Category Archives: Technology and Society

Humor, Popular Culture, Technology and Society

Back To The Stone Age

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A thirteen-year-old boy goes retro:

My friends couldn’t imagine their parents using this monstrous box, but there was interest in what the thing was and how it worked.

In some classes in school they let me listen to music and one teacher recognised it and got nostalgic.

It took me three days to figure out that there was another side to the tape. That was not the only naive mistake that I made; I mistook the metal/normal switch on the Walkman for a genre-specific equaliser, but later I discovered that it was in fact used to switch between two different types of cassette.

Another notable feature that the iPod has and the Walkman doesn’t is “shuffle”, where the player selects random tracks to play. Its a function that, on the face of it, the Walkman lacks. But I managed to create an impromptu shuffle feature simply by holding down “rewind” and releasing it randomly – effective, if a little laboured.

I told my dad about my clever idea. His words of warning brought home the difference between the portable music players of today, which don’t have moving parts, and the mechanical playback of old. In his words, “Walkmans eat tapes”. So my clumsy clicking could have ended up ruining my favourite tape, leaving me music-less for the rest of the day.

How did we survive?

Political Commentary, Science And Society, Technology and Society

Flint, Without Us

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It is returning to nature. A nice little photo essay.

There’s a quote from a New Yorker review of the book, The World Without Us:

After thousands of years, the Chunnel, rubber tires, and more than a billion tons of plastic might remain, but eventually a polymer-eating microbe could evolve, and, with the spectacular return of fish and bird populations, the earth might revert to Eden.

Why do I think that the reviewer would look forward to that? Except, of course, he or she wants an Eden without either Adam, or Eve.

Popular Culture, Technology and Society

Heyday Of The Accord

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I had an ’86 three-door LXi that I put over a quarter of a million miles on, all over the west. It still had its original clutch when I sold it, and never needed any major engine work (only problem that caused a roadside breakdown other than timing belts was a sheared distributor shaft once down in Orange County on the 405).

I thought they went downhill in the nineties — they got too big and too soft, and you couldn’t get a stick shift with a six cylinder–what was up with that? As far as I can tell, as far as Honda goes, the Civic is the new Accord.

Business, Economics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Science And Society, Technology and Society

The Case Against Waxman-Markey

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Here. Bottom line:

Waxman-Markey would impose costs at least 10 times as large as its benefits, would not reduce the deficit, and doesn’t even really cap emissions.

But other than that, it’s a great idea.

Not to mention that the bill is twelve hundred pages long. I wonder if they’ll be given an opportunity to read it?

[Afternoon update]

What this bill will and won’t do for the climate.

Technology and Society

A “Breakthrough” In Appetite Suppression

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Via Futurepundit:

The brain injection part isn’t exactly appealing. But surely some appetite-cutting compounds will be able to travel via the blood. After all, appetite is influenced by the hormone ghrelin (secreted epsilon cells of the pancreas and P/D1 cells of the stomach) and leptin (secreted by adipose tissues). So the blood does contain compounds that make it into the brain.

While we are living in an era with a high prevalence of obesity we are nearing the end of that era. 20 years from now I expect obesity to be rare in developed countries as drugs that suppress appetite hit the market.

So, if they can get around the “brain injection” part, sounds great. Right?

Not to me.

Let’s start with the fact that it is not our appetites, per se, that make us obese. Throughout history, humans with our appetites have not been, for the most part, obese.

It is a combination of our appetites with a body inherited by evolution to resist losing weight in times of scarcity, and plentiful high-glycemic carbohydrates unavailable to our pre-agricultural ancestors, and a lack of need to go running miles a day with a heavy load to bring home food. We are obese because food that is bad for us is cheap, we don’t exercise much any more because we have figured out how to do a living at a desk, and our bodies haven’t caught up.

But you know what?

I like my appetites. I think that appetites are one of the things that make us human. I like digging into a juicy filet mignon, a succulent lobster dipped in butter, an artichoke. I love the taste (and smell) of fresh bread coming out of the oven.

And you know what else? I really like engaging various of my bodily parts with those of another person of the opposite sex, even though it makes no sense, from an intellectual standpoint. I even like thinking about it, or looking at pictures of other people doing it (though not anywhere near as much as actually doing it). That’s an appetite, too. And one that decreases with age, but I haven’t noticed that it’s made me (or I imagine many others) any happier. And (at least from the literature) the age-related decrease seems to be increased in females, which doesn’t in any way enhance the happiness of many males for whom the decrease has been less, particularly when they are the only females available, sans adultery. That seems like a more worthy problem to attack than “reducing appetite.”

Yes, I know that some transhumanists (like Hans Moravec) want to be a robot. This has been the platonic ideal going back at least to…well…Plato. You know, the body distracts us from the higher values of the intellect…bla, bla, bla.

But does the intellect really make life worth living? The platonists, the transhumanists, would like to persuade us that it does, that properly implemented, the pleasures of the intellect will vastly exceed the base carnal pleasures of this rotting form.

Well, maybe. But even though I’m from Michigan, my darling Patricia is from Missouri. Show us.

Then, maybe.

But mere showing won’t be enough of course. We’d have to have a personal demonstration, in which thinking about…whatever…beats an orgasm, or even biting into a delicious meal.

Maybe suppressing appetites is the future, but I hope not, at least for the immediate future. I’d like to think that there are better redesigns of the body to prevent obesity. Because I like my appetite for food, and my appetite for other things, and if this is where technology is taking us, sign me…not up.

Of course, with the current administration, which clearly wants to put the government in charge of our health care, and which will be looking for ways to reduce the cost of such, and obesity being viewed as one of the primary causes of health-care costs, don’t expect that it will merely pay for appetite suppressants, brain injected or otherwise.

Expect them to be compulsory.