Best Endtimes Ever

King Corn

Wed, 24 Oct 2007 20:54:48 -0800

Speaking of documentaries, the new film King Corn is about the huge proportion of our national diet that we derive from corn. The exposure of corn as the fuel in our food system was one of the most compelling parts of the hugely acclaimed [The Omnivore's Dilemma][od]. Author Michael Pollan introduces us to George Naylor, an Iowan struggling to run the farm his grandfather brought into the family in 1919, early in that section on "industrial" food: [od]: http://www.michaelpollan.com/omnivore.php > The day I showed up was supposed to be the only dry one all week, so George and I spent most of it in the cab of his tractor, trying to get acquainted and get his last 160 acres of corn planted at the same time; a week or two later he'd start in on the soybeans. The two crops take turns in these fields year after year, in what has been the classic Corn Belt rotation since the 1970s. (Since that time soybeans have become the second leg supporting the industrial food system: It too is fed to livestock and now finds its way into two-thirds of all processed foods.) For most of the afternoon I sat on a rough cushion George had fashioned for me from crumpled seed bags, but after a while he let me take the wheel. > > Back and forth and back again, a half a mile in each direction, planting corn feels less like planting, or even driving, than stitching an interminable cloak, or covering a page with the same sentence over and over again. The monotony, compounded by the roar of a diesel engine well past its prime, is hypnotic after a while. Every pass across this field, which is almost but not quite dead flat, represents another acre of corn planted, another thirty thousand seeds tucked into one of the eight furrows being simultaneously etched into the soil by pairs of stainless steel disks; a trailing roller then closes the furrows over the seed. > > The seed we were planting was Pioneer Hi-Bred's 34H31, a strain that the catalog described as "an adaptable hybrid with solid agronomics and yield potential." The lack of hype, notable for a seed catalog, probably reflects the fact that 34H31 does not contain the "YieldGard gene," the Monsanto-developed line of genetically engineered corn that Pioneer is currently pushing: The genetically modified 34B98, on the same page, promises "outstanding yield potential." Despite its promises, Naylor, unlike many of his neighbors, doesn't plant GMOs (genetically modified organisms). He has a gut distrust of the technology ("They're messing with three billion years of evolution") and doesn't think it's worth the extra twenty-five dollars a bag (in technology fees) they cost. "Sure, you might get a yield bump, but whatever you make on the extra corn goes right back to cover the premium for the seed. I fail to see why I should be laundering money for Monsanto." As Naylor sees it, GMO seed is just the latest chapter in an old story: Farmers eager to increase their yields adopt the latest innovation, only to find that it's the companies selling the innovations who reap the most from the gain in the farmer's productivity. This new film is by Ian Cheney and Curt Ellis, who undertook their own corn adventure: they grew their own acre of corn in Iowa, to discover that same life cycle from field to plate. The film was the first topic in [a recent episode of Boing Boing TV][bbtv]:

[bbtv]: http://tv.boingboing.net/2007/10/22/king-cornpurikura.html The film seems to cover much the same area as and Eric Schlosser's Fast Food Nation. It's [already caused some controversy][controversy], but hopefully [King Corn][kc] is a good film that will get more people thinking about what we put in ourselves. [kc]: http://kingcorn.net/ [controversy]: http://kingcorn.net/blog/?p=90

In the Shadow of the Moon

Tue, 23 Oct 2007 08:58:19 -0800

*In the Shadow of the Moon* is not bad. I saw it a couple weeks ago and a couple of points stuck out at me. The first was when one of the guys mentions that an atheist from Dallas sued for the astronauts quoting from Genesis during the first moon pass. (They don't mention it was [activist Madalyn Murray O'Hair][mmo].) I can sympathize, but it seems awfully inhumanist not to let the astronauts express their personal beliefs. Up there with the most amazing sight seen by eyes until then, they related to the splendor of the universe as they understood it. They *were* representing all of us up there, but they didn't do wrong. [mmo]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madalyn_Murray_O%27Hair Mainly, the ending isn't quite what I had hoped. They do explicitly point out that no one has set foot on the moon since Apollo 17, but Sington doesn't leverage that into a value judgment. *In the Shadow of the Moon* is a retrospective, encasing these old men in amber. I had hoped it could also be a call to action for further moon missions, or at least explore the absence of swagger of these guys' caliber nowadays. There's little heroism in today's socialized space program, but *In the Shadow of the Moon* shows it only in negative. You might check it out when it's on DVD.

The neoteny pattern

Tue, 16 Oct 2007 14:00:56 -0800

Children are getting older. This is another major theme I’d like to write about here. It’s been crazy around here this past week, so this may not be the cogent introduction I wish it were, but here goes. Childhood as a phase of life is growing longer: adolescents are treated as children, and people in their twenties act adolescent. There’s a new book on exactly this topic, The Case Against Adolescence by Robert Epstein. As [Jason Kottke quotes when talking about the book][kottke], Epstein has evidence that adulthood is now beginning as late as 27, which certainly makes me feel better about only just now entering what feels like the adult phase of my life. Hopefully I can grab a copy and share any insights it informs. [kottke]: http://kottke.org/07/09/the-case-against-adolescence As Kottke also notes, Neil Postman's The Disappearance of Childhood claims the idea of childhood itself comes and goes in waves. Part of the current swing may be the resonance of this pattern in popular culture. It’s similar to Devo’s [core theme][] of *devolution,* the idea that modern society with its lack of true challenges allows us to become dumber, worse people; that society’s natural direction is downward. The same idea plays out in Mike Judge’s recent film [*Idiocracy*][idio]: thousands of years into the future, America has devolved into a purely consumerist society run by cyborg corporations and a government that’s more a line-up of reality TV series than a ruling body. [core theme]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Truth_About_De-Evolution [idio]: http://www.avclub.com/content/node/52408 There are several phenomena crucial to understanding our world today that seem (at least to me) related to this idea of bringing childhood into adulthood. For a convenient name for the general pattern, I like [**neoteny**][neoteny], the term in biology for keeping youthful characteristics into adulthood ("as among certain amphibians"). I keep seeing neoteny as the possible motive force in a bunch of phenomena, enough so that it seems like a hint to some underlying system of the world. [neoteny]: http://www.answers.com/neoteny Neoteny is related to the **fairy tale morality** that currently polarizes our public discourse. It’s a child-like view to split the world into unambiguous virtue and vice, and the job of adults to discern the good intentions in bad acts and forge compromise. There seems to be precious little of this among the people we give power. Another apparent ramification of epidemic neoteny could be the focus on **materialism** we see in our culture. We Americans are generally not so hot on waiting for things we want, and as a result spend $1.22 for every $1 we earn ([claims the American Bankers Association][aba] in an undated statistic they ascribe to [the Myvesta Foundation][myvesta], a "consumer finance assistance" organization). That you can’t have everything you want is the basic axiom of economics, yet we’re extremely eager to except ourselves from it, assuming economics happens only to everyone else. It seems peculiarly adult not to partake of the “free money” credit card companies spam out. [aba]: http://www.aba.com/Consumer+Connection/mediatips_talkingpoints.htm [myvesta]: http://myvesta.org/ **Geek chic** is another possible result of neoteny. Comic books and video games are adolescent media that my generation is bringing with us throughout our lives, to say little of the stereotypical nerd who lives with his parents ‘til 30, who is simply *still adolescent.* To be broadly generous instead, to be a geek about something is to show enthusiasm for it, and enthusiasm tends to be the province of youth; the cliché is *child-like wonder* for a reason. The relationship we’ve developed with our **corporations** can put people in a child’s role at times. While science fiction still has a monopoly on corporations gaining sentience and acting independently, it rings like a bell the fear of superhuman legal fictions with rights. Focusing on corporate speech (which is, after all, one of the few ways we interact with them), we picture child-like susceptibility to advertising in other people. It’s in the interests of the corporations that want to sell us things to infantilize us into material consumers. I’ve been reading The Authoritarians by Bob Altemeyer, a layman’s overview of his and others’ psychological research into the authoritarian behavior of both leaders and followers. (It’s [available on Altemeyer's web site][authism].) He describes aligning with a strong authority as if it were an identifiable pathology. Some of the authoritarian behavior we see in contemporary societies (both leading and following, which Altemeyer takes pains to explain are quite different) can be explained in terms of the strong father figure, which allows it to map conveniently onto ideas of neoteny. While, as ever, [the behavior of particular human people is more complicated][complicated], it seems like a useful metaphor. [authism]: http://home.cc.umanitoba.ca/~altemey/ [complicated]: http://members.shaw.ca/jeanaltemeyer/drbob/chapter2.pdf#page=20 Perhaps neoteny of itself isn’t a major thread in the fabric of our world; it could be a mere result of a more primal component, like positive feedback. Even so, it comes up enough in various guises that it’s worth understanding.

Lies, damned lies, and effective experiences

Wed, 19 Sep 2007 08:59:09 -0800

The steady intonations of a hypnotic voice sends shivers down my spine, and I realize, *I'm being lied to, and I like it.* I remember some specific cases. The earliest is also the most personal: some girl I was in classes with in the eighth grade, saying something in a group of us hanging around on an event day in the foyer in the school's new gym where I rarely went. She was saying something that made me feel like I was part of her collected clique, an ordained member of the in crowd. I count this as being lied to because, while I wasn't a *pariah* in middle school, I was too big a nerd to be accepted in a popular crowd. For those brief minutes, though, I could pretend. The more recent events were, like such a large percentage of meaningful events the past few years, mediated. John Hodgman is so skillfully deadpan that when he delivers his compendium of world knowledge, [*The Areas of My Expertise*][areas], it's hard to pick out the fiction sometimes. What made the spine-tingling moment, though, was the repartee with Jonathan Coulton. They trade fake facts about these United States, and it's easy to invest in their common conviction. *Investing in conviction* could be the key. Conviction is a magician's stock in trade, and [Marco Tempest's iPhone Magic][iphone] was another lie I notably enjoyed. The way some people talked when it was coming out (and still talk, some of them), it's easy to believe it could do almost anything. Ken Nordine is another master of convincing delivery; the air of authority in his voice surely helped his history in advertising. For some reason I'm especially affected by two recordings of his that, rather than the same old talking in his commanding voice, prominently feature *mouth noises.* That is, Bubblegum, which features the chewing of same, and Hunger Is From: > It's silly, if you say it is, but... I look at a little olive, like this... mmm... and it tastes wonderful. This's got a seed in it, but... I like 'em pitted too. That way you don't have to worry about the stone. Mm... I swear I do this, practically every night of the week. Oh, not every night... but pretty near. As a last example, Iris Bahr punches up her [Social Studies series for KCRW][studies] with a sensual accent and the air of the illicit. It's a fictional audio blog by a globe-trotting prostitute with a big Russian accent, after all. The invitation inside the character's privacy is naturally intimate, on top of the salacious nature of the insider's view of a jet-setting world of media and political celebrities (here, a delivery mechanism for satire). Why should I like being lied to like this, and why doesn't it happen more often? I regularly make elaborate claims to skepticism as an amateur scientist (I expect [Dijkstra][ewd] would agree computer science as I practice it is an amateur science). Beyond scientific pretensions, I spend my days with my head stuck in that same mediated sluice of political and economic propaganda; down here, skepticism is a precious survival skill. If anything, I should be *skeptical* to a fault. Perhaps it's that skepticism is *so tiring.* It's comfortable to let the filters down and believe what you hear (which could be why it's so popular). Relaxing the skeptical habit works with the natural intimacy of these moments--the actual human interaction, the naturally incidental noise of Nordine's Bubblegum, the confessions of a worldly woman--to connect in a special way that most media doesn't. Except for outright magic, all these examples were auditory, leading me to believe that radio is a more intimate medium than television (and likewise for their internet equivalents). That voice by itself is more intimate seems counterintuitive, but true. Processing visual input is an analytical process, *engaging* the filters instead of circumventing them. On the other hand, listening to someone speak is a language task, almost literary. This apparent difference between radio and tv in the capacity for intimate connection reminds me mainly of virtual worlds, which means it raises an interesting question for interface design. How do you design media experiences for people when the medium with less fidelity better fosters intimacy? The idea of a virtual world is it’s a mode of experience that seems like real life--that is, a high fidelity medium. My main experience with virtual worlds, though, is from the era of text: non-graphical MUDs and [single-player interactive fiction][if]. Compared to my experience with, say, Second Life, text worlds are much better at conveying intimacy. This is for the same reasons interactive fiction is lauded as a lost art, and especially *the complicit imagination*: you create the visual component yourself, so you have to buy into the fiction at a deeper level than if the pictures are presented to you. That it happens in your head creates a kind of self-healing imagery that is hard to build outside a flexible human mind. Text gets a bad rap for having low emotional bandwidth, which is true. SMS carries much less emotional cuing than a voice call does. For one, the bandwidth problem is conjoined with the *barrier to entry*. Text is *actually* only as narrowcast as a book is, and we’ve had written works for centuries that can evoke emotional response. How do you evoke that rich history in an IM window? It takes skill and talent at writing to convey emotion. Even IRC evolved a `/me` command; the third person and a context in which acts can occur could be downright necessary. Today’s immersive games and graphical worlds increasingly use voice, which, given this thought started with radio, would seem to provide the much wider emotional bandwidth required to build intimate experiences. However, this is not apparent in the use of voice on, say, Xbox Live. Again it’s an issue with barrier to entry: instead of the world-building and writing skills necessary in text worlds, it requires the acting ability of a John Hodgman, or the prowess at performance of a Ken Nordine. We don’t generally consider acting a basic skill on the level of writing. One also can’t maintain a *deep* fiction about the nature of oneself when your voice is apparent. The banal example is how hard voice in Second Life has made it to cross-”dress.” Developer of MUD [Richard Bartle cautioned][notyet] in 2003 that voice can’t be used in roleplay worlds until it doesn’t break the players’ fiction: > Adding reality to a virtual world robs it of what makes it compelling - it takes away that which is different between virtual worlds and the real world: the fact that they are *not* the real world. Short of the future where the voice is completely synthesized, maintaining the fiction will depend on the acting skill of the players as much as any technical capability of the software. The lesson appears to be the idea that higher fidelity media is better can't be assumed when considering the actual user experience. While I’ve certainly been lied to online, the intimacy required to make the kind of lies I *like* is hard to convey in internet media. Using higher fidelity only makes it harder to be good. [areas]: http://www.audible.com/adbl/site/products/ProductDetail.jsp?productID=BK_PENG_000511&BV_UseBVCookie=Yes [iphone]: http://www.youtube.com/user/virtualmagician [ewd]: http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/ [studies]: http://www.kcrw.com/etc/programs/ss [if]: http://getlamp.com/ [notyet]: http://www.gamegirladvance.com/archives/2003/07/28/not_yet_you_fools.html

The state of space

Wed, 12 Sep 2007 15:32:20 -0800

I read enough science fiction to know it isn't the future until we're in space. We have our information age and our years that start with *2*, but we're still stuck down here in the ol' gravity well. Weren't we supposed to be well on our way to the stars, or at least the planets we can see from here, by [2001][]? What happened to the cool space station spinning to the Blue Danube? Coincidentally, [Slate V][] recently posted this Explainer about if we're ever finishing our own actual space station:

Photo by Matthew Bradley

For further explication on "Blame the shuttles," the most memorable web resource is [Maciej Cegłowski][iw]'s article [A Rocket to Nowhere][]. As one might expect with even as limber a government agency as NASA, not much has changed in two years: the [gouge in the foam tiles][foam] under the Endeavour when it landed on the 21st with no new disaster [have prompted only "modest changes."][end] Cegłowski further describes the current state of affairs in the closely following [Meanwhile, Back in Space][]: > It is likely, therefore, that the next decade will open with a Space Chase (the inevitable name), as China attempts to develop a space program from scratch faster than the United States can dust off its forty-year-old blueprints. ... There may even be a pad 3, some kind of unholy alliance of Europeans, Russians, and Objectivist billionaires, flying a composite rocket powered by the sheer force of the market. My main interest in the topic is fueled by this talk from TED by Burt Rutan, founder of SpaceShipOne creator Scaled Composites.

He theorizes the state of the art in one's childhood influences interest; I was at that particular school age where [we were watching Challenger][chal] because Christa McAuliffe was there, wow, a schoolteacher going into *space.* I think we weren't actually watching it, but we huddled into another classroom with a tv shortly after when the news got out. Challenger means space to many people who were adults, too, especially Florida teachers—who saw [another of their own fly in that recently returned *Endeavour* mission][npr]. Ron Howard is only a decade younger than Rutan, and obviously influenced by the same era of aeronautics as he. Not only did Howard make *Apollo 13*, but now he's [helping promote][] the new documentary about the Apollo missions, [*In the Shadow of the Moon*][shadow]. ([See the trailer in HD.][shadow-trailer]) While a single documentary can't spark many minds in their formative era now, it can help, and the actual work being done by Rutan and his compatriots just may. I've learned from my work in internet services that the key to staying alive and available is *redundancy:* eliminate single points of failure. Assuming we avoid the near term environmental disaster we've created here on Earth--the biggest SPoF of all--making it into space is incredibly important to our future as a species. The devotion of the new pioneers of commercial space promises to keep the next few years of the process interesting, if not outright fruitful. [2001]: http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/19970327/REVIEWS08/401010362/1023 [Slate V]: http://www.slatev.com/ [chal]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Shuttle_Challenger_disaster [iw]: http://www.idlewords.com/ [A Rocket to Nowhere]: http://www.idlewords.com/2005/08/a_rocket_to_nowhere.htm [Meanwhile, Back in Space]: http://www.idlewords.com/2005/10/meanwhile_back_in_space.htm [end]: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2007/08/22/MNTDRMJPJ.DTL [foam]: http://www.newsvine.com/_news/2007/08/24/918701-nasa-issues-repair-plan-on-shuttle-tanks [helping promote]: http://sev.prnewswire.com/entertainment/20070629/LAF03729062007-1.html [shadow]: http://www.intheshadowofthemoon.com/ [shadow-trailer]: http://www.apple.com/trailers/thinkfilm/intheshadowofthemoon/hd/ [npr]: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=14019745