Author Archives: rdmyers75@hotmail.com

Kurt Vonnegut’s advice to the people of 2088

In 1988 Kurt Vonnegut wrote a short letter of advice to the people of 2088. The full letter, which is short, is here. An excerpt:

Our century hasn’t been as free with words of wisdom as some others, I think, because we were the first to get reliable information about the human situation: how many of us there were, how much food we could raise or gather, how fast we were reproducing, what made us sick, what made us die, how much damage we were doing to the air and water and topsoil on which most life forms depended, how violent and heartless nature can be, and on and on. Who could wax wise with so much bad news pouring in?

For me, the most paralyzing news was that Nature was no conservationist. It needed no help from us in taking the planet apart and putting it back together some different way, not necessarily improving it from the viewpoint of living things. It set fire to forests with lightning bolts. It paved vast tracts of arable land with lava, which could no more support life than big-city parking lots. It had in the past sent glaciers down from the North Pole to grind up major portions of Asia, Europe, and North America. Nor was there any reason to think that it wouldn’t do that again someday. At this very moment it is turning African farms to deserts, and can be expected to heave up tidal waves or shower down white-hot boulders from outer space at any time. It has not only exterminated exquisitely evolved species in a twinkling, but drained oceans and drowned continents as well. If people think Nature is their friend, then they sure don’t need an enemy.

If I can summarize the sentiment, what he found depressing is that we have the knowledge and ability to understand what is going on and do something about it, and yet as a civilization and species we are failing to do anything.

World Order 2.0

Richard Haas has a vision for what a new international order could look like.

Today’s realities call for an updated operating system—World Order 2.0 – based on “sovereign obligation,” the notion that sovereign states have not just rights but also obligations to others.

A new international order will also require an expanded set of norms and arrangements, beginning with an agreed-upon basis for statehood. Existing governments would agree to consider bids for statehood only in cases where there was a historical justification, a compelling rationale, and popular support, and where the proposed new entity is viable.

World Order 2.0 must also include prohibitions on carrying out or in any way supporting terrorism. More controversially, it must include strengthened norms proscribing the spread or use of weapons of mass destruction.

He goes on to talk about climate change, trade, health, cyberspace, and refugees. It all sounds good but there aren’t a lot of specifics here.

Obama’s word clouds

Obama read 10 letters a day while in office. He received about 10,000 pieces of mail and email a day, and his staff had to pick the 10. Also interesting, the staff made a word cloud out of all emails received and posted them in the White House. I find that kind of nice, the idea that words you write were received and might have had an influence in some form even if they weren’t all read.

I’ve always liked the idea of elected officials setting up some kind of voting site where constituents could weigh in on issues or even specific bills. The official could get a daily “report card” of where his or her constituents stand, and this could help to influence his or her decisions. If there were a concern that people logging on to the website were not representative, some form of demographic weighting could be used.

how the ATF traces guns

This is one of those in-depth articles that GQ puts out every now and then.

Anytime a cop in any jurisdiction in America wants to connect a gun to its owner, the request for help ends up here, at the National Tracing Center, in a low, flat, boring building that belies its past as an IRS facility, just off state highway 9 in Martinsburg, West Virginia, in the eastern panhandle of the state, a town of some 17,000 people, a Walmart, a JCPenney, and various dollar stores sucking the life out of a quaint redbrick downtown. On any given day, agents here are running about 1,500 traces; they do about 370,000 a year…

The National Tracing Center is not allowed to have centralized computer data… That’s been a federal law, thanks to the NRA, since 1986: No searchable database of America’s gun owners. So people here have to use paper, sort through enormous stacks of forms and record books that gun stores are required to keep and to eventually turn over to the feds when requested. It’s kind of like a library in the old days—but without the card catalog. They can use pictures of paper, like microfilm (they recently got the go-ahead to convert the microfilm to PDFs), as long as the pictures of paper are not searchable. You have to flip through and read. No searching by gun owner. No searching by name…

All the out-of-business records that come in here—2 million last month—are eventually imaged and organized according to the store that sent them. It might be 50,000 Form 4473s from one Dick’s Sporting Goods in some suburb of Cleveland. So, say you need to find one particular 4473 from that store. “We go through them,” Charlie tells me. “Just like photographs from your Christmas party, and we look through every one. Until we find it.”

the Twenty-Fifth Amendment

the text of the Twenty-Fifth Amendment Section 4, via Wikipedia:

Section 4. Whenever the Vice President and a majority of either the principal officers of the executive departments or of such other body as Congress may by law provide, transmit to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives their written declaration that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, the Vice President shall immediately assume the powers and duties of the office as Acting President.

Thereafter, when the President transmits to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives his written declaration that no inability exists, he shall resume the powers and duties of his office unless the Vice President and a majority of either the principal officers of the executive department or of such other body as Congress may by law provide, transmit within four days to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives their written declaration that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office. Thereupon Congress shall decide the issue, assembling within forty-eight hours for that purpose if not in session. If the Congress, within twenty-one days after receipt of the latter written declaration, or, if Congress is not in session, within twenty-one days after Congress is required to assemble, determines by two-thirds vote of both Houses that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, the Vice President shall continue to discharge the same as Acting President; otherwise, the President shall resume the powers and duties of his office.

Afghanistan and the return of the “Great Game”

This BBC article talks about the post-occupation (the most recent U.S. occupation, that is) geopolitical intrigue, or Cold War II as I think of it, that is developing in Afghanistan.

In December 2015, a senior Russian diplomat declared that “the Taliban interest objectively coincides with ours” in the fight against IS and that his country and the Taliban “have channels for exchanging information”.

Taliban sources also confirmed that the group’s representatives met Russians inside Russia and “other” countries several times over the past two years.

But Moscow’s current assertiveness in Afghanistan can also be seen as a tactic to put pressure on the US and to enhance its role and regional influence.

Taliban contacts with Russia and Iran might also help Pakistan to distribute and dilute the international pressure it is under for hosting the Afghan Taliban leadership.

10-Minute Neighborhood Analysis

This article from Kirkland, Washington describes in detail an interesting scoring scheme they applied to all of their neighborhoods. They have a good run-down on why walkable neighborhoods are good.

The ability to retain, create, and enhance 10 minute neighborhoods has benefits for users of the neighborhood and benefits for the community as a whole.

  • Health. Residents who walk or bike regularly are healthier and therefore walkable communities make it easier to live healthy lifestyles.  According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, people living in walkable neighborhoods get about 35 to 45 more minutes of moderate-intensity physical activity per week and are substantially less likely to be overweight or obese than people of similar socioeconomic status living in neighborhoods that are not walkable

  • Traffic. Residents with convenient access to local goods and services are less likely to drive.  If they do drive, they have a shorter travel distance.  The 10 minute neighborhood acknowledges the value to Kirkland’s transportation system of every trip not taken and every mile not driven.

  • Transit.  Better access to transit equates to more transit users.  Regional data show that people who live within a half mile of a transit node commute less often by single-occupant vehicle (SOV) with a higher percentage using transit, carpooling, and walking or bicycling to work .

  • Demographics.  21 percent of the population aged 65 and older does not drive – and that segment of the population is projected to grow significantly .  Older non drivers need options so they remain engaged with their communities.

  • Clean Air.  Less traffic means cleaner air and less greenhouse gas emissions.

  • Social Connectivity.  Pedestrian activity and local gathering places help build social cohesion and eyes on the street help people feel safer in their communities.

  • Market Forces.  Recent surveys indicate that a majority of Americans want to live in walkable neighborhoods served by good transit .  Those numbers are significantly stronger for younger Americans and those who plan to move in the future, a strong representation of the future real estate market.

  • Stronger Retail.  A local customer base is good for local businesses.

social interaction in cities

Here’s an interesting article from the University of Bern, Switzerland, on social interaction in cities. The engineer in me likes to see some hard data and theory applied in the social sciences.

Cities and the Structure of Social Interactions: Evidence from Mobile Phone Data

Social interactions are considered pivotal to urban agglomeration forces. This study employs a unique dataset on mobile phone calls to examine how social interactions differ across cities and peripheral areas. We first show that geographical distance is highly detrimental to interpersonal exchange. We then reveal that individuals residing in high-density locations do not benefit from larger social networks, but from a more efficient structure in terms of higher matching quality and lower clustering. These results are derived from two complementary approaches: Based on a link formation model, we examine how geographical distance, network overlap, and sociodemographic (dis)similarities impact the likelihood that two agents interact. We further decompose the effects from individual, location, and time specific determinants on micro-level network measures by exploiting information on mobile phone users who change their place of residence.

And here’s a more touchy-feely article in Vox on how the U.S. suburban development pattern discourages social interaction.

the key ingredient for the formation of friendships is repeated spontaneous contact. That’s why we make friends in school — because we are forced into regular contact with the same people. It is the natural soil out of which friendship grows…

This kind of spontaneous social mixing doesn’t disappear in post-collegiate life. We bond with co-workers, especially in those scrappy early jobs, and the people who share our rented homes and apartments.

But when we marry and start a family, we are pushed, by custom, policy, and expectation, to move into our own houses. And when we have kids, we find ourselves tied to those houses. Many if not most neighborhoods these days are not safe for unsupervised kid frolicking. In lower-income areas there are no sidewalks; in higher-income areas there are wide streets abutted by large garages. In both cases, the neighborhoods are made for cars, not kids. So kids stay inside playing Xbox, and families don’t leave except to drive somewhere.

I buy this about 75%. I am lucky to live and work in a highly walkable urban neighborhood, and I do have a lot of friendly spontaneous interactions with people around the neighborhood. I have a “scrappy” job where I bond with my co-workers, like soldiers in the trenches. I am also a middle-aged family person and somewhat of an introvert. Part of the reason I don’t have a lot of close adult friendships outside of work and family is that between work and family, I have all the human interaction I can really handle. If I have 15 minutes free on a given day, I would rather spend it alone than interacting with yet another person. I suppose this could change when the kids get a little older and/or when I don’t have to work so much, assuming I live long enough for these things to happen. So I’m just saying there are family pressures, financial and career pressures, and personality differences that influence these things alongside urban form.

Back to the first article, it suggests that high school, college, band camp, and even most workplaces might not be the best model of the most fulfilling and productive social interactions that can develop among adults in the best cities. In high school and college we tend to form small, tight-knit groups where most people in the group network only within the group. The first article above, if I am interpreting it correctly, describes a case where not only are individuals interacting frequently within a social network, but relatively open social networks themselves are interacting with each other as individuals within them interact in random and freewheeling ways. It’s wonderful. Now if you’ll excuse me I’m going to sit on my couch for a little while, watch some TV, unwind and recharge so I can handle the social interaction that will be thrown at me tomorrow.

The Great Equalizer

The Great Equalizer by David Smick book is #8 on the New York Times nonfiction best seller list. Here’s the Amazon description:

The experts say that America’s best days are behind us, that mediocre long-term economic growth is baked in the cake, and that politically, socially, and racially, the United States will continue to tear itself apart. But David Smick—hedge fund strategist and author of the 2008 bestseller The World Is Curved—argues that the experts are wrong.

In recent decades, a Corporate Capitalism of top down mismanagement and backroom deal-making has smothered America’s innovative spirit. Policy now favors the big, the corporate, and the status quo at the expense of the small, the inventive, and the entrepreneurial. The result is that working and middle class Americans have seen their incomes flat-lining and their American Dreams slipping away. In response, Smick calls for the great equalizer, a Main Street Capitalism of mass small-business startups and bottom-up innovation, all unfolding on a level playing field. Introducing a fourteen-point plan of bipartisan reforms for unleashing America’s creativity and confidence, his forward-thinking book describes a new climate of dynamism where every man and woman is a potential entrepreneur—especially those at the bottom rungs of the economic ladder.

Ultimately, Smick argues, economies are more than statistical measurements of supply and demand, economic output, and rates of return. Economies are people—their hopes, fears, dreams, and expectations. The Great Equalizer is a call for a set of new paradigms that inspire and empower average American people to reimagine and reboot their economy. It is a manifesto asserting that, with a new kind of economic policy, America’s best days lie ahead.

 

IBM’s Smarter Cities

What exactly has IBM been up to all this time with its Smarter Cities program? It’s been hard to figure out. The marketing hype and media coverage have seemed to die down a bit. But here is an article in Cities with some research on it.

An investigation of IBM’s Smarter Cites Challenge: What do participating cities want?

In 2010, IBM created the Smarter Cites Challenge to address critical issues of the 21st century through its digital expertise, in collaboration with city governments. Despite questions about the origin and intentions of IBM’s involvement, 130 cities from all around the world took up the challenge in the first five years. There is limited case study research available on a number of participating cities which has not been able to unpack cities’ rationale for working with IBM. This paper provides an index of all participating cities in the Smarter Cities Challenge, to understand the areas of interest in which urban governments have been seeking IBM’s consulting service. Findings present the state of smart city thinking in urban governments, and raise questions about the multidimensional integration, if any, across the areas of focus in which digital technologies are shaping contemporary cities.