the government for whom toleration is a quaint concept, and who can operate much further out of the limelight. And Wikileaks.well, Wikileaks has published American diplomatic cables which contain material dangerous to dozens of different states.

The moral of the story, of course, is that if you are going to take on an Evil Empire, pick one that's well-behaved. The Sheep you can stuff in a wolf's skin, and proclaim a public enemy, is so much easier to deal with than the real thing.

Note to Liberals and the Left

I've been reading a number of articles lately about the growth of anti-immigrant sentiment …not just in the USA, but around the world. From Switzerland to Japan, there are calls for "them" to be sent back where they came from. All too often there's a touch of racism (or a truckload of it) in the appeals.

Note, this is all happening when the economy is down. And here's the dirty secret of human nature: Times are good, we are open and accepting. Times are bad: the recruiting office of the Waffen-SS is around the corner.

So, note to Liberals and Others who'd like to make the world a better place. Want people to be less bigoted? Enrich them.

The task of the Left, everywhere, and, indeed of everyone of good will, is to create jobs, reduce prices, and give people a sense of purpose, dignity, and wellbeing.

From that, all else will follow.

Sarah on the Tube

I saw the other day that Sarah Palin's reality TV show has been losing viewership in great hordes. People are just not watching it any more.

Well, I'm not terribly fond of Palin. But, discounting that, I wonder if her program wasn't doomed from the beginning.

Reality TV is an odd entity. It seems to be most successful when it shows us people doing things of which we disapprove, but which we secretly wish we could do...like have sex in exotic places, or spend vast amounts of money on things that we don't need, or live the lives of celebs.

And, well, Palin and her crew didn't do any of those things. Or, if they did, they did so off camera.

So, how can the network fix the situation? They can recast. Replace the boring real people with actors. Best bet to play Sarah Palin? Pam Anderson. No connection with anything genuine, of course. But envision her shooting wolves in full "Barbed Wire" get-up.

Smash ratings. Guaranteed.



Source: http://www.thedailybeast.com/cheat-sheet/item/sarah-palins-ratings-plummet/television

We need the Terminator in politics...

I read the other day that one of the Democratic party strategists is suggesting that his party take more of a lead from the GOP. They need, he suggests, to be tougher and far less moral.

Not a bad idea. But, really, I'm not sure the Dems can manage it. I mean, who do they have that really match the malice and cunning of, say, a Karl Rove?

Which I suggest they need to bring in outside talent. Someone, say, like Terminator. But with more metal and fewer morals.

After that, it might almost be something like a fair fight.

whimper, whine, pout

I'm online and reading an article about how one of the big newspapers has hired a famed blogger to write for it.

Sigh. Grumble. Kvetch.

I've been blogging for years. In fact, I had an ezine (an emailed publication) before there was a Web. My explosive-cargo or Xcargo (now explosive-cargo.blogspot.com has been around in one form or another since 1990.

But, does anyone hire ME to pontificate at major newspapers? Noooooo.

Of course, one might suggest that a slight total lack of talent may play some small role in all this. But we shan't listen to such base canards. Nor malevolent mallards. No. That would be foul. Or fowl. Six of one.

So, instead, I shall simply sit here and whimper. And pout. I do that quite well. It's when my little lower lip trembles that I'm particularly heart-breaking.

Does A Bear....?

Saw the article the other day by Dave Johnson on how the very wealthy caused our current, massive deficit and by extension our current Recession and joblessness. His argument, which is buttressed by an amazing number of statistics, is that the mega-rich (what I call the 1%) forced the government to stop taxing them at anything like reasonable levels.

But, they and everyone else (but mostly them) continued to demand social services. The result was a government that supported itself by borrowing, hoping against hope that when the bill came due there would be money from somewhere to pay it off..

So, now that day is here, but our fairy godmother has declined to show up with magic wand and debit card.

The result? The 1%ers continue to insist on No New Taxes…for them. Meaning the cost of their decades of irresponsibility is shifted to us, the middle class. We pay for it with joblessness, higher prices, and the general decline in our standard of living.

Did the mega-rich cause the deficit?

Well, let's see, they forced the government to stop taxing them at anything like reasonable levels, but then demanded that the government provide them with social services, and so Washington had to borrow like mad, and, now, here we are, with the wolf at the door…

So, did they cause the deficit?

Does a bear sh— …er…seek a moment of solitary contemplation in the woods?





Source: huffingtonpost.com/dave-johnson/did-the-rich-cause-the-de_b_786062.html?ir=Business

Compassionate Conservatism

I saw recently that the Republicans have at least temporarily blocked legislation that would have provided hot meals to thousands of needy children. It was to have been part of a program that had the support of, among other people, Michelle Obama.

In a word, cripes. Why doesn't the GOP just hang out a big sign that reads, "Hi, We hate widows, orphans, and small fuzzy puppies" and be done with it?

Ah well. It's a PR disaster but at least it's in time for Christmas. Should make a great factoid for all those op-ed writers doing stories about the season …and Scrooge.

Here's to Tiny Tim, y'all. And God bless us, every one.


source: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20101201/ap_on_bi_ge/us_congress_school_nutrition

Like a monk at a strip club

So, like everyone else in the known universe, I'm watching the Wikileaks saga. I'm not quite sure how I feel about it all, but...

It sure would be easier to sympathize with Mr. Assange if he just didn't look so damn pleased with himself.

The Great Wall Of Mexico...

So, in light of Thanksgiving, I guess I'll mention one thing I'm thankful for. Specifically, I'm thankful that my family and I are not that bad off. We're employed. Maybe not as well paid as we'd like. But, we've got jobs. And that's not the case for a lot of folks these days.

And, while I'm on that topic, I'd like to ask you a question. Ready? Great. Here it comes:

Do you know anyone…ANYONE at all…who has lost their job because an illegal immigrant was willing to do it cheaper?

Need to think about it a little? Fine. Take your time. One. Two. Three. Okay…pencils down. Do not turn the page.

You haven't, have you? Or, at least, I'd bet that’s the case. I'd bet you don't know a single person who's lost or didn't get a job because some guy named Juan did the frogman routine across the Rio Grande and offered to take that chemical engineering spot (or whatever) for less than minimum wage.

In fact, I'll go further. I'll bet that you have never even MET someone who has lost a job to an illegal immigrant. Ever. I certainly haven't.

But, would you like to know who I HAVE met?

I've met lots, and Lots, and LOTS of people who have lost their jobs because of out-sourcing and off-shoring. I've met them by the score. Men and women whose jobs up and walked away because some MBA in a distant office decided that things could be done cheaper, without regulation, in some place far removed from American shores. I've met them among my friends. Among my former co-workers. Among my students (I teach adult ed). Among my family.

And I'm pretty sure you've met people like that, too. You may be one of them.

But, have you noticed? No one talks about that. Or, at least, very few people in power do.

Oh, we hear an awful lot about those nasty, nasty illegal immigrants. We're going to hear more about them, now that the House is in the hands of its new owners. And we'll probably see new laws written to keep "them" out. Who knows? Maybe we'll even build that Great Wall of Mexico that people like Jan Brewer keep talking about. Maybe it will have fences and guard towers and, someday, land mines. Maybe it will be the great construction project of the century…the one and only public works project that Tea Partiers and Libertarians will support.

But what we won't hear from the new, improved House of Representatives is much talk about the real causes of unemployment—like the fact that American jobs are flowing overseas at a record rate. On that, somehow, our masters and commanders will remain silent.

Why? To answer that, you have to ask another question—i.e., who is to blame for the situation? For the out-sourcing, and off-shoring, and "right-sizing," and all the other reassuring euphemisms for lay-offs and poverty? Who profited from it?

Well, certain members of the American elite, that's who. The people whose profits soared when production was taken offshore to places where wages were tiny and unions non-existent. The corporate managers whose "compensation packages" improved with every layoff and firing. The Wall Street wonders whose portfolios grew yet more morbidly obese each time a plant closed or a city died.

Or, to put it another way, those who benefit from our looming national bankruptcy are the very people who poured vast sums of money into the last election. And who now own the Republicans, manipulate Tea Party activists, have the majority in the House, may soon dominate the Senate, and are already planning to put another George W. into the White House in 2012. (Surely they have already selected the next empty-headed photogenic figure that they shall wheel onstage and automate as our Commander and Chief.)

Is it any wonder that such people are so vocal about "Illegal Immigrants?" It is the classic magician's technique of misdirection. We focus on a few Latinos, and miss the vastly greater harm that our own national elites have inflected upon us. We concentrate obsessively on the paper cuts of illegal immigration, and so don't notice the fact that we are being slowly eviscerated.

And you have to admire their technique. What they are doing is terrible. It may, someday, be classified as treason. But, they do it so very, very well.

But, of course, that brings up yet another question…something else to ponder.

To wit: that Wall? The Great Wall of Mexico that Jan Brewer et al would build? Is it to keep "them" out?

Or us in?


Onward and upward.

Introducing Brother Bacon

Well, today, I'm going to be posting a number of little odds and ends. They're not quite Depth Charges ("the lowest form of explosive-cargo") but they're close. So, let's call them "Brother Bacon's Squibs And Crackers."

(You'll recall that the thirteenth century monk, Roger Bacon, included in his notes one of the first known recipes for gunpowder.)

So, here we go…

*

I saw in the news this morning that Hillary Clinton has ruled out a run for president.

Sad, but inevitable. She would have made a excellent president. But, circumstances ruled against her. Indeed, her greatness is best evidenced by her principled decision NOT to run in 2010. Doing so would have vastly hurt her party.

So, as some let praise her. As some people claimed that her husband was the first "African-American President," so let us remark that she was the first female president of the nation...

Only, like Tilden a century ago, she was too patriotic to take the White House, knowing it would harm the nation.

*

So, I read in the news that Donald Trump has said that Sarah Palin is a lightweight, that Obama isn't any better, and he's considering running for president in 2012.

Yes. You read that right. Donald ("You're Fired") Trump. For president. That is, of the United States. Running against Sarah ("Moose Killer") Palin.

For some strange reason I'm reminded of a poem. Something about Tweedledum and Tweedledee.

Can't imagine why that image is coming to mind.

Must be 'cause I'm just so dang literary.

"Exclusive: Donald Trump Says Presidential Run 'Could be Fun,' Decision by June" at blogs.abcnews.com/george/2010/11/trump-presidential-run-could-be-fun-decision-by-june.html.

*

Oh, here's another one that's fun.

I've read on the U.S. News and World Report site that Wall Streeters, Investment Bankers, CEOs and big corporate business types are running really scared …because of the election.

No kidding.

You see, here's the thing. The top 1% of the American population which owns pretty everything any more spent a whole heck of a lot of money (much of it secretly) to put "fiscal conservatives," Tea Partiers, Libertarians, Ayn Randers, and Laissez Fairies into office. They've done everything they can to cripple the Obama administration short of violence (and I'm not sure that they didn't consider going beyond even that. Remember all the Gun-totting crackpots that showed up in protest marches right after he was elected?)

So, now, they've got what they want…

Except, they're also starting to realize the price of that. They have basically sold themselves to people who, as God is their witness, want to reduce Washington to a broad spot in the road and "free the economy."

Ah, but as the 1%-ers know perfectly well, a completely unregulated economy, without any management what so ever, leads pretty inevitably to things like hyperinflation, Recessions, Depressions, market crashes, violence in the street and…well, all manner of stuff that can just spoil your whole day. Or several days. Maybe your life.

So, folks, you who looted the public coffers, who out-sourced and downsized and deindustrialized and put into joblessness…this is the government you wanted.

I wonder, will you survive it?

Give me your guess.


Source: 4 Fresh Fears About Washington Wrecking the Economy, finance.yahoo.com/news/4-Fresh-Fears-About-usnews-2195640786.html?x=0

*

What's the line in the Bible? Sow the wind?

But, then, 1%ers probably don't read the Bible. Has all those depressing bits. About eyes of needles. And people who just won't fit through 'em.

*

So I see that now President Obama is now being criticized by the Right for writing a children's book that doesn't say Sitting Bull was a terrorist.

For the Right to say such a thing is ridiculous, of course. But, come, let us confess. It was inevitable. The state of political discourse in this country has become so vicious that Obama could not praise motherhood and Apple pie without Fox News announcing that he had a Oedipal Fruit Fetish.


nation.foxnews.com/media/2010/11/15/obama-praises-indian-chief-who-killed-us-general

aolnews.com/politics/article/fox-news-headline-on-president-obama-kids-book-ignites-sitting-bull-controversy/19720203?icid=maing|main5


*

I say a lot of hard things about the 1%ers, and I mean them.

But, I'm not terribly fond of socialism either. I think it tends to come in two forms: Swedish and Soviet.

The first kind is run by bureaucrats, technocrats, social engineers, and other folks who are just so gawdamn smug your wanna strangle 'em. The second kind, at least in its early stages, is run by intellectuals, would-be intellectuals, wanna be intellectuals, and other beard and sandal-types of the sort that show up in college towns and pontificates a lot.

The worst part about the first sort of socialism is that it is damn dull. But you don't have to worry about dullness when you get the other sort. Its leaders tend to be people like Lenin, and Trotsky, and Mao—-people full of energy, with fascinating intellects and enormous charisma.

Though, they do have the unfortunate habit of thinking of other people as abstractions ("The People," "The Workers," "The Proletariat"). And then, once they're power, millions of such two-legged abstract concepts…die, in the gulag, or the camps, or in the Revolution.

So, here's my advice. If you find yourself in a society that seems to be moving toward the first sort of socialism, invest in Prozac.

If you find yourself in the second…keep shooting until you empty the clip. Then, use the rifle butt to club the body until it stops twitching.

*

Onward and upward.






Copyright © Michael Jay Tucker 2010

A sincere apology to obscenely rich people

Today I need to apologize. I need to humbly...oh, so humbly...beg for forgiveness. I mean, beg. Because, you see, I've said something really foolish and utterly wrong.

Here it is: as you know, I've been writing a lot about how America is now basically owned by and governed for about 2% of the population, the "mega-rich" who got Ronald Reagan & Co. to transfer vast amounts of the nation's wealth from us to them.

Well, I'm wrong.

I've looked at the numbers and discovered that it isn't 2%. It is more like 1%.

That's right. About 1% of Americans own pretty much everything. (Here's a site you can go to see some of the numbers in question http://www.stateofworkingamerica.org/. And while you're cursing... I mean, cruising, look at this column by Nicholas Kristof in the New York Times, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/18/opinion/18kristof.html?_r=1&nl=todaysheadlines&emc=a212).

So, to the top 1%...the mega-bankers and mega-lawyers and mega-CEOs who have vacuumed every penny out of the public's pocket...the Wall Street Brokers who "broke" the economy and then used bail-out money to give themselves obscene bonuses...the Off-Shorers and Out-Sourcers who plunged us into a "post-industrial, service-based economy" of mass unemployment and national decline...

I'm sorry.

I'm terribly, terribly sorry I grossly underestimated just how rare and strange you are.

Can you ever forgive me?

In Alaska

And lastly for the day...

The news is that Lisa Murkowski has won the Alaska Senatorial race as a write-in candidate.

To which I say, Oh, Lord, Thank You, Jesus.

Conservative, Liberal, GOP, or Dem-donkey...you gotta admit that the idea of Joe ("Nuke A News-Reporter For Christ") Miller in the Senate was just about as chilling and slightly less fun than an ice water enema...

...with a fire hose.




Onward and upward.

More on the 2%

While we're at it, here's another fun little news item.

You know how the Fed is bending over backwards (and then some) to make cheap money available to big corporations so that they'll finally start spending and investing and hiring and maybe get Americans back to work?

Well, according to a recent article on Bloomberg, the aforesaid big corporations and are (wanna guess? Huh? Wanna?) investing it outside of the US. The cash is flowing in a major gauge pipe right overseas.

Right.

Is it just me? Or does that feel a little like somebody just shoved a knife between our shoulder blades?

But, of course, it is a well-made knife, with an excellent bone handle, and a blade of the finest Swedish steel.

Nothing but the very best for the 2%.


The article: Not Made in America Prevails as Fed's `Cheap Money' Finds Its Way Overseas

To Top 2%

I've heard it said that most of the nation's resources are now controlled by about 2% of the population. (Yes, the middle class, as you knew it, is gone. We're all peons, now.)

Well, here's an interesting an article by Robert Scheer on someone in that top 2%, Sandy Weill, former head of Citigroup and the man credited with arranging the legislation that deregulated the banking industry....and got us into our present kettle of fish.

So, if you're wondering what to expect from our new masters, read the piece to which I've linked below. It's all about Mr. Weill's nifty new mansion, purchased while people all over the country are being kicked out of their homes by robo-signers.

Makes me feel just all warm and fuzzy.

Or maybe that's nausea. Hard to tell. Well, six of one.


Here's the piece: The Man Who Shattered Our Economy

Scary...and yet reassuring

Here's an interesting article.

Bad news...this is scary.

Good news...well, at least we know we're not the only nation in the world with its share of Fred Phelpses and Terry Joneses.

Everyone's got a heaping helping of crackpots. Reassuring really. Proves that God's generosity knows no national boundaries.

Fate of Mideast talks in hands of polarizing rabbi (http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20101116/ap_on_re_mi_ea/ml_israel_palestinians)

hit counter

Added a hit counter to my blog. Kinda disconcerting, though. I've run the Blog for years, and the mailing list before it even longer. But, since I've just started recording hits, it looks like my page has been viewed only 90 times.

Sigh.

Please visit and make me feel better ;-)

mjt

.3%

More thoughts on energy ....


I want to draw your attention to an advertisement.

It's not a bad ad. It's not misleading. I'm not about to launch off into another tedious tirade about Lies-From-Madison-Avenue.

But it is an ad that concerns me all the same.

You've probably seen it. It's been in a lot of the glossy print publications. At the top there is a large photo of a number of women—I believe they may be of the Tuareg people, but I'm not sure. Below that there is, on the left, the name of the sponsoring company, and, on the right, the following: "0.3% of Saharan solar energy could power Europe."

And that's what worries me.

Here's why. It lends itself to a kind of thinking that I encounter a lot among our decision-making elites. Specifically, it suggests that the energy crisis is a simple problem with a simple cure. All we have to do is [insert preferred solution here] and everything will be fine.

But there's the rub. That's not true.

Let's just take this ad. Again, I have no quarrel with the company that ran it. But that "0.3 %" which seems so quick and easy, is troubling.

There are a lot of unanswered questions behind that little number three. First, three tenths of a percent of the "solar energy" which falls on the Sahara might indeed power all of Europe, but can we catch it? What sort of collectors are we talking about? Are these solar cells? Mirrors focusing light on a boiler? Either way, what sort of efficiency is involved? Are the solar cells capable of turning 100% of all the energy that falls on into usable electricity? Last time I checked, the best of them does about 10%. That's good, but it isn't 100%.

But, let's say for the sake of argument that we can capture .3% of all the light that falls in the Sahara. Or that .3% is all we need even given the efficiencies of current technologies. If so, what does that mean in terms of construction? Do we put flat panel collectors or mirrors over .3% of the whole desert? The Sahara is about 3.3 million square miles. My math isn't good, but I believe that translates out to being about ten thousand square miles. For comparison, Rhode Island is about a thousand square miles.

Okay, let's say we are really going to cover all that territory with mirrors or panels. How are we going to pay for it? And, once we've done it, how are we going to keep them upright in a sandstorm? How are we going to maintain them? How are we going to keep them clean? Each time they get dusty, after all, their efficiency drops. Are we going to employ millions of Berbers to dash about the desert with squeegees?

Let's say we've got those problems licked. There are still lots of others to worry about—like, how do we store the energy we get? How do we transmit it? How do we protect the installations from sabotage? Particularly given the political instability of the region?

And on, and on, and on.

Now, this is not to say that these problems couldn't be dealt with. In fact, I notice that European scientists have indeed looked at all the issues and pronounced a Saharan solar facility "the size of Wales" quite feasible.

But it won't be a quick fix or a cheap one. And the same is true for any solution to the energy crisis that we can conceive. Clean nukes, controlled fusion, wind turbines, tidal power, rooftop solar…whatever.

But no one in power seems to be saying that. What we hear instead is that oh-so-seductive "all we have to do is X…" and everything will be just ducky.

Which is scary.

We are going to have to deal with the energy crisis. It isn't going to be easy. It is going to cost us big money. It is going to take a long time. Our standard of living is going to decline until we're finished. But it has to be done…for our children's sake, if not our own.

And having our leaders pretend otherwise is dangerous if only because it lulls us into the belief that we can delay action until some convenient time in the future.

But there will never be a convenient time.

So, let us act. Let us demand that our leaders confront reality and be honest about it. Let them know that they must speak the hard truth, or we will find someone who can.

We cannot survive anything else. We cannot again descend, again, into the delusions…the pleasant but deadly dreams…of a .3% solution.

Cruises and Bruises

So I've been watching the news story about the Carnival cruise ship that ended up floating helplessly for three days (see below). Believe it or not, I have a slight connection to this story.

Years ago, my parents took my family and me on a Carnival cruise. They wanted to give us something we would always remember.

We did. The cruise turned out to be a disaster. The food was bland, the staff unfriendly, the toilets worked but not well, the entertainment was crude, and there was very little to do other than smoke, drink, or gamble...none of which we did.

You couldn't even see the ocean. The ship was set up to focus all your attention on the casino. There were translucent plastic shields between the decks and the outside. That meant there was no place where you could sit and simply watch the waves.

My poor parents were aghast. And, I must confess, I've never had warm feelings about Carnival again.

*

Source: Cruise passengers endured stench, cold food

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20101112/ap_on_re_us/us_cruise_ship_fire

robots on film

A friend of mine saw my recent "rant" 'bout industrial robots and sent me a link to a great video on Brazilian robots.

This is what we could, and should be doing, y'all.

mjt


http://apps.detnews.com/apps/multimedia/player/index.php?id=1189

The Dagger Quick

Hello, Everyone,

Time out from my usual blogging to push a friend of a friend's book. The Dagger Quick by Brian Eames is just about to be published by Simon & Schuster/Paula Wiseman Books. You can see it here: http://www.amazon.com/Dagger-Quick-Brian-Eames/dp/1442423110/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1289078510&sr=1-1

This is a very cool young person's novel by a very talented writer. It's only available for pre-order as of this date, but if you're looking for a gift for a son, daughter, nephew, niece, whatever, then I'd say that you'd be hard pressed to go wrong with this one.

cheers
mjt

A few words about robots

Hi, Everyone,

Well, I'm going to post here another one of the oped pieces I'm submitting to newspapers around the country. It's kind of a fool's errand 'cause, let's face it, newspapers are in pretty deep trouble at the moment. They've got way more pages than they've got ad revenue to support them, so farming out a few hundred words to a non-staffer (even if the aforesaid non-staffer is giving his stuff away for free) is a non-starter.

Still, because I'm stubborn, and not too damn bright, I keep trying.

This week I'm showing you something that I've been sending around only to newspapers in New England. That's cause I've given it a New England slant. But, frankly, that's a bit of a scam. What I say about New England here is true for the whole country.

Here's my schitick: I'm convinced that America is in serious trouble. I mean, BIG time trouble. I think that if we don't do something, and something dramatic, then we're in for very hard times.

I think MOST of our problems (but not all) stem from the economy. I think that we have basically lost the capacity to pay for our own needs.

Why? Two major reasons. Energy is number one. So long as we keep importing oil, and so long as oil keeps going up in price, everything gets a little more expensive every day. We are, in effect, slowly bleeding to death.

But problem number two, every bit as bad, is "de-industrialization"—that is, the process by which our economic elites moved all our industrial production overseas, and left the rest of us to rot.

I'm very serious about this. I am convinced that de-industrialization was the worst thing to happen to us as a society since the 1930s. Oh, we've had foreign wars that have been more destructive in terms of loss of life. But, if we restrict ourselves to just internal developments, then the loss of our industrial capacity (and the pay checks that went with it) is pretty darn awful. I'd say that in recent history, only the Great Depression can match it. And before that? Perhaps the Civil War.

Oh, and by the way, if things keep going as they are now, I'm not sure that the last Civil War will be the only one we'll ever fight.

So, I'm writing articles and oped pieces in which I try to encourage people to do what I think needs to be done to save the country. I know that sounds alarmist and fantastically arrogant, but…I'm saying it all the same.

And in particular I'm saying that we need to develop new, cheap forms of energy. I don't know what those will be (I'm a big fan of fusion myself, but I could be wrong), but whatever it is, we need them, and we need them very soon.

The other thing I think we need to do is re-industrialize. We need to build factories again.

Yes, I know that sounds insane. And I know also that when and if we build them, they probably won't employ as many people as the old, smokestack industries did. In fact, I suspect they won't employ many people at all. They'll be automated. We'll invest heavily in industrial robots.

But even so, automated industries will give us something to stand on. They'll provide the foundation on which the rest of our so-called "post-industrial" businesses will base themselves.

At least that's what I believe. For more of my logic and my arguments, I offer the piece I've pasted below.

Once you've read it, if you like, tell me what you think.

mjt




[head] The New New England and the Post-Post-Industrial Economy

[by] Michael Jay Tucker



I'm about to say something crazy.

Here it comes: New England can and should lead the nation in re-industrialization. Moreover, we should automate and invest massively in robots.

I warned you it would sound crazy. But, bear with me.

Everybody knows that America was once the leading industrial nation of the globe. Everybody also knows that it isn't any more. It was cheaper and easier to offshore. Which was fine because we thought we'd still have employment via service-based businesses. We thought everyone could be a white-collar worker in the post-industrial economy.

Except…now, it looks like we're in the post-post-industrial economy. Service businesses aren't hiring much and those that are aren't paying particularly well. Worse, as anyone who has ever called tech support can testify, we've found that service-based employment can itself be offshored.

So what do we do about it?

Answer: Re-industrialize. We build factories again…automated factories…using as many industrial robots as possible.

Why? First, because the technology is now available. Where, before, there was something a little bit science fiction about it, now we know how to automate plants to the nth degree. Japan has been using industrial robots to compensate for its aging workforce for decades.

Second, robots provide the ultimate in low-cost labor. They don't take raises and they don't want benefits. They would allow the nation to successfully compete with any labor force on earth, no matter how underpaid.

Third, because every time a robot manufactures something here, that's an item that's not manufactured overseas. So, the money required to produce it stays here, in the United States. That's a little mercantilist, yes, but, at the moment, we need every dime we can get.

Fourth, because while it is true that automated factories do not hire many people, they do hire some. More, they provide a foundation for the rest of the economy. They become or create clients for service-based businesses—everything from PR firms to design shops.

And, finally, now is the perfect time for it. A generation ago, mass automation would have been impossible. Unions would have quite rightly objected. But, now, most of our factories are already gone. The people who worked in them are already unemployed. We have nothing left to lose.

So, the time is now for America to become, again, a manufacturing nation.

And New England is where it should start. We already have expertise in the profitable production of robots, as witness I-Robot, Kiva Systems, and dozen recent startups in the field. And, we have the brainpower necessary. There are robotics labs in schools from Maine to Rhode Island. Given all of that, New England can and should take the lead.

Besides, it's fitting. New England was where industrialization began in America. And it was here, too, where America first de-industrialized, as mills fled to cheaper climes.

Now New England should guide the nation back…to industry, and to prosperity.

We've got a tradition to uphold.



#



Author's Bio



Michael Jay Tucker has been writing about science and technology since the early 1980s. He was on the staffs of such magazines as Mini-Micro Systems, Computerworld, UnixWorld, SunExpert, and Datamation. Today, he teaches English and History at Northeastern and Cambridge College.



Copyright © 2010 Michael Jay Tucker

The Tea Party's Gift

America owes a great debt to the Tea Party, conservatives, and the Right in general. They have given us the greatest gift of all— i.e., laughter.

Let us confess it…let us say it loud…they are greatest comedians of the century. Slapstick, low comic, pratfall, Three-Stooges-style, pie-in-the-face buffoons admittedly…. but comedians all the same.

Consider, just this week we had Joe Miller, that clown prince of Alaska, the man who's got a million of 'em, hold a public forum which he then announced was private and so his security detail jumped a local reporter and held him against his will, even though that was about as illegal as peddling methamphetamine lollipops and hash brownies down at your local PTA bake sale.

Then we get full-color pix and vids on youtube of the whole skit. And, by golly, there's Miller's goon-squad looking like a bunch of stubble-headed Matrix dwellers from Planet Zork. I mean, the costuming alone was brilliant!

But that wasn't all. Next we learn that the Death Star Storm-troopers are from a private security firm, Drop Zone Security Services, which…it turns out…doesn't have a license.

Ah, but hold on, that's not the punch line. 'Cause then we discover Drop Zone is owned by William F. Fulton, who also happens to be a local commander of the Alaska Citizens Militia, an ultra-right strong arm group. And, oh, by the way, the Alaska Citizens Militia's founder is Norm Olson, who previously founded the Michigan Militia…which, in turn, hosted a meeting which happened to be attended by Terry Nichols, the guy who helped the late Timothy McVeigh kill all those people in the Oklahoma City bombing.

Amazing! You'd need half a dozen sit-coms plus several years' worth of soap operas to come up with a plot this convoluted. Yet the Right invents it all without even breaking a sweat. I stand in awe.

But, mind you, we're not talking any one hit wonder. These people manage this kind of comedy consistently. Every day! Why, think about Christine O'Donnell, Delaware's Tea Party/Republican/Nutcase candidate for Senate. Consider how she proclaimed in the middle of a debate, "Where in the Constitution is separation of church and state?" And, oh! The way she said it! With that utterly adorable little look of absolute bewilderment! You could almost think she really meant it. Not even the great female comedians of the twentieth century, like Marilyn Monroe in Some Like It Hot, did it any better.

And there are so many others—Sharon Angle and her "Dearborn's Dominated By Muslims" shtick (which I think is every bit as good as Jeff Foxworthy's "You May Be A Redneck"), and Jan Brewer with her sure-fire "Illegal Aliens Are Going To Get Your Mama."

So, all in all, I adore these people. They just keep getting funnier every time. But, I do have a small critique. I think their acts could use just a little tuning.

So, here's my message to 'em: Guys and Gals on the Right…you know I love your work…but pull back, just a little, from complete craziness. Because, if you don't, well, you come off as a total maniac. And that's not funny.

In fact, it's damn close to terrifying.

What Isn't Being Said

Hello, Everyone,

I'm shopping a shorter version of the material below to op-ed pages at various newspapers. So far, no one has taken the bait. But, you never can tell…

In the meantime, here it is, submitted for your approval.



[head] What isn't being said

By Michael Jay Tucker





It is what they don't say that freaks me out.

I mean the debate in Washington (and everywhere else) on the current Recession. Like you, and probably like everyone else in America, I've been watching while Right, Left, and Center battle about it. It's rather awe-inspiring, really. Economists and scholars and pundits and people who look really, really good on Fox TV are slugging it out big time, and all of knows exactly What Is To Be Done.

But, have you noticed? They all disagree with one another, very loudly. Some of them invoke Ayn Rand, others Baron Keynes, but no matter what their ideological orientation, they are united on a single premise. To wit, they hold the Recession is (for lack of a better word) a managerial issue. Their underlying assumption is that the crisis was brought about by unwise policies on the part of someone in office—the Republicans under George W. Bush by failing to properly police Wall Street, or the Democrats under Barack Obama through deficit spending (which seems somewhat improbable, given that Recession began before Obama's election, but that's beside the point).

But, this is followed by an equally fascinating corollary—i.e., that having been created by one set of policies, the Recession can be made to go away again by the imposition of another, wiser set. Once we reduce taxes or increase them, introduce more regulation or less of it, things will "get back to normal."

In other words, everyone in the debate—everyone!—seems to hold that our current crisis is subject to bureaucratic pressure, and that the proper group of experts could end it by changing the regulatory environment of the economy.

That's comforting, because it seems to give us the power over our situation. We just keep trying to various solutions on offer—Republic, Democratic, Tea Party, Socialist Workers, whoever—until one of them works. And surely, they can't ALL be wrong. Can they?

But…what if they are? All wrong, that is.

What if the Recession has nothing to do with policy? What if it in fact reflects material, structural problems in the nation as whole? And nothing we can do—no matter who's Chairman of the Fed, no matter how much we fiddle with capital gains or impose new regulations on Wall Street—is going to change things? What if, in short, we're screwed?

For instance, let's talk about energy costs. There are other problems as well (like de-industrialization) but, for the moment, let's just stick with energy.

It doesn't take a genius to notice that energy costs have been going up consistently for the last half century.

Which is a problem, because our society is based on fuel. Consider food. Any time you eat, you eat fossil fuels. You were able to ease your hunger because our society has the oil, gas, coal, or whatever to power the pumps that irrigate our fields, the tractors that harvest our crops, the trucks and trains that carry that food to our cities, and the freezers and stoves that we use to preserve and cook it. Oh, and by the way, once we've eaten it, we need still more pumps, and still more energy, to carry it all away again…or else we drown in our own sewage.

Which means, in turn, that each time energy costs go gone up, so too does the cost of everything we use that energy to produce, refine, transport, or prepare. Which is pretty much everything. And, so, every time energy costs go up, we get a little poorer.

And, it has only just begun. You can argue about whether we've reached "peak oil production," but what is undeniably true is that we've pumped out all the oil that was easy, safe, and convenient to get. From now on, we're going to get our fuels from places that are hard to reach, politically unstable, or just flat out dangerous. Oil is going to go get more expensive, and everything else is too.

And there's absolutely nothing we can do about it.

Not…that is… until we can push energy prices back down.

I'm not sure how we're going to do that. Maybe we'll invent a 100% efficient solar cell. Maybe we'll get clean nukes. Maybe we'll finally get fusion power up and running. But, until we do, things are going to be hard. We will only know the sort of prosperity we knew in the 1950s and the 1960s when the cost of energy is, again, measured in fractions of cents, rather than multiples of dollars.

Which is what scares me. Nothing I've said here is a secret. We all know this.

But, have you heard anyone say it? I mean, among the People Who Know Best? Our Leaders? Our elites? Have you heard any of them say, "Here's the grim reality: if we are to survive, we must invest in alternatives to fossil fuels. It is going to take time and money. We will have to develop basic technologies and build considerable infrastructure. We will solve the problem eventually, but it may be twenty years before we even start to see results, and over that period there were be far fewer resources to do other things. It isn't going to be pleasant, but that's the choice we've got."

No. We haven't heard them because they haven't said it.

I certainly haven't heard them say this. And that scares me to death. Because someone…some man or woman among them…needs to say these things to us, and needs to say them soon.

The alternative, and I fear it is all too likely, is that we awaken one morning to discover that the sun, in fact, has not arisen. And we are condemned, forever, to that famous darkling plain, wondering only which ignorant army will claim us next.







Copyright © Michael Jay Tucker 2010

Out Of My League

You may have noticed that I've not commented on Christine O'Donnell, the Republican –qua-Tea Party– qua anti-masturbation-qua-witchcraft candidate for Senate from Delaware.

Perhaps you've wondered why I've been so silent.

Well, because…blush, stammer…I'm outclassed. She's already so weird that, um, well, there's no way I can make fun of her. She's already delivered, and exceeded, any punch line I could invent.

Sigh.

Guess she's just WAY outta my league.


*

But I am kinda mad at her. I mean, she's just soooo easy.

I wanna snarl at her something like, "For Christ's sake, woman. Stop handing it out for free. At least make Jon Steward work a little bit for his money."

*

Darker thoughts.

I also haven't commented on her, and a lot of other stuff, partly because everyone else already had. She'd been all over the blogsphere, and more important, she'd been all over the mass media.

Which meant that by the time I could get something written and posted, the rest of the world would have moved on to some other concern. Anything I said would already be old news.

But, increasingly, that's true for all of us. In the age of the Internet and cable TV, ordinary people (that would be me) can no longer really comment on major events or issues. By the time we become aware of them, the video pundits, the sponsored bloggers, the Think Tank Op-Eders, and Others Who Know Best have already swarmed over it, stripped it to the bone, digested it, and excreted their so opinions thoroughly that we don't have a ghost of a chance.

Any ideas we might had have on our own…well…sorry. Individual opinion is obsolete.

*

This shouldn't be news to any of us.

When the net first came out, it took the media by surprise, and a number of writers, bloggers, filmmakers, etc. could slip into the gap. But, now, the networks have gotten their Internet act together and moved in. For any ordinary blogger, like thee and me, there are a hundred others with high profile sites supported by established media outlets and content producers.

Thus the reality of American discourse. Our elites happily give us free speech…because, of course, they know no one will listen.

finished draft of three chapter

Just finished the next-last-draft (probably) of the New Mexico section. It is now three chapters and about 90 pages long.

Argh.

I'll try to post some of it later for comments.