Sure, the web is a place where ideas percolate, people network, knowledge is shared, blah blah blah. Is there a single site where all that really happens? Where you don't have to sift through layers of intro and setup -- where it's all just idea after idea, and a place for your feedback?
There is. Whynot.net. And, I guess, halfbakery has been around doing sort of the same thing.
It seems, though, that you could pick up the Tuesday Times and a half-dozen or so innovative new ideas on science and technology. Maybe it's too slow to read a 2000 word article, sift through the descriptions and whatnot... So this site just has one-line ideas: "Have the third brake light indicate degree of deceleration" or "put a GPS-stamp in a camera" (both ideas which have been pursued elsewhere...).
Is it progress towards Open Source Everywhere (there's a manifesto out there you can link to)? Or is it more, I suspect, the slimming down of extraneous content, down to the meat. My thesis abstract is boiled down from 200 pages to a few paragraphs, essentially with a footnote saying "I've got some proof." Those interested can read further... Those ready to comment and opine and adapt, however, can go right ahead on whynot.net.
The Politics of Laughing
It struck me when SNL started making fun of the "let inspections work" movement... And sure, they make fun of Bush, and Daily show is a solid left wing comedy factory, but the right making people laugh too, and not just by their actions. Some call it South Park Republicans, or attribute it to the Howard Stern following...
The bottom line is, it's become a lot easier to make fun of liberal excess, especially as they get shrill in their hatred of Bush. Also, as they get shrill, it becomes harder for them to laugh about stuff. Dark sarcasm doesn't count; too bitter. Maybe it's a function of being out of power (the right was pretty shrill during the clinton years), getting angry and desparate about the direction of things.
But the left could laugh in the past, even when they were out of power (the Nixon and Reagan years). But today, I'm hearing mostly venom. A party that can't laugh can't bring in new members.
Here's what I said in the old journal:
5/21 Is it me or is liberal humor just not funny? The most cutting edge comics -- Tom D'Bug, Waylay, and others, are just seeming mean-spirited and nihilistic.
And the left was supposed to be funny -- subversive, anti-establishment, etc. So why is Naomi Wolf blocking the Ali G segment?
Moreover, SNL seems to have switched -- with pieces ridiculing the UN as self-absorbed obstructionists, and Powell as a Cassandra.
But right-wingers aren’t funny either, they just don’t have a sophisticated sense of humor. They laugh at stooges, broad caricatures. No subtlety.
The bottom line is, it's become a lot easier to make fun of liberal excess, especially as they get shrill in their hatred of Bush. Also, as they get shrill, it becomes harder for them to laugh about stuff. Dark sarcasm doesn't count; too bitter. Maybe it's a function of being out of power (the right was pretty shrill during the clinton years), getting angry and desparate about the direction of things.
But the left could laugh in the past, even when they were out of power (the Nixon and Reagan years). But today, I'm hearing mostly venom. A party that can't laugh can't bring in new members.
Here's what I said in the old journal:
5/21 Is it me or is liberal humor just not funny? The most cutting edge comics -- Tom D'Bug, Waylay, and others, are just seeming mean-spirited and nihilistic.
And the left was supposed to be funny -- subversive, anti-establishment, etc. So why is Naomi Wolf blocking the Ali G segment?
Moreover, SNL seems to have switched -- with pieces ridiculing the UN as self-absorbed obstructionists, and Powell as a Cassandra.
But right-wingers aren’t funny either, they just don’t have a sophisticated sense of humor. They laugh at stooges, broad caricatures. No subtlety.
The Tryptophan Meme
Tryptophan gets a ton of off-hand mentions around Thanksgiving. Like the Y2K bug and several other memes, has filtered its way down to the masses over the last 10 years. "turkey has tryptophan, makes you sleepy. FX network has Awesome-o-phan!" I'm not making that up, I saw it on TV. Maybe people are interested in hearing how Tryptophan gets broken down and how the pineal gland makes melatonin, seratonin, etc. I don't know much about it myself, yet...
This is tailor-made for your MD/PhD background, the only time I would consider tacking it onto my pen name. I hope you write it up and submit this around thanksgiving 2004, along with some election jokes. If you go on to explain melatonin, the link, etc, say "The literature on this topic is somewhat dry, not unlike many turkeys today will be."Bring a clip to your interviews.
This is tailor-made for your MD/PhD background, the only time I would consider tacking it onto my pen name. I hope you write it up and submit this around thanksgiving 2004, along with some election jokes. If you go on to explain melatonin, the link, etc, say "The literature on this topic is somewhat dry, not unlike many turkeys today will be."Bring a clip to your interviews.
Strategery
The Atlantic Monthly is reporting that 37% of all political news coverage is about strategy, while only 25% is about actual policy details (one assumes the rest of the political news is about polls...)
I suspect this is even more biased towards strategy than the numbers indicate, since stories about policy often include coverage of how it "plays" among constituents, who's lining up to oppose it, etc.
Some of this is because, for the audience, policy is dry and measuring the impact of various proposals in real terms is difficult and contentious. Furthermore, political strategy is fun and engrossing in a gossipy sort of way. But it's also easier for the journalists to report on intangibles like "the mood of the electorate" and "responding to attacks" and "appealing to the middle" and whatnot. Actually a lot of these pieces report as fact that which can only be described as opinions on motivation. Nowhere in the language of an FCC ruling is a phrase like "we're caving to powerful communications lobbies" and yet, it is often reported as such. Strategy and maneuvering and style trumping substance.
This fits with that princeton economist who said this is the first White House he's seen that has no independent policy team -- instead, policy is guided by politics at every level. Ideas aren't proposed by wonks and economists only to be massaged and spun by Rove -- instead, they are proposed by pundits based on what will win, wedge, and energize the base. Only later do the policy wonks chime in about feasibility, worth, usefulness, etc.
I suspect this is even more biased towards strategy than the numbers indicate, since stories about policy often include coverage of how it "plays" among constituents, who's lining up to oppose it, etc.
Some of this is because, for the audience, policy is dry and measuring the impact of various proposals in real terms is difficult and contentious. Furthermore, political strategy is fun and engrossing in a gossipy sort of way. But it's also easier for the journalists to report on intangibles like "the mood of the electorate" and "responding to attacks" and "appealing to the middle" and whatnot. Actually a lot of these pieces report as fact that which can only be described as opinions on motivation. Nowhere in the language of an FCC ruling is a phrase like "we're caving to powerful communications lobbies" and yet, it is often reported as such. Strategy and maneuvering and style trumping substance.
This fits with that princeton economist who said this is the first White House he's seen that has no independent policy team -- instead, policy is guided by politics at every level. Ideas aren't proposed by wonks and economists only to be massaged and spun by Rove -- instead, they are proposed by pundits based on what will win, wedge, and energize the base. Only later do the policy wonks chime in about feasibility, worth, usefulness, etc.
Coin the Phrase
The Atlantic runs a contest every few months called Word Fugitives -- find a phrase that fits the given scenario. This summer it was: "what do you call it when you're driving on the highway and you come across a police car and a bunch of slow cars clustered, afraid to pass?"
I came up with "cruiser control" which was apparently quite a popular entry. The winner was "Halo effect" because everyone's acting like angels, but also surrounding the cop. Whatever. I like mine better.
But more importantly, I generated "Cruiser control" by listing all the synonyms and slang and associated words for cops, and for driving, and for traffic, and just mixed and matched. It kind of worked.
Let's do the same for location-based cell-phone ads! I could coin the next "spam".
Here are the categories:
JUNK MAIL: spam, bulk, mass-market, targeted ads, demographics, ad blitz, campaign, commercial, unsolicited, privacy, brand, image, telemarket, promo
GPS: global positioning, satellite, location-based, geocache, triangulation, search, track, stalk, signal, message, orbit, earth, home in
Mobile phones: cell, talk, charge, minutes, flip phone, dial, text, call, connect, busy signal, ring, tones, answer, message, voicemail, hangup, memo
my predictable, uncreative picks include "location-spam" or "GP-Spam" or "telespam"
my early favorites include "hard cell" and "stalkmail" and, though this makes almost no sense, "promoto"
will keep mulling...
I came up with "cruiser control" which was apparently quite a popular entry. The winner was "Halo effect" because everyone's acting like angels, but also surrounding the cop. Whatever. I like mine better.
But more importantly, I generated "Cruiser control" by listing all the synonyms and slang and associated words for cops, and for driving, and for traffic, and just mixed and matched. It kind of worked.
Let's do the same for location-based cell-phone ads! I could coin the next "spam".
Here are the categories:
JUNK MAIL: spam, bulk, mass-market, targeted ads, demographics, ad blitz, campaign, commercial, unsolicited, privacy, brand, image, telemarket, promo
GPS: global positioning, satellite, location-based, geocache, triangulation, search, track, stalk, signal, message, orbit, earth, home in
Mobile phones: cell, talk, charge, minutes, flip phone, dial, text, call, connect, busy signal, ring, tones, answer, message, voicemail, hangup, memo
my predictable, uncreative picks include "location-spam" or "GP-Spam" or "telespam"
my early favorites include "hard cell" and "stalkmail" and, though this makes almost no sense, "promoto"
will keep mulling...
Remote Possibilities
Clive Robertson in the New York Times magazine writes: "Pundits have fretted for years that mobile phones are making us ruder. In June, Nokia released some evidence that may actually prove it. A survey found that 71 percent of mobile-phone users admit they are now consistently late for social events. Why? Because they can send a flurry of text-messages explaining where they are, how fast they're moving and precisely when they'll arrive, down to the minute. ''You sort of feel you've got more play, because you're in this incredibly close contact,'' says Robbie Blinkoff, the principal anthropologist at Context-Based Research Group, which has found similar trends in its studies. "
...
Indeed, the next generation of phones is slated to become even more sophisticated. Phone companies have begun offering ''location based'' services with handsets that let other people know where you're walking, all day long. Next year, the French telecommunications equipment company Alcatel will offer Guardian Angel, which will let people track the movements of their children (or their Alzheimer's-ridden elderly parents) via their phones. We won't need to send out those ''where are you?'' queries anymore; instead, we'll have a nearly psychic level of knowledge about one another. New forms of play will arise: in Sweden and Finland, teenagers already play BotFighters war games -- one phone attacks another if they get physically close enough, like two Game Boys sensing each other's presence. Nokia's N-Gage phone, designed specifically to run games, lets players go head to head in a racing or fighting game with anyone nearby. Beyond this ''whoa'' potential, though, the privacy implications of location-based capabilities are hair-raising, says Roger Entener, a mobile-phone analyst at the Yankee Group. ''Your spouse will say she's on a business trip in Kansas City, but you'll notice that her phone is actually down in Chelsea. So you'll go, Hmm, what's happening there?''
Yet even then, observers say, people will probably never be willing to rein in their mobile lives. Bell tells a story that illustrates just how central phones now are. In Malaysia, she recently attended a ''feast of the hungry ghosts,'' where Chinese Malays burn paper replicas of food. ''They do it to ensure that their ancestors are well fed,'' Bell notes. But in recent years, they've also begun burning paper versions of mobile phones -- and even paper versions of prepaid phone cards, to make sure the phones will work beyond the grave. ''They can't imagine their dead relatives existing without the latest models,'' Bell says. ''And they wouldn't want their ancestors to be lonely.'' Even in death, no one wants to be cut off.
-----
If I'm going to pull this together for an article this week, here's the format I imagine:
1: Cell phone portability is here! Now we can keep our numbers forever.
2: Is this really good news? How many people want to keep their email forever? I don't.
3a: Email addressess eventually get discovered and spammed. Relentlessly. Now I know better than to buy stuff or register with my regular email address -- I should use a throwaway spam yahoo account.
3b: email spam is so bad that it may force borderline users away from email, and keep kids off altogether. the long march towards universal interactivity has hit a snag with spam.
4: The same thing may happen with cell phones
4a: text spam is already a problem in the UK
4b: the new location-tracking GPS phones could take it to a new level
5. Unlike junkmail or telemarketers, Spam is a parasite, draining internet resources and helping no one but the spammers (and a tiny number of customers).
6. GPS-spam would be made possible via the FCC mandate for GPS, but also by a significant investment by the phone companies themselves, and others. They can charge what they want, do what they want with their network. Virgin already announced they've been tracking users for years, just with tower data alone.
7? Cell phone companies were against number portability, because it would lead to higher customer turnover. They might have been shortsighted -- in the future, keeping your number might mean keeping your tracklog of all the places you've been, all the stores you've shopped in... They could sell that to advertisers and corporations, recouping any losses from turnover.
Tracking will make people conscious of where they shop, who they visit. Yet they won't stop shopping or sneaking around. But they will turn off their phones when they're doing it.
Kicker:
In the early days of email, the entire process seemed so benevolent and efficient and progressive and I would have never imagined the current situation, where 75% of email is repulsive, tedious junk. I would have never believed email could be too risky for kids to use; too bothersome for regular / recreational folks.
The same thing may happen to mobile phones. What seems like inexorable progress toward universal reachability might suddenly stop with GPS-enabled tracking and ads. People will be powering down, leaving the phone behind, or only using it in emergencies. One step forward, one step back.
...
Indeed, the next generation of phones is slated to become even more sophisticated. Phone companies have begun offering ''location based'' services with handsets that let other people know where you're walking, all day long. Next year, the French telecommunications equipment company Alcatel will offer Guardian Angel, which will let people track the movements of their children (or their Alzheimer's-ridden elderly parents) via their phones. We won't need to send out those ''where are you?'' queries anymore; instead, we'll have a nearly psychic level of knowledge about one another. New forms of play will arise: in Sweden and Finland, teenagers already play BotFighters war games -- one phone attacks another if they get physically close enough, like two Game Boys sensing each other's presence. Nokia's N-Gage phone, designed specifically to run games, lets players go head to head in a racing or fighting game with anyone nearby. Beyond this ''whoa'' potential, though, the privacy implications of location-based capabilities are hair-raising, says Roger Entener, a mobile-phone analyst at the Yankee Group. ''Your spouse will say she's on a business trip in Kansas City, but you'll notice that her phone is actually down in Chelsea. So you'll go, Hmm, what's happening there?''
Yet even then, observers say, people will probably never be willing to rein in their mobile lives. Bell tells a story that illustrates just how central phones now are. In Malaysia, she recently attended a ''feast of the hungry ghosts,'' where Chinese Malays burn paper replicas of food. ''They do it to ensure that their ancestors are well fed,'' Bell notes. But in recent years, they've also begun burning paper versions of mobile phones -- and even paper versions of prepaid phone cards, to make sure the phones will work beyond the grave. ''They can't imagine their dead relatives existing without the latest models,'' Bell says. ''And they wouldn't want their ancestors to be lonely.'' Even in death, no one wants to be cut off.
-----
If I'm going to pull this together for an article this week, here's the format I imagine:
1: Cell phone portability is here! Now we can keep our numbers forever.
2: Is this really good news? How many people want to keep their email forever? I don't.
3a: Email addressess eventually get discovered and spammed. Relentlessly. Now I know better than to buy stuff or register with my regular email address -- I should use a throwaway spam yahoo account.
3b: email spam is so bad that it may force borderline users away from email, and keep kids off altogether. the long march towards universal interactivity has hit a snag with spam.
4: The same thing may happen with cell phones
4a: text spam is already a problem in the UK
4b: the new location-tracking GPS phones could take it to a new level
5. Unlike junkmail or telemarketers, Spam is a parasite, draining internet resources and helping no one but the spammers (and a tiny number of customers).
6. GPS-spam would be made possible via the FCC mandate for GPS, but also by a significant investment by the phone companies themselves, and others. They can charge what they want, do what they want with their network. Virgin already announced they've been tracking users for years, just with tower data alone.
7? Cell phone companies were against number portability, because it would lead to higher customer turnover. They might have been shortsighted -- in the future, keeping your number might mean keeping your tracklog of all the places you've been, all the stores you've shopped in... They could sell that to advertisers and corporations, recouping any losses from turnover.
Tracking will make people conscious of where they shop, who they visit. Yet they won't stop shopping or sneaking around. But they will turn off their phones when they're doing it.
Kicker:
In the early days of email, the entire process seemed so benevolent and efficient and progressive and I would have never imagined the current situation, where 75% of email is repulsive, tedious junk. I would have never believed email could be too risky for kids to use; too bothersome for regular / recreational folks.
The same thing may happen to mobile phones. What seems like inexorable progress toward universal reachability might suddenly stop with GPS-enabled tracking and ads. People will be powering down, leaving the phone behind, or only using it in emergencies. One step forward, one step back.
JJ on AS on blogs
Jeff Jarvis on buzzmachine.com quotes Andrew Sullivan on blogging. I'm just going to leave this up, peruse them later for potential future jumping-off points:
: Andrew Sullivan is speaking to the Online News Association. I'm just putting up quotes now... Will clean up and comment later (I have to be on a panel next).... Talk about instant analysis....
: He is doing a superb job lecturing this audience on how to blog, explaining to them that they must consider themselves part of a community who will correct them and contribute to them.
: Best gag: "Will there be blogs that are purely fictional -- and I don't mean Eric Alterman?"
: "Whenever I wonder why I have not written a book lately [because he is blogging instead].... I say this happens once in a lifetime: You don't stumble across a new medium every day."
: "I think of blogging as the first genuine innovation that came out of the Internet itself."
: What sets apart weblogs, he says, is economics: He talks about the economics of thoughtful journalism: The New Republic has never made money and loses more. The Nation doesn't make money.
"And then I experienced blogging as an alterantive. It staggers me to realize that last week, AndrewSullivan.com... is now reaching more people online than the magazine I used to edit, which is still losing... hundreds of thousands of dollars a year. That's a big deal... We haven't just made the economics of journalism cheaper.... We haven't just lowered the barriers to entry to journalism, we've completely revolutionized it."
: "The overhead is minimal and the reach is almost infinite."
: Journalists have longed for this day, he says -- a world without editors. He told about having to rewrite a piece for the London Times -- and now he can put his original online.
: "I think it's going to get more revolutionary. We're going to see self-publishing of books... and taking power away from editors and publishers and media magnates."
: In the news media now, he says, the public "knows there is a man behind the curtain."
: He says that the trend toward anonymity is dying. Tina Brown killed it a bit when she said that no one cared what The New Yorker says; they know there's an individual there. Blogs extend that individual identity.
: "People trust [blogs]. Not because they are authorities but because they are subjected to scrutiny day in and day out and people decide whether they like them or not."
: Andrew waxes wonderfully on the ability and necessity of bloggers being able to change their minds, being transparent and honest; that is the essence of their (read: our) appeal.
: "They introduce back into the public discourse provisional thinking." We can change our minds. We can miss things. Others can have better ideas. "It recognizes the fallibility of the human mind and opens up to the wisdom of the communal mind." That's a whole new media dynamic, he says. Columnists and magazines have to wait to correct so they work to get it right now. Blogs, he says, don't make that commitment... "Let's continue that conversation onwards."
: "It's a much more modest mode of discourse... That modesty strikes a chord with people."
: "It's very, very modern. It's postmodern.... It's a combination of trends in modern thought and trends in technology."
: "Interactive... this is not a monologue, it's not even a dialogue, it is a conversation."
Amen! I'll say it again: News is a conversation.
" I'm just the recipient of a collective brain. I'm just a portal for the thoughts of other minds." He says he spends 40 percent of his blogging time reading email from contributors to that conversation.
: "It's more transparent than anything in journalism before." He says that when you make an error, there is no shame in that. "In mainstream journalism," he adds, "you have to climb down from your pedestal to correct an error and then climb back up again."
: He says a blog must be read long-term. "It accumulates a voice... traditions... in-jokes... its own vocabulary."
: He says he invented a t-shirt slogan: "Go ahead, fisk my blog." Three people in the audience got it.
: "I feel like an old brick wall covered with ivy and I can't cut it off... I used to take the weekends off but they wont' let you."
: If he were to start a new magazine, he'd find five of the smartest bloggers and put them on a web site "and tell them to go at it."
: "The ultimate and most successful news blog in the business is Drudgereport."
Andrew said he goes to Miami once a year for what he calls a "summit." He says he studies Drudge because "it is by far the most successful blog in history.... He's incredibly powerful."
: Unlike talk radio, he says, weblogs try to talk to people who disagree with us.
: Talking about the ability to use blogs to challenge authority and using Iran as an example, he says: "I'd much rather live in a country where the most we have to worry about is Howell Raines rather than live under the thumb of Saddam Hussein."
: Asked a good question about whether writing a blog affects his style and ability to write other things, Sullivan says yes. "It's like the cuckoo in the nest. It crowds out other genres... I'm supposed to be writing this book and I can't seem to get started."
: Should blogging be taught in journalism schools? "Absolutely... That's one sure way to kill it off."
: Andrew Sullivan is speaking to the Online News Association. I'm just putting up quotes now... Will clean up and comment later (I have to be on a panel next).... Talk about instant analysis....
: He is doing a superb job lecturing this audience on how to blog, explaining to them that they must consider themselves part of a community who will correct them and contribute to them.
: Best gag: "Will there be blogs that are purely fictional -- and I don't mean Eric Alterman?"
: "Whenever I wonder why I have not written a book lately [because he is blogging instead].... I say this happens once in a lifetime: You don't stumble across a new medium every day."
: "I think of blogging as the first genuine innovation that came out of the Internet itself."
: What sets apart weblogs, he says, is economics: He talks about the economics of thoughtful journalism: The New Republic has never made money and loses more. The Nation doesn't make money.
"And then I experienced blogging as an alterantive. It staggers me to realize that last week, AndrewSullivan.com... is now reaching more people online than the magazine I used to edit, which is still losing... hundreds of thousands of dollars a year. That's a big deal... We haven't just made the economics of journalism cheaper.... We haven't just lowered the barriers to entry to journalism, we've completely revolutionized it."
: "The overhead is minimal and the reach is almost infinite."
: Journalists have longed for this day, he says -- a world without editors. He told about having to rewrite a piece for the London Times -- and now he can put his original online.
: "I think it's going to get more revolutionary. We're going to see self-publishing of books... and taking power away from editors and publishers and media magnates."
: In the news media now, he says, the public "knows there is a man behind the curtain."
: He says that the trend toward anonymity is dying. Tina Brown killed it a bit when she said that no one cared what The New Yorker says; they know there's an individual there. Blogs extend that individual identity.
: "People trust [blogs]. Not because they are authorities but because they are subjected to scrutiny day in and day out and people decide whether they like them or not."
: Andrew waxes wonderfully on the ability and necessity of bloggers being able to change their minds, being transparent and honest; that is the essence of their (read: our) appeal.
: "They introduce back into the public discourse provisional thinking." We can change our minds. We can miss things. Others can have better ideas. "It recognizes the fallibility of the human mind and opens up to the wisdom of the communal mind." That's a whole new media dynamic, he says. Columnists and magazines have to wait to correct so they work to get it right now. Blogs, he says, don't make that commitment... "Let's continue that conversation onwards."
: "It's a much more modest mode of discourse... That modesty strikes a chord with people."
: "It's very, very modern. It's postmodern.... It's a combination of trends in modern thought and trends in technology."
: "Interactive... this is not a monologue, it's not even a dialogue, it is a conversation."
Amen! I'll say it again: News is a conversation.
" I'm just the recipient of a collective brain. I'm just a portal for the thoughts of other minds." He says he spends 40 percent of his blogging time reading email from contributors to that conversation.
: "It's more transparent than anything in journalism before." He says that when you make an error, there is no shame in that. "In mainstream journalism," he adds, "you have to climb down from your pedestal to correct an error and then climb back up again."
: He says a blog must be read long-term. "It accumulates a voice... traditions... in-jokes... its own vocabulary."
: He says he invented a t-shirt slogan: "Go ahead, fisk my blog." Three people in the audience got it.
: "I feel like an old brick wall covered with ivy and I can't cut it off... I used to take the weekends off but they wont' let you."
: If he were to start a new magazine, he'd find five of the smartest bloggers and put them on a web site "and tell them to go at it."
: "The ultimate and most successful news blog in the business is Drudgereport."
Andrew said he goes to Miami once a year for what he calls a "summit." He says he studies Drudge because "it is by far the most successful blog in history.... He's incredibly powerful."
: Unlike talk radio, he says, weblogs try to talk to people who disagree with us.
: Talking about the ability to use blogs to challenge authority and using Iran as an example, he says: "I'd much rather live in a country where the most we have to worry about is Howell Raines rather than live under the thumb of Saddam Hussein."
: Asked a good question about whether writing a blog affects his style and ability to write other things, Sullivan says yes. "It's like the cuckoo in the nest. It crowds out other genres... I'm supposed to be writing this book and I can't seem to get started."
: Should blogging be taught in journalism schools? "Absolutely... That's one sure way to kill it off."
Salon.com | Camille speaks!
Camille speaks:
It's nice to agree with a firebrand, if only once in a while. And this blog should be more than just a depository for snippets about gadgets and medical facts and laments about Democrats. Keeping my interests broad, and the commentary honest, is the key to Paglia's 'energy and vision.' And remember that thing about hobgoblins and little minds -- try not to fit everything into the same worldview or you'll end up in a bad state.
"As a writer, I'm inspired not just by other writing but by music and art and lines from movies. I think that's what's missing from a lot of blogs. Most bloggers aren't culture critics but political or media junkies preoccupied with pedestrian minutiae and a sophomoric 'gotcha' mentality. I find it depressing and claustrophobic. The Web is a wide open space -- voices on it should have energy and vision. "
It's nice to agree with a firebrand, if only once in a while. And this blog should be more than just a depository for snippets about gadgets and medical facts and laments about Democrats. Keeping my interests broad, and the commentary honest, is the key to Paglia's 'energy and vision.' And remember that thing about hobgoblins and little minds -- try not to fit everything into the same worldview or you'll end up in a bad state.
Cruiser Control
By way of gizmodo, the Detroit Free Press reports:
Neat! Doctors, of course, should have this. Actually since the government owns the streets and the lights it can do whatever it wants. But I think this should be like insurance -- if you behave, you get rewarded. Reeeeally good drivers should get this priviledge, for those late night empty street drives, and if they abuse it they lose it.
Or we could approach the ultimate in traffic control -- intersections that tabulate votes from the idling cars. It might be more efficient, if everyone had one and the software was properly written. It has to be better than the intersections in Worcester, timed for rush hour at 10 PM and timed for Senior Citizen's Crosswalk Day every morning at 8 AM.
Or, if it was pricey, it could showcase and simultaneously widen the gap between the haves vs. have-nots. Fastlane doesn't do this because it's so cheap. But I bet people heading to work in South Natick, waiting for the lights to change on 27, would start to resent the Lexuses on Rte 9 heading to their office park, with their traffic control modules and their urgent lifestyle.
Enough rambling! Can tech like this even be stopped when it's for sale already? Like radar detectors, it will become something you use with some benefit and some risk.
UPDATE: On May 3, 2004, I coined the term "grapeshit" -- when occurrances are apeshit in a great way. Spread the word.
Now anyone can breeze through congested intersections just like the police, thanks to a $300 dashboard device that changes traffic lights from red to green, making nasty commutes a thing of the past and leaving other drivers open-mouthed at your ability to manipulate traffic.
But what if everyone had one?
That's the fear of traffic control officials, who believe chaos would take over the roads. That's also the potential facing communities from Troy to Washington Township as Internet-marketed knockoffs of the device -- originally intended only for police and fire vehicles -- have become available to the public.
The knockoffs have traffic engineers investigating whether lockout measures will work against the copycats and whether hundreds of thousands of dollars in traffic technology investments will become obsolete.
Police are worried about the possibility of intersection chaos if people
duel over control for lights. But even more fundamentally, the dashboard device may be impossible to detect even from a police car right next to it, and it may be perfectly legal anyway.
"The potential for chaos is enormous," Macomb County Sheriff Mark Hackel said.
The traffic light changer, called the MIRT for mobile infrared transmitter, emits a beam with a 1,500-foot range to a receiver installed at the intersection, which changes the light immediately, allowing an intersection to clear before a fire or rescue truck approaches.
Neat! Doctors, of course, should have this. Actually since the government owns the streets and the lights it can do whatever it wants. But I think this should be like insurance -- if you behave, you get rewarded. Reeeeally good drivers should get this priviledge, for those late night empty street drives, and if they abuse it they lose it.
Or we could approach the ultimate in traffic control -- intersections that tabulate votes from the idling cars. It might be more efficient, if everyone had one and the software was properly written. It has to be better than the intersections in Worcester, timed for rush hour at 10 PM and timed for Senior Citizen's Crosswalk Day every morning at 8 AM.
Or, if it was pricey, it could showcase and simultaneously widen the gap between the haves vs. have-nots. Fastlane doesn't do this because it's so cheap. But I bet people heading to work in South Natick, waiting for the lights to change on 27, would start to resent the Lexuses on Rte 9 heading to their office park, with their traffic control modules and their urgent lifestyle.
Enough rambling! Can tech like this even be stopped when it's for sale already? Like radar detectors, it will become something you use with some benefit and some risk.
UPDATE: On May 3, 2004, I coined the term "grapeshit" -- when occurrances are apeshit in a great way. Spread the word.
Pseudomarketers
... do they oppose the federal do-not-con list?
they just get worse, I tell you.
60 Minutes ran a report on 10/26 about these urban buzz generators, hired by companies not to sell products but just to increase recognition and word-of-mouth. People on the street asking you to take their picture with a glitzy new cameraphone. Or people at starbucks playing a videogame with a new VR controller.
The company gets the word out, the buzzer gets paid, the public sees a cool demo and has a pleasant interaction. What's not to like?
Well, the public's pleasant interaction is a sham. It's like getting hit on by a hot babe, only to find she needs $50 to make you holler. Which is kind of what happened to Spector and me with the Lithuanian vodka buzzer.
The Tipping Point's Malcolm Gladwell thinks once people find out they've been duped, backlash will kill the customer-product relationship. I wonder, though, if people blame the gizmo or the agent?
I think if the buzzer is good enough, and works some honesty in at the end, it might work. Obviously a lot of people hate telemarketers, or mall-salesmen, etc. But if the caller/seller/buzzer is actually fun or entertaining, the sell can turn into a cocktail-party story. It's hard to find actors good enough.
It all comes back to the Lithuanian vodka lady at the bar -- very cute, very seductive, and she gave me a coupon. What's not to like? Yeah, I was out with my friends, but now we had a topic of conversation.
Like all new forms of ads, I guess when the novelty wears off, it's another story. One or two of these subtle sells is an experience -- a dozen a day is a nightmare of false pretenses that could drive civilization to schizophrenia.
I remember thinking spam was quite benign.
they just get worse, I tell you.
60 Minutes ran a report on 10/26 about these urban buzz generators, hired by companies not to sell products but just to increase recognition and word-of-mouth. People on the street asking you to take their picture with a glitzy new cameraphone. Or people at starbucks playing a videogame with a new VR controller.
The company gets the word out, the buzzer gets paid, the public sees a cool demo and has a pleasant interaction. What's not to like?
Well, the public's pleasant interaction is a sham. It's like getting hit on by a hot babe, only to find she needs $50 to make you holler. Which is kind of what happened to Spector and me with the Lithuanian vodka buzzer.
The Tipping Point's Malcolm Gladwell thinks once people find out they've been duped, backlash will kill the customer-product relationship. I wonder, though, if people blame the gizmo or the agent?
I think if the buzzer is good enough, and works some honesty in at the end, it might work. Obviously a lot of people hate telemarketers, or mall-salesmen, etc. But if the caller/seller/buzzer is actually fun or entertaining, the sell can turn into a cocktail-party story. It's hard to find actors good enough.
It all comes back to the Lithuanian vodka lady at the bar -- very cute, very seductive, and she gave me a coupon. What's not to like? Yeah, I was out with my friends, but now we had a topic of conversation.
Like all new forms of ads, I guess when the novelty wears off, it's another story. One or two of these subtle sells is an experience -- a dozen a day is a nightmare of false pretenses that could drive civilization to schizophrenia.
I remember thinking spam was quite benign.
Neuromarketers
... do they oppose the federal do-not-scan list?
groan.
I can make more puns, I'm sure.
There was a great article in the 10/26/03 New York Times Magazine that introduced the term, and really showed how far MRI research has come. I knew researchers had moved into the realm of identifying areas of increased brain blood flow during meditation or thinking about romance, but I had no idea the forces of business were pushing MRI into recognizing brand awareness and self-identification.
I guess the truth is that marketing, economics, and politics are all deeply interested in how people make decisions, and so any light that neuroscientists and MRI machines can shed on this process will be pursued. Maybe this isn't NIH-fundable, but if Madison Avenue is picking up the tab, and the results are peer-reviewed, who cares?
Here are some key quotes from the article:
It's just neat that we're getting better and better at characterizing the physical manifestations of thought. It's been a long time coming. I remember wondering about this when I was in grade school -- could emotions have physical effects? This was before I knew about palpitations, fight-or-flight, anorexia, lie detectors, etc.
Is an MRI lie detector far off? Or MRI psychology? We might build up a library of images to show people in the machine -- how they respond (which brain centers light up) can go on to classify their personality type, their coping mechanisms, etc. Meyers-Briggs and multiple-choice questions look primitive in comparison. Anything that requires people to think and respond is inherently less trustworthy.
How about future school quizzes? You could be shown an image of the Krebs cycle, and if you self-identify with it, that means you've studied biochem long enough and you pass.
groan.
I can make more puns, I'm sure.
There was a great article in the 10/26/03 New York Times Magazine that introduced the term, and really showed how far MRI research has come. I knew researchers had moved into the realm of identifying areas of increased brain blood flow during meditation or thinking about romance, but I had no idea the forces of business were pushing MRI into recognizing brand awareness and self-identification.
I guess the truth is that marketing, economics, and politics are all deeply interested in how people make decisions, and so any light that neuroscientists and MRI machines can shed on this process will be pursued. Maybe this isn't NIH-fundable, but if Madison Avenue is picking up the tab, and the results are peer-reviewed, who cares?
Here are some key quotes from the article:
Montague tried to gauge the appeal of Coke's image, its ''brand influence,'' by repeating the experiment with a small variation: this time, he announced which of the sample tastes were Coke. The outcome was remarkable: almost all the subjects said they preferred Coke. What's more, the brain activity of the subjects was now different. There was also activity in the medial prefrontal cortex, an area of the brain that scientists say governs high-level cognitive powers. Apparently, the subjects were meditating in a more sophisticated way on the taste of Coke, allowing memories and other impressions of the drink -- in a word, its brand -- to shape their preference.
Pepsi, crucially, couldn't achieve the same effect. When Montague reversed the situation, announcing which tastes were of Pepsi, far fewer of the subjects said they preferred Pepsi. Montague was impressed: he had demonstrated, with a fair degree of neuroscientific precision, the special power of Coke's brand to override our taste buds...
...Joey Reiman is the C.E.O. of BrightHouse, an Atlanta marketing firm, and a founding partner in the BrightHouse Institute; over years of producing marketing concepts for companies like Coca-Cola and Red Lobster, he has come to the conclusion that focus groups are ultimately less about gathering hard data and more about pretending to have concrete justifications for a hugely expensive ad campaign. ''The sad fact is, people tell you what you want to hear, not what they really think,'' he says. ''Sometimes there's a focus-group bully, a loudmouth who's so insistent about his opinion that it influences everyone else. This is not a science; it's a circus.''
Kilts plans to publish the BrightHouse research in an accredited academic journal. He insisted to me that his primary allegiance is to science; BrightHouse's techniques are ''business done in the science method,'' he said, ''not science done in the business method.'' And as he sat at his computer, calling up a 3-D picture of a brain, it was hard not to be struck, at the very least, by the seriousness of his passion. There, on the screen, was the medial prefrontal cortex, juggling our conscious thinking. There was the amygdala, governing our fears, buried deep in the brain. These are sights that he said still inspire in him feelings of wonder. ''When you sit down and you're watching -- for the first time in the history of mankind -- how we process complex primary emotions like anger, it's amazing,'' he said. ''You're like, there, look at that: that's anger, that's pleasure. When you see that roll off the workstation, you never look back.'' You just keep going, it seems, until you hit Madison Avenue.
It's just neat that we're getting better and better at characterizing the physical manifestations of thought. It's been a long time coming. I remember wondering about this when I was in grade school -- could emotions have physical effects? This was before I knew about palpitations, fight-or-flight, anorexia, lie detectors, etc.
Is an MRI lie detector far off? Or MRI psychology? We might build up a library of images to show people in the machine -- how they respond (which brain centers light up) can go on to classify their personality type, their coping mechanisms, etc. Meyers-Briggs and multiple-choice questions look primitive in comparison. Anything that requires people to think and respond is inherently less trustworthy.
How about future school quizzes? You could be shown an image of the Krebs cycle, and if you self-identify with it, that means you've studied biochem long enough and you pass.
The Red Sox Relationship
I think how your view the 2003 Red Sox says a lot about how you view relationships. There were highs and lows, it was a good ride, it didn't have to end like it did, and it would have been great to go all the way.
David Prior says as much on baseballmusings.com: "There was a lot that was good about this year, this series, and this game. It was a lot of fun. My heart was broken yet again but in the end it has been an autumn I will remember fondly for the rest of my life. I'll remember leaping 5 feet in the air as Trot Nixon's homerun cleared the center field wall in game three in the ALDS. I'll remember the ups and downs; how every time it seemed like the Sox were out of it, they came storming back. I'll remember the nightly debates about which bar we were going to watch the game from. And yes, I will remember where I was when Aaron "f-ing" Boone broke my heart... Go ahead and be miserable. As for me, I enjoyed the ride."
But there are people who are devastated, like the Sports Guy's friend Hench, who remarked "I guess I have to think about the good things in my life to get through a time like this."
Obviously, I was shocked when the Sox managed to blow it. And the worst part is knowing, now that the Pats have shown us, just how happy the town would have been if we had beaten the Yankees and won the championship. There will be no spring in my step for a few days, but c'mon people, get over it.
It's like, I'm viewing it as a fling that ended prematurely. Others, I guess, thought this was the One. But maybe my depressed friends are right. After all, they tend to be married, and I tend to be 28 and single.
David Prior says as much on baseballmusings.com: "There was a lot that was good about this year, this series, and this game. It was a lot of fun. My heart was broken yet again but in the end it has been an autumn I will remember fondly for the rest of my life. I'll remember leaping 5 feet in the air as Trot Nixon's homerun cleared the center field wall in game three in the ALDS. I'll remember the ups and downs; how every time it seemed like the Sox were out of it, they came storming back. I'll remember the nightly debates about which bar we were going to watch the game from. And yes, I will remember where I was when Aaron "f-ing" Boone broke my heart... Go ahead and be miserable. As for me, I enjoyed the ride."
But there are people who are devastated, like the Sports Guy's friend Hench, who remarked "I guess I have to think about the good things in my life to get through a time like this."
Obviously, I was shocked when the Sox managed to blow it. And the worst part is knowing, now that the Pats have shown us, just how happy the town would have been if we had beaten the Yankees and won the championship. There will be no spring in my step for a few days, but c'mon people, get over it.
It's like, I'm viewing it as a fling that ended prematurely. Others, I guess, thought this was the One. But maybe my depressed friends are right. After all, they tend to be married, and I tend to be 28 and single.
Disney vs. Thinking
Gregg Easterbrook just got fired from ESPN.com, for some poorly-phrased comments he made in a movie review for the New Republic.
Go figure.
Easterbrook is a Brookings Scholar and a wonderful writer. His wit and clarity of thought on politics, space policy, and football has been of great value to many. Better yet, he's not shilling for any agenda that I can identify, other than the truth. He is persuasive because he approaches topics like a true scholar, and reports on the facts that persuaded him.
You can get more on the circumstances of his dismissal at instapundit.com or his own blog at tnr.com.
He joins Bill Maher as independent thinkers fired by Disney/ABC/ESPN in recent years. Both had a witty, incisive and uncommonly independent voice. Both were actually fired for views that, with a little bit of polish on the delivery, were actually not controversial and quite defensible.
People will quickly compare Easterbrook to ESPN's recent Limbaugh firing, but the better comparison is to Maher. Limbaugh
was out of line, bringing his one-note social commentary into a sports show. Easterbrook's only error was to post an awkwardly-phrased indictment of Miramax and Disney leaders for the violence of Kill Bill, on TNR's website. Not ESPN.
It seems like an overreaction from ESPN, but they're probably conscious of the Limbaugh firing. Still, they're losing a great writer for what even the aggrieved parties are calling a minor gaffe. The principle guiding Disney here seems to be avoid controversy at all costs, even if, in the case of Maher and Easterbrook, there is no bigotry or malevolence behind the comments.
Intelligent, nuanced commentary cannot survive when your boss has one finger on the trap-door button, and another finger looking to see which way the wind is blowing.
Actions like this push blog writers to be more polished and more simplistic in their posts. They may have to take on editors (like Daniel Weintraub at the Sacramento Bee). The immediacy and intimacy of the writing will be replaced with more canned, party-line commentary -- noncontroversial but not particularly insightful. The readers lose.
Go figure.
Easterbrook is a Brookings Scholar and a wonderful writer. His wit and clarity of thought on politics, space policy, and football has been of great value to many. Better yet, he's not shilling for any agenda that I can identify, other than the truth. He is persuasive because he approaches topics like a true scholar, and reports on the facts that persuaded him.
You can get more on the circumstances of his dismissal at instapundit.com or his own blog at tnr.com.
He joins Bill Maher as independent thinkers fired by Disney/ABC/ESPN in recent years. Both had a witty, incisive and uncommonly independent voice. Both were actually fired for views that, with a little bit of polish on the delivery, were actually not controversial and quite defensible.
People will quickly compare Easterbrook to ESPN's recent Limbaugh firing, but the better comparison is to Maher. Limbaugh
was out of line, bringing his one-note social commentary into a sports show. Easterbrook's only error was to post an awkwardly-phrased indictment of Miramax and Disney leaders for the violence of Kill Bill, on TNR's website. Not ESPN.
It seems like an overreaction from ESPN, but they're probably conscious of the Limbaugh firing. Still, they're losing a great writer for what even the aggrieved parties are calling a minor gaffe. The principle guiding Disney here seems to be avoid controversy at all costs, even if, in the case of Maher and Easterbrook, there is no bigotry or malevolence behind the comments.
Intelligent, nuanced commentary cannot survive when your boss has one finger on the trap-door button, and another finger looking to see which way the wind is blowing.
Actions like this push blog writers to be more polished and more simplistic in their posts. They may have to take on editors (like Daniel Weintraub at the Sacramento Bee). The immediacy and intimacy of the writing will be replaced with more canned, party-line commentary -- noncontroversial but not particularly insightful. The readers lose.
Passive Radar
Gizmodo reports: "Fascinating article in BusinessWeek about Celldar, a 'passive' radar system that sort of piggybacks on the whole cellphone network to track almost any moving object anywhere. It works by using complex signal-processing software to interpret how signals from cellular base stations bounce off of and interact with boats, planes, cars, and maybe even people, and costs considerably less than traditional radar systems. "
This is news to me. Just making a note of it. More from Business Week:
Celldar's implications are exciting -- but also troubling to some. Even though the technology can't be used to identify cell-phone users, since it "sees" only radio waves echoing off hard surfaces, it and similar approaches are evolving quickly. In addition to Celldar, which is sopping up $1.5 million a year for development, a dozen other passive-radar projects are under way in the U.S., Europe, and Asia. As the technology bears fruit, it should give the world's police and homeland security agencies new tools for monitoring shipments of illegal weapons and drug smuggling operations. Highway officials could gain a detailed window on traffic flows, helping them to minimize congestion. But because passive-radar systems could be cheap enough for hobbyists to buy -- or cobble together themselves -- the technology could also become the next fad among people who own police-radio scanners or who enjoy snooping on their neighbors' comings and goings.
...in late October, radar researchers from around the world will gather in Seattle to discuss recent advances, including passive systems that use FM radio or TV broadcasts instead of cell-phone signals. The invitation-only meeting will be hosted by John D. Sahr, a University of Washington electrical engineer. Since 1997 he has operated a passive-radar system unshrouded by military secrecy. It harnesses an FM station's signals to study particles in the ionosphere -- the top layer of the atmosphere, over 300 miles up. Sahr decided to go with passive radar, he says, "because it's incredibly cheap" -- $20,000 vs. $25 million for a comparable active system. "You could probably do an amateur system for under $5,000," Sahr adds. A system for small airports might cost as little as $15,000. That's important because of the 5,280 public airports in the U.S., only about 300 currently have radar.
STRONG SIGNALS. Lockheed-Martin Corp. (LMT ) is perhaps the best-known passive-radar champion, but others include Avtec Systems, Dynetics, and ONERA, the French counterpart of NASA. Lockheed-Martin's system is dubbed Silent Sentry. Last fall, in a demo for the U.S. Air Force, a third-generation Silent Sentry radar tracked all the air traffic over Washington, D.C., by picking up FM and TV echoes. Because FM and TV transmissions are more powerful than their cell-phone cousins, Silent Sentry can detect planes as far away as 135 miles, roughly 10 times the reach of an individual cell-phone tower.
However, because cell-phone towers are scattered far and wide in many countries, an airborn Celldar system "could covertly monitor a whole country" by flying along its borders, says Lloyd...
Despite Celldar's military potential, Lloyd predicts the first applications will come in the civilian sector. He says transportation officials are eager to use Celldar to monitor road traffic because it would avoid the expense of installing either sensors in roads or TV cameras overhead. And police cars equipped with Celldar could follow a car driven by a suspected crook or terrorist from a safe distance, without danger of being seen.
TRACKING MADE CHEAP. Celldar might also provide an alternative to the global positioning satellite (GPS) systems now being explored by insurance companies and governments for monitoring vehicles. Their goal is to set premiums individually, based on how much and how fast each car or truck is driven -- or to levy a road-use toll determined by the distance a vehicle travels, over which types of roads, and at what times of day. In Ireland, AXA Insurance is testing a GPS gadget called Traksure. It continuously checks a car's speed and location, then compares that data with the local speed limit, obtained from digital maps. But Celldar might do the job more cheaply.
And it might support schemes by Oregon and other states regarding "pay-for-use" road taxes. Many transportation experts assert that taxing actual driving distances would be a more equitable way of funding highway upkeep than today's tax on gasoline and diesel fuels. That's why the European Commission wants every vehicle in Europe to be fitted by 2010 with a black-box device that can be tracked by satellite. Germany is now testing such a system on trucks, and Britain plans to require it on trucks by 2006...
This is news to me. Just making a note of it. More from Business Week:
Celldar's implications are exciting -- but also troubling to some. Even though the technology can't be used to identify cell-phone users, since it "sees" only radio waves echoing off hard surfaces, it and similar approaches are evolving quickly. In addition to Celldar, which is sopping up $1.5 million a year for development, a dozen other passive-radar projects are under way in the U.S., Europe, and Asia. As the technology bears fruit, it should give the world's police and homeland security agencies new tools for monitoring shipments of illegal weapons and drug smuggling operations. Highway officials could gain a detailed window on traffic flows, helping them to minimize congestion. But because passive-radar systems could be cheap enough for hobbyists to buy -- or cobble together themselves -- the technology could also become the next fad among people who own police-radio scanners or who enjoy snooping on their neighbors' comings and goings.
...in late October, radar researchers from around the world will gather in Seattle to discuss recent advances, including passive systems that use FM radio or TV broadcasts instead of cell-phone signals. The invitation-only meeting will be hosted by John D. Sahr, a University of Washington electrical engineer. Since 1997 he has operated a passive-radar system unshrouded by military secrecy. It harnesses an FM station's signals to study particles in the ionosphere -- the top layer of the atmosphere, over 300 miles up. Sahr decided to go with passive radar, he says, "because it's incredibly cheap" -- $20,000 vs. $25 million for a comparable active system. "You could probably do an amateur system for under $5,000," Sahr adds. A system for small airports might cost as little as $15,000. That's important because of the 5,280 public airports in the U.S., only about 300 currently have radar.
STRONG SIGNALS. Lockheed-Martin Corp. (LMT ) is perhaps the best-known passive-radar champion, but others include Avtec Systems, Dynetics, and ONERA, the French counterpart of NASA. Lockheed-Martin's system is dubbed Silent Sentry. Last fall, in a demo for the U.S. Air Force, a third-generation Silent Sentry radar tracked all the air traffic over Washington, D.C., by picking up FM and TV echoes. Because FM and TV transmissions are more powerful than their cell-phone cousins, Silent Sentry can detect planes as far away as 135 miles, roughly 10 times the reach of an individual cell-phone tower.
However, because cell-phone towers are scattered far and wide in many countries, an airborn Celldar system "could covertly monitor a whole country" by flying along its borders, says Lloyd...
Despite Celldar's military potential, Lloyd predicts the first applications will come in the civilian sector. He says transportation officials are eager to use Celldar to monitor road traffic because it would avoid the expense of installing either sensors in roads or TV cameras overhead. And police cars equipped with Celldar could follow a car driven by a suspected crook or terrorist from a safe distance, without danger of being seen.
TRACKING MADE CHEAP. Celldar might also provide an alternative to the global positioning satellite (GPS) systems now being explored by insurance companies and governments for monitoring vehicles. Their goal is to set premiums individually, based on how much and how fast each car or truck is driven -- or to levy a road-use toll determined by the distance a vehicle travels, over which types of roads, and at what times of day. In Ireland, AXA Insurance is testing a GPS gadget called Traksure. It continuously checks a car's speed and location, then compares that data with the local speed limit, obtained from digital maps. But Celldar might do the job more cheaply.
And it might support schemes by Oregon and other states regarding "pay-for-use" road taxes. Many transportation experts assert that taxing actual driving distances would be a more equitable way of funding highway upkeep than today's tax on gasoline and diesel fuels. That's why the European Commission wants every vehicle in Europe to be fitted by 2010 with a black-box device that can be tracked by satellite. Germany is now testing such a system on trucks, and Britain plans to require it on trucks by 2006...
An Ounce of Prevention, a Pound of Nanny-State
Just got back from a WDMS meeting in which the idea of medical errors was expressed commonly as a "can't-happen-to-me" type of problem; the kind of willful ignorance of statistics that so many people use when speeding, when driving unrestrained, unhelmeted...
Trauma really hurts those libertarian notions of freedom uber alles. I choose to speed now, but it's getting harder as the patients keep rolling in. They made the same mistake I do, but statistics caught up with them. Freedom, rah, rah. Risk the family. Risk the insurance. Risk the lifetime of living in a persistent vegetative state.
Bottom line: I could never, ever do it to my family. Getting in an unrestrained accident would pretty much invalidate my parents' existance, rip a hole from here to Sparta, and pretty much guilt-trip any of my surviving brain tissue into ischemia.
Dr. P notes our society is comfortable with a Vietnam-level of trauma casualties EVERY YEAR (50k deaths). Either stop grousing about the youths lost 30 years ago, or start grousing about the lives claimed by the highway lifestyle.
Nader makes so many people crazy because he actually wallows in these numbers and tries to change them. And remember the old pearl that, if you really want to help people, get into preventative medicine... Once you really immerse yourself in that field, can you view the mall, McDonalds, and the roads in between as anything but a toxic affront to your life's mission? Wouldn't you get to be as loopy as Nader?
Trauma really hurts those libertarian notions of freedom uber alles. I choose to speed now, but it's getting harder as the patients keep rolling in. They made the same mistake I do, but statistics caught up with them. Freedom, rah, rah. Risk the family. Risk the insurance. Risk the lifetime of living in a persistent vegetative state.
Bottom line: I could never, ever do it to my family. Getting in an unrestrained accident would pretty much invalidate my parents' existance, rip a hole from here to Sparta, and pretty much guilt-trip any of my surviving brain tissue into ischemia.
Dr. P notes our society is comfortable with a Vietnam-level of trauma casualties EVERY YEAR (50k deaths). Either stop grousing about the youths lost 30 years ago, or start grousing about the lives claimed by the highway lifestyle.
Nader makes so many people crazy because he actually wallows in these numbers and tries to change them. And remember the old pearl that, if you really want to help people, get into preventative medicine... Once you really immerse yourself in that field, can you view the mall, McDonalds, and the roads in between as anything but a toxic affront to your life's mission? Wouldn't you get to be as loopy as Nader?
From Cursors to Arms
The Boston Globe (via WaPo) reports on monkeys moving a robotic arm with their thoughts alone:
It really seems that neuro has the most exciting advances right now. Every other field is serving up incremental improvements, next-generation drugs, etc. This neuro stuff -- the TMS, these cyberkinetic implants -- is not just about extending life or even restoring function, but potentially expanding the realm of human ability.
The device relies on tiny electrodes, each resembling a wire thinner than a human hair. After removing patches of skull from two monkeys to expose the outer surface of their brains, Nicolelis and his colleagues stuck 96 of those tiny wires about a millimeter deep in one monkey's brain and 320 in the other animal's brain.
...Then came the training, with the monkeys first learning to move the robot arm with a joystick. The arm was kept in a separate room -- "If you put a 50-kilogram robot in front of them, they get very nervous," Nicolelis said -- but the monkeys could track their progress by watching a schematic representation of the arm and its motions on a video screen.
The monkeys quickly learned how to use the joystick to make the arm reach and grasp for objects and how to adjust their grip on the joystick to vary the robotic hand's grip strength. They could see on the monitor when they missed their target or dropped it from having too light a grip, and were rewarded with sips of juice.
While the monkeys trained, a computer tracked the patterns of bioelectrical activity in the animals' brains. The computer figured out that certain patterns amounted to a command to "reach." Others meant "grasp." Gradually, the computer learned to "read" the monkeys' minds.
Then the researchers did something radical: They unplugged the joystick so the robotic arm's movements depended completely on a monkey's brain activity. In effect, the computer that had been studying the animal's neural firing patterns was now serving as an interpreter, decoding the brain signals according to what it had learned from the joystick games and sending the appropriate instructions to the mechanical arm.
At first, Nicolelis said, the monkey kept moving the joystick, not realizing her brain was now solely in charge of the arm's movements. Then, he said, an amazing thing happened.
"We're looking, and she stops moving her arm," he said, "but the cursor keeps playing the game and the robot arm is moving around." The animal was controlling the robot with its thoughts.
..."John P. Donoghue, a neuroscientist at Brown University developing a similar system, said paralyzed patients would be the first to benefit by gaining an ability to type and communicate on the Internet, but the list of potential applications is endless, he said. The devices might allow quadriplegics to move limbs again by sending signals from the brain to various muscles, leaping over the severed nerves that caused their paralysis.
'Once you have an output signal out of the brain that you can interpret, the possibilities of what you can do with those signals are immense,' said Donoghue, who cofounded a Foxborough-based company, Cyberkinetics Inc., to capitalize on the technology."
It really seems that neuro has the most exciting advances right now. Every other field is serving up incremental improvements, next-generation drugs, etc. This neuro stuff -- the TMS, these cyberkinetic implants -- is not just about extending life or even restoring function, but potentially expanding the realm of human ability.
Scary / cool
Gizmodo GPS tracking reports keep coming:
Yeah, this is every teenager's nightmare. But the thing is, it's also pretty cool. I think I'd let some friends track me, at least while it's still novel. They'd see nothing but trips back and forth from my apartment to the hospital. Every now and then they'd see a late-night dunkin' donuts run.
I guess if you were trying to go somewhere sneaky, you could always turn the phone off to travel unwatched. When I first got my phone, I tried to keep it off most of the time, only using it to originate calls when necessary. This was mostly a $ consideration, but gradually I was impressed with the convenience and connectivity -- now it's always-on. But it might be necessary to return to the days when we weren't always reachable...
Maybe people will start getting two phones, one to turn off when their spouses are tracking them, and one with which to call their secret fling on the side.
Has this happened before? Has a product become so successful, so laden with features, that it actually became an intrusive burden? Maybe television fits this bill.
Besides cells, the other big communication avenues -- landlines and mail, never became so clogged with unsolicited communication that people stopped using them. With email, the jury's still out. I can imagine some kids are forbidden from getting accounts because of x-rated spam, and I imagine many newbie adults are turned off by the whole thing, too.
"There's a new service for GPS-enabled cellphones called uLocate that makes it possible to easily keep tabs on your friends and family, allowing you to see their exact location on a map, 24 hours a day; review everywhere they've gone throughout the day; and set up and automatic alert if the person goes outside of a pre-defined area. Right now uLocate only works with a few select Motorola phones and Nextel's Total Connect cellular service, but support for more phones and carriers is in the works."
Yeah, this is every teenager's nightmare. But the thing is, it's also pretty cool. I think I'd let some friends track me, at least while it's still novel. They'd see nothing but trips back and forth from my apartment to the hospital. Every now and then they'd see a late-night dunkin' donuts run.
I guess if you were trying to go somewhere sneaky, you could always turn the phone off to travel unwatched. When I first got my phone, I tried to keep it off most of the time, only using it to originate calls when necessary. This was mostly a $ consideration, but gradually I was impressed with the convenience and connectivity -- now it's always-on. But it might be necessary to return to the days when we weren't always reachable...
Maybe people will start getting two phones, one to turn off when their spouses are tracking them, and one with which to call their secret fling on the side.
Has this happened before? Has a product become so successful, so laden with features, that it actually became an intrusive burden? Maybe television fits this bill.
Besides cells, the other big communication avenues -- landlines and mail, never became so clogged with unsolicited communication that people stopped using them. With email, the jury's still out. I can imagine some kids are forbidden from getting accounts because of x-rated spam, and I imagine many newbie adults are turned off by the whole thing, too.
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