But in fact, I do not expect Rick to win the nomination, this time around. That is because Republicans always follow a very precise pattern in their nominations.

(1) if there is a recent or sitting Vice President available and running, they always choose him. (In fairness, the dems do that too, almost as consistently.)

(2) If there is no available veep, they then nominate the guy whose “turn it is.” The fellow who came in second for the nomination last time.  Reagan in 1980, Dole in ’96, McCain in 2008, etc.  Hence, following that rule, it will be Romney in 2012…

…only dig it… that means Santorum in 2016.  Was Heinlein off by only a little bit? I’ll conclude this series with a comment on that. Including a prediction for how the GOP base will deal with it when — the very second after he is nominated — Mitt Romney instantly charges for the Center as fast as he can.

But first, let’s get back to Rick Santorum, the gift that keeps on giving.

 == Rick’s Roll Goes On and On… ==

What’s he been saying lately?

State and federal governments should not have a role in operating schools.

No abortion even in cases of rape or incest. Women should “make the best out of a bad situation.”

Birth control is “harmful to women.”

The government should ban or refuse to pay even for pre-natal testing.

When Santorum’s press secretary, Alice Stewart, called Obama a “radical islamist“ to an open mike, was that just an innocent slip of the tongue?  Or an inadvertent, but Freudian-honest rolling-out of what she – and many Santorum supporters – commonly say and believe in private?

And it goes on. Did Rick call Obama Hitler? See how he denies it… then weaves a draw-your-own-conclusions tapestry that inescapably says exactly that.

== “Fairness” is When YOU Want More… ==

“Just like we have certifying organizations that accredit a college, we’ll have certifying organizations that will accredit conservative professors. If you are to be eligible for federal funds, you’ll have to provide an equal number of conservative professors as liberal professors.” See this interview with Santorum.

So, governments should not operate public schools, and big federal interference is bad… but it should hammer down on colleges to force them to hire 50% conservatives?  Wow.  What’s the principle here, Rick?  Fairness and equal time?

Hm… then why do the GOP and Fox scream bloody murder over any mention of restoring the old equal time rule in broadcast news?  The notion that the viewers deserve to see and hear rebuttals to outrageously partisan declamations on partisan cable “news” channels?

Why no opposing opinions or rebuttals… at all?  That’s the policy on Beck, Limbaugh, Fox&Friends, Hannity and so on.  Only the resident “adult” at Fox, Bill O’Reilly, has the guts to bring on some guests with challenging viewpoints. Rarely. You say it’s the same on the Left?  Not.  Jon Stewart has more opposition guests on his one show than the entire Fox network. He treats them courteously and hawks their books. They come back often and eagerly! There’s a word for what Stewart does. It is Courage.

And thus, those who do the opposite are cowards.

Heck, I’d settle for a 10% rule, because having tough, smart opposition voices just that often on Fox would demolish their hypnotic trance.  Rupert and Roger desperately fear the day their captive audience might hear alternative viewpoints. Or even — (shudder) — facts.

It seems that “equal time” is right and proper, depending entirely on who is getting “equalized.”

Oh but I saved the best for last. It is by far the most important aspect to all of this, even though it will strike many of you as troglodytic and obscure.  Because it shows where millions of our neighbors have been wandering, in their minds and in their increasingly fury-drenched attitude towards the rest of us..

== The role of religion: Rallying the faithful… vs the majority ==

Here’s the part that Rick Santorum considers paramount. And so we should take his word on that and spare the time to  pay close attention, because the moral and logical essence is astonishing.

Santorum proclaimed that mainstream Protestantism is “gone from the world of Christianity” — thereby dismissing all of the communions who are members of the National Council of Churches  as heretical, and thus classifying – by inclusion – all Americans who abide by mainstream Protestant sects such as Lutherans, Episcopalians and Methodists. By all means. link to hear his speech laying out how Satan personally seeks to destroy America, and has so far succeeded in corrupting our colleges and our mainstream Protestant churches:

“And so what we saw was this domino effect, once the colleges fell and those who were being educated in our institutions, the next was the church. Now you’d say, ‘wait, the Catholic Church’? No. We all know that this country was founded on a Judeo-Christian ethic but the Judeo-Christian ethic was a Protestant Judeo-Christian ethic. Sure the Catholics had some influence, but this was a Protestant country and the Protestant ethic, mainstream, mainline Protestantism, and of course we look at the shape of mainline Protestantism in this country and it is in shambles, it is gone from the world of Christianity as I see it.“

What a guy!  I’d be delighted… at one purely political level… if I weren’t also terrified.  This, after all, being the year that Papa Heinlein forecast the election of a radical fundamentalist “prophet of the lord” named Nehemiah Scudder.

Woof.  How do you answer stuff like that? Is the intention of all this to make half of Americans view the other half as purely satanic enemies?  For it is no less than that.  Can the United States of America govern itself when we’re no longer arguing over negotiated policy solutions, but over pure and essential damnation?

Before you shrug, consider what this means. These folks try not to say it before an open mike, but their pastors (e.g. of Sarah Palin’s church in Wassila) make plain that they both pray for and expect all of the events described in the Book of Revelation (BoR) to befall us in the very near future, and that those who do not hold to their exact doctrines are inherently in for grotesque torment and eternal damnation. (Do, by all means, read Revelation and see what they pray for, including “fire from the sky,” lavish agony for the vast majority of us, and an end to all democracy and to the United States of America.)

Many of us were already used to being consigned to that category by the BoR-fetishists. Only now Rick makes it clear — it includes a majority of his fellow citizens.

But let’s return to that bit about Satan personally having it in for the good old USA.  Consider it logically.

Let’s suppose that someone, say Satan — (or else an immensely rich foreign royal family with its eye on ending and replacing Pax Americana) — did conspire and plot to see the U.S. ruined.  Would the devil — or those princes — not want exactly this volcanic fury vented by Rick Santorum and his allies?

Raging, hate-propelled civil war? Demonizing our neighbors over any disagreement? An end to all chance for Americans to negotiate with one another as free minds, willing to learn and adapt in the face of evidence? To make us incapable of negotiating with our neighbors as calm adults.

Wasn’t that our strength, the eager optimism of our song?

And who’ll be laughing with delight the day that music dies?

He started by impugning President Ombama’s religious faith as “phony theology.” This is red meat, so central to the party faithful that a surrogate let slip what it really means, into an open microphone — the “radical muslim” fantasy that they share privately on the bus and plane.

But more on that in a bit.

Is Santorum the new “teflon candidate” to whom nothing bad will stick? Let’s start with the Phony Theology of environmentalism.

==  Elevating the Earth above People? ==

Now, completing 48 hours of grand assertions, Santorum proclaims that President Barack Obama is beholden to “radical environmentalists” and has a “world view that elevates the earth above man.”

Again and again, we see broad-brush assertions that are immune to testing by facts or experiment of falsification, because by their very essence they are about rhetoric, polemic, the world of subjective rage.

There IS an answer for this latest Santorum salvo.  Alas, it must be in terms that are rhetorical, polemical and subjective.  Yet, the pure truth.

Santorum claims that both Obama and the hated/satanic blue half of America elevate the Earth above people?

Wrong.  We elevate our great-grandchildren… and their great-grandchildren… above both short-term ripoff artists and dopes who pray for Armageddon.

Tens and hundreds of billions of people… future people… our descendants.  We want to save a viable planet — and a viable, vibrantly creative economy and a vigorously scientific civilization — for them.

When you strip away all the dross and distractions — like the insipid notion that any of this involves old-fashioned “left-vs-right — and when you strip away all the self-hypnosis incantations like “muslim” and “socialism” — what is left?  What’s the essential. core matter before us?

== The divide is not left/right… it is forward vs backward ==

Picture the big-money oligarchs who are stage managing this hysteria, hijacking the once-noble movement of Barry Goldwater…what do they have in common with the ground troops of the GOP, in their steepening spiral of frothing religious hysteria? Very little, except…

…the future.  Neither of them think about it, want it, care about it or believe in it. The populists in America’s latest Great Revival think the days of the Late Great Planet Earth are numbered, and they despise those who would tend it with careful attention to distant tomorrows. The oligarchs? If they had horizons extending beyond ten years, they would get rich the way Gates and Buffet do, with goods and services, and with some thought to the long range, as well. In both cases, the agenda is nostalgia.

Oh, I will concede that Newt wants a moon base.  But where else is the extended future – the Long Now – to be found, contemplated anywhere at all on the right?  Barry Goldwater used to think long term. But in those days, 40% of scientists called themselves Republican, instead of 5% today. A migration and exile that says it all.

Read more about how well Rick Santorum channels to the “future shocked” side of America — our neighbors who want no part of it.

Yes, there are also lefties, who “avatar” tomorrow with gloom.  I have always avowed that there are nut-jobs in that direction, too.  But those flakes are relatively rare and they do not own or operate an entire political party.  They don’t have the calamitous misrule of the 2000s decade to atone for. Those lefty flakes are not the same thing as Blue America.

The America that still thinks about posterity — and yes the posterity of our beloved fellow (red) citizens, as well. All of our descendants who will need a living Earth.

Solve for X: Google’s new TED-style project aims for technologic ‘moonshots’ to develop innovative, far-reaching solutions to the problems of tomorrow, covering topics ranging from transportation to agriculture, genetics to computing.  Google notes: “Moonshots live in the gray area between audacious projects and pure science fiction; they are 10x improvement, not 10%,” because we can’t afford to think incrementally…

…for the future is a steamroller bearing down upon us. In Megachange: The World in 2050, Lawrence C. Smith takes at big picture look at the megatrends and forces shaping the civilization’s next forty years. We will need to anticipate the accelerating effects of globalization, climate change, population growth, and increased demands on natural resources, particularly water (which the author calls Blue Oil), which are likely to exacerbate inequalities across the globe.

Looking even further ahead, Deep Future: The Next 100,000 Years of Life on Earth, by Curt Stager, explores the potential long range impact of climate change on our planet. Stager notes, “We face a simple choice in the coming century or so; either we’ll switch to nonfossil fuels as soon as possible, or we’ll burn through our remaining reserves and then be forced to switch later on…We are faced today with the responsibility of determining the climatic future that our descendants will live in.”

The future of space exploration is increasingly international—yet the U.S. has backed out of 5 joint projects with the European Space Agency. The 2013 NASA budget slashes planetary science by 20%, with Mars exploration taking a severe hit. (Fortunately, the James Webb Space Telescope avoided the axe.) NASA may abandon the joint NASA-ESA ExoMars missions scheduled for 2016 and 2018, as well as a joint venture to explore the moons of Jupiter. Europe is now courting Russia for the ExoMars mission. We need to show some consistency and commitment to our partners overseas… and how about some commitment to our heirs and descendants? The War on Science has gone too far–if we are to remain a forward looking civilization.

Universities are critical in preparing students for a rapidly changing world, yet undergraduate education has changed little over the last century—large lecture halls, blue books and expensive textbooks still prevail. Lawrence Summers notes that factual mastery, passive learning and individual effort should be of less consequence than analytical, cooperative, cross-disciplinary thinking. In the real world, fields such as science, business and government rely on an ability to collaborate and work together, yet at schools this broaches on ‘cheating.’ A recent study showed that replacing the lecture part of introductory physics with an interactive peer-based seminars increased comprehension by 20%. Moreover, this fits already-embedded American ways of education.

For too long we have been tolerant of planned obsolescence–for manufacturers know they can sell us a new and improved model in a year or two.  A lovely nugget from Christian Cantrell’s hard SF novel, Containment: He describes the “Nobel Prize winning concept of ‘End of Life Plans’ or ELPs” – instructions included with every single manufactured item, specifying what to do when the item is discarded. With parts no longer tossed in landfills, manufacturers were forced to develop products using recycled/converted components. Anticipating that components would be reused, manufacturers had an incentive to use longer-lasting materials that could be upgraded for next-generation models. Make it so!

More generally, how about an overhaul of our entire trash collection system? One concept straight out of Sci Fi: Pneumatic tubes to whisk away trash. Such a system is already in place in several European cities, as well as Roosevelt Island in New York City, processing nearly 6 tons a day. The upfront costs to develop infrastructure would be substantial, yet there are long term savings in personnel, vehicle and fuel costs, as well as CO₂ emissions. It currently takes 6000 heavy garbage trucks rumbling down already over-crowded streets to remove trash from New York City alone (The very model of inefficiency–these trucks get all of 3 miles per gallon!) Such pneumatic systems may be the future of municipal waste collection.

And the future of energy….The United States’ first new nuclear power plant in a generation won approval Thursday as federal regulators voted to grant a license for two new reactors in Georgia. Part of the promised “nuclear renaissance” to restart the road to energy independence… though with beefed up standards in the wake of the tsunami-caused problems in Japan. Finally (after 60 years) nukes will be required to have ample cooling liquid available on a purely gravity-supply basis. I mean geez, what’s so hard about that?

What do you get when you cross an accelerator with a nuclear reactor? The Accelerator-Driven Subcritical Reactor (ADSR) would use thorium instead of uranium. It doesn’t generate long-lived nuclear wastes and can even consume toxic wastes from traditional nuclear reactors.

==The Possibilities are Endless==

Now and when: some radical notions for the future of Australia. Many of these concepts, presented at the Venice Architecture Biennale, portray Australians moving onto and incorporating the ocean into the urban environment.

One way to build a lunar colony: print structures directly on the moon, using lunar rocks as raw material.

Things we were promised…By 2031 we’ll be flying personal blimp-jets.

Six inventors visualize the perfect toy–setting aside concerns over money, safety… and the laws of physics

Lifebook: a single device that combines every gadget you carry.

Enter the 2012 Create the Future Design Contest – which aims to stimulate engineering innovation in areas such as Sustainable Technologies, Transportation, Electronics and Consumer Products.

We’ve discussed this here before.  Yes, a recent Supreme Court case appears to have settled this matter, in principle. The imbalance of power between individual and state is so huge that the citizen must — must — retain the one thing that equalizes the playing field somewhat.  The truth. In practice, this will still be a hard fight.  I tend to worry much less about restricting what the government and other elites can see (how you gonna stop em?) than about preserving our right to look back!

But can we look?  Really?  We have the illusion of choice…but six media giants now control a staggering 90% of what we read, watch or listen to. These companies are: CBS, Viacom, Disney, GE, NewsCorp (which includes Fox and the Wall Street Journal) and Time Warner (which includes CNN, HBO, Time and Warner Bros). The largest owner of radio stations in the U.S., Clear Channel, operates 1,200 stations, airing shows by the likes of Limbaugh and Hannity, with programs syndicated to more than 5,000 stations. And who owns Clear Channel? Bain Capital purchased Clear Channel shortly before Mitt Romney’s 2008 presidential bid  One clear reason why conservative talk show hosts support Mitt? And weren’t we supposed to be more independent and broad in in our access to information, by now?

Well, at least now we know who to blame for what’s happened to the History Channel.

A horrifying brain drain. “At some Ivy League schools last year, up to half of the graduates went into finance or consulting, a move that could have a profound effect on the economy in the years to come.”  Crum, any civilization that does this to itself deserves what will happen next. The very brightest, who do NOT fall for this trap will simply leave the country. A genuine “brain drain.” Leaving the finance twits in charge of a society that explores nothing, invents nothing, produces nothing except paper short-term-parasitic profits. Ever hear of the Golgafrinchan B-Ark? Think about it.

Self censorship? Social media giant Twitter announced they would block messages on a country by country basis, to “to withhold content from users in a specific country while making it available to the rest of the world.” This policy will allow Twitter to grow internationally into countries with “different ideas about the contours of freedom of expression”, but won’t affect China or Iran where Twitter is already completely blocked.

An unprecedented loss of Arctic sea ice over the last few decades suggests we may soon see an ice-free Arctic summer. But then, as I have linked many times before, the US Navy has long known this and is making major plans. So are the Russians. Maybe THAT will get through to your crazy uncle.

Digital thievery is rampant! Have a look at the precautions that US corporate officers, scientists and government officials have started taking, before getting on a plane to China.  “If a company has significant intellectual property that the Chinese and Russians are interested in, and you go over there with mobile devices, your devices will get penetrated,” said Joel F. Brenner, former counterintelligence specialist. We’re not enemies!  But things are passing through a phase where it just makes sense to be careful.  You’ll actually get more respect when they know you’re smart enough to protect yourself and your endeavors. Seriously, read the description of what a cautious businessman does to stay digitally clean and no bring home spyware.

The media does seem to have a polarizing effect…Would ANY new data make you change your opinions on hot button issues such as the death penalty, abortion, same sex marriage, legalization of marijuana? Or God? Or the fact that US taxes are near a 100 year low? Any data at all? Read about opinions beyond the reach of data.

Cadmium, a carcinogen and neurotoxin, may be as hazardous to children as lead. Current regulations are based on threats to adults; recent studies show possible links with learning disabilities and retardation in children.

== Better Accountability through Visualizing our World==

Shining a light into the darkness: I knew I liked the guy, despite resenting the soul-sold handsomeness… The Satellite Sentinel Project (SSP), begun by George Clooney, is an attempt to use technology to deter civil war and atrocities against citizens in Sudan. SSP combines satellite images and field reports with Google Maps to track movements of troops and displaced people, bombed villages, mass graves and other evidence of large-scale violence, providing public access to updated information on these long-suffering areas.

An ever-reddening glow: NASA video depicts global temperature data over 130 years

Speaking of heating… this map shows hot spots for terrorist attacks within the U.S.–a third of attacks occur in urban areas.

How is water used worldwide? Researchers map a global water footprint detailing water usage. 92% goes to growing food, 40% toward the export of products.

Satellite data reveal the extent of China’s air pollution problem–finding dangerous levels of fine particulate matter (PM2.5, less than 2.5  microns).

Accountability on a local basis: the energy usage of New York’s buildings, visualized.

When 30,000 square feet isn’t enough…aerial views of mega-mansions. Even as the size of the average American house shrinks after peaking during the boom, several of the wealthy are building gigantic homes of 20,000 square feet and more.

==On the Technology Front==

 Virtual devices will read your hand motions and gestures and provide what you want—meaning technology will appear even more like…magic. If you hold up your hand, a map or keypad will appear, for you to retrieve or send data. Sensors on the ceiling will monitor your gestures, and respond.  I portray this in Existence…

CleanSpace One, an $11 million “Janitor Satellite” under development in Switzerland, would be the first of a series of craft launched to clear orbital debris, grabbing items with its robotic arm.  Read a better method in chapter one of my next novel.

Patrick Tucker suggests that Artificial Intelligence will be America’s next Big Thing, directing traffic, managing electrical grids and resources, aiding doctors, lawyers and police, analyzing satellite data, optimizing manufacturing and design, developing new medicines and cures, leading to a third Industrial Revolution. Yet, the roboticization of the factory floor will have human costs, as well. See Making it in America in The Atlantic.

Researchers make iron invisible to X-rays, using quantum interference.

==Miscellaneous Fiction/Film==

I’m quoted in this article on Prophets of Science Fiction–and the interplay between science and Sci Fi.

A few sci-fi-ish films from this year’s Sundance Film Festival.

Eeeek!  A “re-imagining” remake of the worst sci fi pile of drivel ever made… Space 1999!

Fascinating perspectives from Jonathan Dotse – an IT student, blogger, and science fiction writer based in Accra, Ghana. He discusses the future of African science fiction.

How does Science Fiction influence Public perception of science topics such as Genetic engineering, cloning, nanotechnology? See an article in Biology in Science Fiction.

Glimpse this new Nigerian sci fi film! Kajola.

Seriously? Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter. In this movie, that axe isn’t just for chopping down trees… and it looks as if it just might (unbelievably) be worth checking out!

Russian speakers, see a translation of my essay about The Uplift War.

Enough of a coolstuff dump for ya?  Well… the year has just begun…

In an earlier political posting I pointed out that the top federal income tax rate – for earned income – has seldom been lower than it is right now.. and the rate that Mitt Romney pays on dividends is half of that.  Federal taxes, in general, are at one of the lowest points since 1912… suggesting that our current national argument about taxes ought to at least feature commensurately lower rates of anger.  Sure, let’s negotiate how to simplify the system and make it more fair. But can we tone down the rage a little?

(Oh, but indignant fury is the whole point.  If it isn’t taxes, it will be something else.)

Above all, effective tax rates on the very wealthy are at their lowest since Teddy Roosevelt was president.

One response was sent in “That’s federal taxes! But state rates have gone up.”  Well, it’s a point that merits answering. So consider: (1) states vary a great deal, hence you are free to move to a low-tax state and I know many folks who have.  (2) Have a look at the Wiki site for “Tax Freedom Day.”

Tax Freedom Day 1971 to 2011 Source: Tax Foundation

Tax Freedom Day is the first day of the year in which a nation as a whole has theoretically earned enough income to fund its annual tax burden. It is annually calculated in the United States by the Tax Foundation—a Washington, D.C.-based tax research organization that is far, far from lefty, let’s say. Every dollar that is officially considered income by the government is counted, and every payment to the government that is officially considered a tax is counted.

Taxes at all levels of government—local, state and federal—are included.  Have a look at the site.  Even taking all state and local taxes into account and averaged, the US falls way toward the bottom of tax rates for industrialized nations.  And at rather low rates compared to American history.

Only now have a look at the deadline for a fix that looms ahead of us in January 2013.  The Bush era tax cuts, that were supposed to result in vanished deficits (via Supply Side magic) have instead simply vanished revenue while inflating asset bubbles and rewarding passive types of parasitic income,  Do, by all means, actually read this article in the New York Times.

“We are at a revenue level that is almost the lowest in 60 years as a share of national income, too low to fund the things that are required,” Mr. Conrad said.

In 2011, federal tax revenue as a percentage of the gross domestic product stood at 15.4 percent, the Congressional Budget Office said in January. That is up slightly from the previous two years, but otherwise is the lowest percentage since 1950. Federal spending last year, at 24.1 percent of gross domestic product, was on a par with 2009, but to see such levels before the recent recession, you have to go back to 1946 and the winding-down of World War II.

…and this, from later in the article:

“The Bush tax cuts, which totaled nearly $2 trillion over their first decade, remain highly controversial. Tax cuts in 2001 lowered income tax rates at all levels, to 35 percent from 39.6 percent for the highest income earners, and to 10 percent from 15 percent for the lowest bracket. They also doubled the size of the child tax credit and made it refundable for the working poor, while phasing out the tax on inherited estates and allowing affluent taxpayers to take more deductions and credits. Even Mr. Hubbard acknowledges that in some ways the cuts made the tax code more complex.

Another round of tax cuts in 2003 reduced most capital gains tax rates to 15 percent from 20 percent, while also taxing dividends at 15 percent. Before, dividends were taxed as ordinary income, meaning a 39.6 percent rate for affluent investors.

Mr. Conrad calls the tax cuts “a profound mistake for the country on almost every level.” Still, 2001 started as a heady year, with the Congressional Budget Office projecting a federal budget surplus for the coming decade totaling $5.6 trillion. Alan Greenspan, then the chairman of the Federal Reserve, worried that the federal debt would be eliminated too quickly, leaving the world with nothing to benchmark interest rates against because Treasury bonds would cease to exist.”

Really?  How charmingly naive and quaint.  And dismally stupid and an utter repudiation that such people should ever again be listened-to or allowed anywhere near power.

Read the article… and the suggested “reforms” that are being discussed. I am seriously unimpressed with most of them.  See my own suggestion on how the tax code can inarguably be simplified while avoiding the usual political wrangling. My “no losers” approach separates simplification from tax “policy” or who should pay more!  If we did this first, we’d have a sleek, sensible system in no time, and could then make policy adjustments that made sense.

Oh… but it gets worse, way worse.  See these charts revealing the “knee-capping of the U.S. middle class.”  And yes, this will be the issue, for the rest of 2012.  Above all, as I suggested last time, use all this as a basis for making real-money wagers with your tea party uncles.  But get them to write it down, first.

== Ultrafast Stock Trading ==

Following up another past-posting, where I touted a Transaction Fee as a way to let humans regain some footing in stock market trading… here’s a relevant recent study. “

Ultrafast Trades Trigger Black Swan Events Every Day, say Econophysicists. The US financial markets have suffered over 18,000 extreme price changes caused by ultrafast trading, according to a new study of market data between 2006 and 2011“

But nothing will convince the mutants of the City and Wall Street. Listen to these religious fanatics spouting fervent and totally un-based incantations about “market efficiency” and “hyper-liquidity” and denouncing “friction”…  then look at the bitter fruit of their tenure at the helm of our economy.  They are mad.  Eloquent!  But loony priesthoods often are. In fact, they are out of their cotton pickin’ minds… and sucking at our necks like lampreys. They are the worst enemies of true capitalism.

==  Political Miscellany ==

Get to know Rick Santorum. People look at this. Oh, seriously. I am glad he’s doing what he’s doing because it may finally make ten million sane-conservative “ostriches” lift their heads. But remember Nehemia Scudder.

An interesting… pessimistic… interpretation of why Americans are using a whole lot less gasoline than they used to.

But let’s finish with some optimism! My friend Peter Diamandis has an essay in Forbes, foretelling that science, entrepreneurial markets, innovation, startups, amateur enterprise and stunning breakthroughs in technology may soon unleash a tsunami of Abundance on the world, erasing poverty and helping to heal the planet, too!  Peter discusses why we are biologically programmed to view the would through a filter of anxiety, when, in fact:

“What does the world really look like? Turns out it’s not the nightmare most suspect. Violence is at an alltime low, personal freedom at a historic high. During the past century child mortality decreased by 90%, while average human life span increased by 100%. Food is cheaper and more plentiful than ever (groceries cost 13 times less today than in 1870). Poverty has declined more in the past 50 years than the previous 500. In fact, adjusted for inflation, incomes have tripled in the past 50 years. Even Americans living under the poverty line today have access to a telephone, toilet, television, running water, air-conditioning and a car. Go back 150 years and the richest robber barons could have never dreamed of such wealth.”

Peter goes on to describe tech wonders looming on the horizon.  I make many of them vivid in Existence (coming in June.) But I think he leaves out one reason for our frenzied waves of anger and fear, nowadays… because rage feels great!  Sanctimony and Self-righteousness are drug highs. They can have their uses.  But when they prevent our fellow citizens from even detecting good news? Or worse, when they turn our neighbors into active obstacles to progress?  Then these sick habits are worse than heroin.

== THE GREAT FURY OVER TAXES ==

To listen to Republicans, you would think we have the most oppressive tax rates ever, with the federal government hogging ever larger portions of the national economy.  Ever hear of Orwellian anti-truth?  That is where you repeat the exact opposite of the truth and people start believing it.

Top Federal Marginal Income Tax Rate From 1913 to 2011

But drop by and look at the actual facts. See this compilation of income tax rates.. Tax rates are at historic lows. And  this is for earned income. Rates for dividends and capital gains are even lower – by half - than what you see in the figure!

In the 99 years that we have had the income tax, rates for top earners were lower than they are today only twice: 

1)  during the 5 years before the US entry into the First World War in 1917, and

2) during the brief stretch from 1925 through 1930… when a massive asset value bubble pumped the economy into the Great Depression.

Also note this. They are LOWER for the middle class, under Obama, than they were under Bush. The “Obama tax hikes” are purely mythical.

That’s it. Today’s top rates are currently lower than at any time since 1930… and ironically that includes half of the HOOVER Administration preceding FDR. In other words, the hiking upward was first done by the same 1930 Republican Congress that brought us the Smoot-Hawley Tariffs!

Just to make this clear, so you rub it in your crazy-as-Fox uncle, income tax rates are lower than at any time in 80 years.

The other big fact is the fraction of U.S. national GDP taken by the federal government.  Fox’s uncles swear that this is at an all-time high. In fact, the federal share of GDP is at its lowest since 1950.

Be entrepreneurial.  Make Adam Smith proud and use all this to make money. Seriously. Lure your nearest Tea Partier to make grand declarations about the oppressiveness of recent tax rates and the growing federal share of the economy and then demand a wager!  Only… get it in writing.

== Chilling Effects ==

What exactly are your online rights? What protections are offered under the First Amendment and intellectual property laws? Here are details expanding on last time:  Chilling Effects offers an extensive database of info about copyright and trademark infringement, fan fiction, cease and desist notices, issues of anonymity and freedom of expression. A joint project of the Electronic Frontier Foundation and Law Schools at Harvard, Stanford, …Berkeley and the George Washington School of Law, Chilling Effects is a first stop to determine your legal rights in the on hot issues in the ever-evolving online world.

I’ve been known to differ over matters of emphasis with my friends at EFF. I am far less worried about what governments and the mighty “see” about me — and history shows little hope of stopping them — while I am more vexed and angry over government and the mighty hiding from citizen supervision. Still this is a good and important move and I am glad these folks are doing things like this!

Most civil servants… and even a lot of politicians… are sincere. They believe they are protecting us and/or defending freedom. The problem (for now) is that they can be counted on – via human nature – to have the inherent reflex of rationalizing how they must wield power for the greater good and must evade (some) accountability of the kind that might hamper them in doing their jobs.

1) They (and we) must be convinced that what’s important is to defend and promote… the secular trend toward a more open world. The reason is clear and it goes beyond mere “goodness” of openness. It is the simple fact that our type of society is invigorated by the effects of transparency (though individual leaders are often severely inconvenienced) while all the cultures that oppose our way suffer from severe-to-lethal damage when washed in light. That is too great an advantage to ignore, even if you are a realpolitik-cynic.

2) Given that this secular trend is essential… and that human nature works against it… are there forms of sousveillance – or shining light upward – that can be applied to our own elites that will still leave them unimpeded in the practical fulfilling of their duties? Short term tactical secrecy is still vital for the effectiveness of military, police and Homeland Security functions, among others.

In EARTH I portray the legal sequestration of information being limited to short, 5 year terms unless a longer term is purchased at considerable dollar cost. In other words, there is a built-in bite and disincentive to claiming longer periods of secrecy, and with most secrets kept at the shorter, 5 year term, you have a reflex to say “I’d better behave generally well… or at least well enough to be forgiven… since this will all come out.”

3) As it happens, there are some lovely potential innovations that could increase our confidence in supervision while ensuring minimal interference in day-to-day operations. I talk about some of them elsewhere. 

== Clint Eastwood… Democrat? Or American? ==

Has there begun a jobs renaissance in America, especially in manufacturing?  There are definite signs of “in-sourcing” taking place.

Oh but that segues into Clint Eastwood’s Superbowl Chrysler commercial… and the subsequent Republican fire storm against him, by Karl Rove and others, for daring to suggest that the “bailout” of Detroit was actually a resounding success. 

Rove sniped “… Chicago-style politics, and the President of the United States and his political minions are, in essence, using our tax dollars to buy corporate advertising and the best-wishes of the management which is benefited by getting a bunch of our money that they’ll never pay back.”

Say what? Except that we’re getting every single penny back. Plus many millions more in taxes on now-profitable American companies that Rove and his ilk wanted to let go belly up? (After they did urge much bigger bailouts for their Wall Street friends.) Refusal to admit that the automaker loans were anything other than a towering, spectacular, 200% success is the act of a deranged mind.

Oh… BTW. Clint has said “I don’t recall ever voting for a democrat.” If a man like that has switched sides, it is because he has sanely realized that the GOP has “left him.”

== Some Fascinating Political Miscellany ==

Here’s a fascinating one: “The lesson of the Great Crash was that unequal enrichment provokes asset bubbles, excessive demand for debt and, finally, economic failure. Now we are painfully learning that again.”  Read the whole article by Stewart Lansley.  But a key point.  The massive wealth that has been redistributed upward to a thousand or so billionaires and top corporations is not generating jobs or economic activity at anywhere near the same pace as the same wealth would have, if it remained with the middle class. Those “job creators are mostly sitting on mountains of cash.  Banks, flush with reserves, are lending very little. Cash-rich companies are neither building productive capital (supply-side’s justification) nor doing much hiring.

Sign the petition offered by Senator Bernie Sanders, for a Constitutional Amendment that declares that Corporations are not the same as people and can be regulated by Congress and the States.  I also recommend Kent Pitman’s blog on this topic.  

On the lighter side…. In New Hampshire there was an event carried on C-Span… the “lesser candidates’ forum” featuring 13 Democrats running against President Obama (all it takes is $1000 in NH) and 25 or so lesser known Fepublicans. See an article… but it pales next to the videos, including one of the “very silly party” candidate wearing a boot on his head, named “Vermin” who promises every American a pony.

Look at how a transparency (and tech-empowered) citizen hero caught villains with his flying drone. Snapping aerial photos of an illegal river of blood pouring from a slaughterhouse into a river.   Exactly what I spoke of in The Transparent Society  and especially the citizen action smart mobs I portray in my next novel!  

Recall my earlier blog urging the establishment — or rather RE-establishment — of the 90 year old transaction fee for financial trades?  At 0.1% per trade, this would scarcely be noticed by you or I, but would lessen the huge advantage grabbed by giant Wall Street houses through massive computerized trading systems.  Well, things are moving fast.  The French are now siding with the Germans in enacting such a fee.  The British conservative government, protecting the “City” bankers who got western civilization into this fine mess, are balking hard.

An interesting – if biased in-favor – article about President Obama does clarify matters as to whether he has either been a “socialist” or “betrayed liberals.”

And again…. Nehemia Scudder supporters! Order your bumper sticker!  Seriously, get people talking. It is a meme worth spreading. 

Or scroll through the stunningly beautiful, thought-provoking… and sexy… newest Farley work… “First Word.” And I may have a very special Farley-related announcement  soon!

==More on Fantasy and SF==

I enjoyed the guest essay, A Far Green Country, that fantasy Author Catheryn Valente contributed to Charlie Stross’s blog.  I found many of her insights and metaphors fascinating and fun, such as why magic realism as a sub-genre seems to crop up especially in countries ruled by brutal despotisms.

Nor is magical thinking solely the province of non-technological minds.  I agree that the nerdy-techno “singularity” is – at root – just a modern manifestation of magical-transcendentalism.  Indeed, our 21st Century America is awash in mystics!  The technological illiterates among them either wallow in the Book of Revelations or lefty-Gaian nostalgism or else solipsistic AynRandianism,  Those who are tech-empowered shift their transcendentalism to what’s been called the “rapture of the nerds.”  Same stuff though, when you dig deep to the level of personality, and thousands of years old.

I found the anecdote about Cotton Mather and obsession with the Rapture erudite, hilarious, persuasive and rather moving!

Still, in the end, I found Cat’s missive troubling.  We all know there IS a difference and distinction between Fantasy and SF. Simply pointing the finger at some sci fi and saying “that’s also magical thinking!” is not a truly helpful step toward understanding.  Cat knows very well that there is a lot of science fiction that explores the processes of change in human civilization, thought and nature without pleading a transcendent dispensation or rapture.

No, the root element is right there in that word “change.” Science fiction borrows many elements from the mother genre – fantasy — elements of boldness and the fantastic that date back to Homer & Gilgamesh. But sci fi then rebels against all literary foundations by embracing change.  Even when it warns against BAD change it is relishing, exulting, expanding upon what Einstein called the “gedankenexperiment” or thought experiment.

When SciFi goes “whatif” it takes the sacred word seriously.

 Fantasy is almost perfectly encapsulated by the presumption of changelessness.  Oh, kingly rulers my topple and shift, but the abiding assumptions and social castes generally do not. This is why, despite her dragons and bards and medieval crafts, Anne McCaffrey proclaimed loudly that “I am a science fiction writer!”  Because her characters know that change is coming.  Some resist, many are eager to bring it on as fast as they can.  And the future on Pern will have both dragons and flush toilets.  Songs and tapestries and universities and hyperdrive ships.

Terry Pratchett writes science fiction because his discworld (borne through space by a mythical turtle) has something called progress.  People are waking, rising up. George Martin’s depressing Game of Thrones saga has very little magic in it, but it consigns the peasants to endless, endless, endless misery and feudal oppression, with absolutely no hope of progress.  It is part of the longer/older tradition stretching back to Homer. It is fantasy.

I go into this elsewhere in my essay,  The Difference between Science Fiction and Fantasy.

But other than that…terrific article.  Thanks Cat, I learned a lot.  I must look up your books.

== And Miscellaneous Cool Stuff! ==

Watch this segment of Neil deGrasse Tyson about America’s decline amid the changing landscape of modern science. I mean it.  Watch this and make your uncles and cousins watch it. Half of our economic growth since WWII came from science and technology. This last decade was the first in 60 years in which the US did not stun the world with some terrific “new thing” that let us get rich enough to then buy megatons of crap from foreign factory workers and uplift a new world middle class. The Fox War on Science is nothing less than pure, unadulterated treason.

No more Virtual reality headsets or helmets: DARPA is developing megapixel augmented reality contact lenses that will allow users to focus on both faraway objects and images placed very close to the eye. I portray this in EXISTENCE.

Too pretty for words. Gorgeous planets in drops of water.

Comedian — Dara O’Briain — opines on science and quackery. Brilliant, utterly brilliant: “The difference is that science knows it doesn’t know everything. If it thought it knew everything it would stop.”

Some of us, including fellow author John Shirley, used to muse about the possibility of using a plasma blaster to turn trash into component atoms–a trash DISINTEGRATOR. It’s apparently energy efficient and could solve many environmental problems.

What exactly are your online rights? What protections are offered under the First Amendment and intellectual property laws? Chilling Effects offers an extensive database of info about copyright and trademark infringement, fan fiction, cease and desist notices, issues of anonymity and freedom of expression. A joint project of the Electronic Frontier Foundation and Law Schools at Harvard, Stanford, Berkeley and the George Washington School of Law, Chilling Effects is a first stop to determine your legal rights in the on hot issues in the ever-evolving online world. I’ve been known to differ over matters of emphasis with my friends at EFF.  I am far less worried about what governments and the mighty “see” about me — and history shows little hope of stopping them — while I am more vexed and angry over government and the mighty hiding from citizen supervision.  Still this is a good and important move and I am glad these folks are doing things like this!

Former PA Senator and Presidential candidate Rick Santorum is at least no hypocrite. He is up-front about the anti-intellectualism that has become a central theme in the Republican Party. Watch this clip of Santorum telling people to stop donating to colleges because college indoctrinates kids against religion. (Don’t most Ivy league schools have a seminary?) Well, in fact, a college education doesn’t eliminate faith. It does, however, tend to decrease confidence that the Earth is 6000 years old. And the percent who watch Fox does steeply decline.

If you think wealth is concentrated in the United States, just wait till you look at the data on campaign spending. In the 2010 election cycle, 26,783 individuals (or slightly less than one in ten thousand Americans) each contributed more than $10,000 to federal political campaigns. Combined, these donors spent $774 million. That’s 24.3% of the total from individuals to politicians, parties, PACs, and independent expenditure groups. Together, they would fill only two-thirds of the 41,222 seats at Nationals Park the baseball field two miles from the U.S. Capitol. When it comes to politics, they are The One Percent of the One Percent.

A Sunlight Foundation examination of data from the Federal Election Commission  reveals a growing dependence of candidates and political parties on the One Percent of the One Percent, resulting in a political system that could be disproportionately influenced by donors in a handful of wealthy enclaves. (And remember, this is just the up-top data and does not include Super Pacs!)

One percent of one percent… that is about the ratio of nobility in feudal societies.  welcome back to the human normal.  The Enlightenment was cool while it lasted, hm?

The rationale for that immense tax cut for (mostly) rich investors was simple and alluring – that super-low rates would entice more of the rich to invest in companies within the U.S., helping them to increase their productive capacity and hire more workers. Moreover, the resulting boom in economic activity would then result in so much new tax revenue, even at low rates, that deficits would disappear.

Let’s put this in context with a term you may have heard. “Supply side” economic theory maintained that this flow of investment capital would pump up the factory end of things, increasing the supply of goods and services, offering them cheaper, thus stimulating demand.

In contrast, the standard Keynsian “demand side” model was to fight recession by ensuring that poor and middle class folks had enough cash (“high-velocity” money) in their pockets to buy – or “demand” – goods and services. Whereupon producers would be drawn into greater production.

For a more detailed description of the differences between these two economic models, see my earlier missive  A Primer on Supply-Side vs Demand-Side Economics. (It really is one of the top issues of our day and an informed citizen should know about it.) Here in this place, I’ll try to be brief.

Who was right? Blatantly, the Keynsian approach worked in the 1940s, when massive government spending on WWII resulted in a boom that ended the Great Depression.  A boom that then continued for 30 years, till Vietnam crushed it against a wall. Throughout that period, high tax rates and stimulative spending seemed to work, whenever the economy needed a little help. Moreover, during that era, a very flat social structure – (CEOs earned only a few times what factory workers did) – combined with the most rapid growth of the middle class and the most vibrant era of startup capitalism in human history.

That does not make Keynsianism perfect! Critics like Friedrich Hayek, have indeed exposed some faults and blunders that later Keynsians, like Paul Krugman, openly admit and have striven to correct. Still, the Demand Side approach can point to many clearcut successes.

In particular, it is plain that during recessions, when economic activity lags and deflation looms, what you want is “high velocity” money in circulation – money that will pass from buyer to seller and then to another seller and so on.  Not money that just sits.

Does Supply Side have a similar track record? Not even remotely.  Not even once. Simple charts – and hard conclusions from the Congressional Research Service – show that the Supply Side assertion was… and is… utter mythology.  None of its predicted effects ever happened.  And let me reiterate.  Not ever, even once.

Specifically, cuts in tax rates for dividends and capital gains have never had any long-term effects upon capital investment, since records were kept in the United States.  (See this cogent article putting the myth to rest, once and for all. Also my article: A Primer on Supply-Side vs. Demand-Side Economics.)

In fact, this is no surprise, for several reasons:

1) Supply Side assumes that the rich have a zillion other uses for their cash and thus have to be lured into investing it!  Now ponder that nonsense statement. Roll it around and try to imagine it making a scintilla of sense! Try actually asking a very rich person.  Once you have a few mansions and their contents and cars and boats and such, actually spending it all holds little attraction.  Rather, the next step is using the extra to become even richer. Naturally, you invest it.  Whatever the tax rates, you invest it, seeking maximum return.

Instead of enticing the rich to invest, these super low dividend and capital gains rates simply used money taxed from middle class wage earners to give bonuses for speculations wealthy folks were doing anyway.  If anything, the only major effect, other than budget deficits, was a pumping up of asset value bubbles.

2) Now to be sure, some of the rich … a few… put a fair amount of their wealth into truly bold and risky new enterprises.  I know such men and women, who engage in Venture Capitalism or starting up creative new enterprises. And just so you know that I’m no socialist I believe this kind of investment truly should be encouraged by taxing it at a very low rate!  Not only because of the risk, but also because equity shares that are bought de novo directly from a new firm actually deliver nearly all of that value directly into capitalization and company development.

In contrast, most exchanges through the NYSE or NASDAQ are purchases from other stock-owners who happen to disagree with you about prospects for future capital gains and dividends. It is just as much a betting/gambling system as any Vegas casino, Your trades may marginally raise or lower the posted price, allowing the company to raise a little capital on the side, but almost nothing from your stock transaction actually goes to the company itself, or into new products or plants and equipment.

(Hence, that kind of investing – by far the largest portion – helps industry only at appallingly low levels of efficiency, but diverts management into spending nearly all its time trying to bribe stockholders with short term benefits, ignoring long-term company health.)

No wonder Adam Smith himself expressed contempt for passive investments that he called “rents”… compared to investments in which the owner actually gets involved in starting up or entrepreneurial development of long term company or enterprise health.

3) So what about “targeted investing”?  The towering hypocrisy of supply side tax cuts for the rich is that they are claimed (without a scintilla of evidence) to help create jobs. But then, why treat investments overseas equally to those made in domestic companies? President Obama proposes narrowing the super-low rates to U.S. companies that are (a) startups, or (b) demonstrably adding jobs, or (c) investing directly in new equipment or R&D.  For this he is derided for “picking winners and losers”… even though the list of targeted tax breaks for GOP-favored industries like coal and oil are myriad. (and outrageous.)

4) In fact, we spoke earlier about how stock and equities markets have lately become the tail wagging the dog.  Instead of serving the capital needs of companies, firms like Mitt Romney’s Bain Capital show that productive corporations making goods and services are now like cattle, farmed by Wall Street, to be bled or dissected at whim.  Nor is the whim even human anymore! Most trades are now propelled by hyper-aggressive, parasitical “flash trading” computer programs that vastly amplify volatility, sap investor earning potential, and threaten our entire economic system in a dozen ways.

5) The reduction of dividend and capital gains tax rates almost to zero has coincided with the rapid ending of the relatively flat social structure that we inherited from the Greatest Generation of the 1950s and 1960s.  Back then, the rich managers of major corporations earned only ten or twenty times what factory workers got, a situation that still exists in Japan. Only now, American wealth disparities are approaching levels not seen since the American Revolution.

The last thing that the GOP or Fox wants you to do is look across the last 6000 years.  The class that they call “job creators” used to have another name. Lords.

6) The outrageous inherent unfairness of passive dividend-clipping getting far better tax treatment than earned wages is inherently suspect.  It is exactly what you would expect rich and powerful men to lobby for, whether or not their supply side rationalizations were true!  It should be no surprise that, in our money-drenched political system, those with such power and influence have benefited immensely.

But are the arguments and rationalizations valid at all?  At minimum, supply-siders should bear some burden of proof.  Their experiment has been run, now, for more than three decades, and never once has their core predication come true… that cutting taxes on the rich will result in increased overall revenues and a vanishing federal deficit.  The results are utterly conclusive.

Supply side is disproved, top to bottom.

What we need in this depression – and by most of the metrics it has been a depression, not a recession* – what’s needed is what ended the last one. The circulation of high velocity money that goes hand to hand very quickly, generating economic activity with every transaction. Not the exact opposite, money that sits in portfolios, not helping capitalize industry but simply fostering the aggrandizement of a parasitic caste.  One the the founding father of free enterprise – Adam Smith himself – quite despised.

“All for ourselves and nothing for other people, seems, in every age of the world, to have been the vile maxim of the masters of mankind. As soon, therefore, as they could find a method of consuming the whole value of their rents themselves, they had no disposition to share them with any other persons.”

Smith is not talking about charity, but the vigor of trade.  In this case, we “share” by buying from one another.  The middle class is very good at that.  It is the middle class that – assisted prodigiously by technology and science – propelled our economy to be the wonder of the world.

It is the middle class who should get whatever tax benefits can be doled out.  They’ll use it to make small startups.  They’ll use it to educate bright, competitive kids.  They’ll spend it!

They are the real “job creators.”

The same site has republished a more colorful version of my essay on “Who Wants Immortality?”

While we’re on the subject. Do you know a fair-sized group that might want me to speak for them when I go on a book tour for EXISTENCE in June?  Cities included for sure will be Seattle, Portland OR, the SF Bay Area, and LA.  Other possibilities – New York, Boston etc, if there’s enough interest, plus points in between. Have a look at a list of the public talks I’ve given over the last few years (and go to the bottom for the happy testimonials!)

Osiame Molefe a young columnist at South Africa’s Daily Maverick, wrote passionately about the need for moderate grownups within the ruling African National Congress to stand up for good government against radical leaders setting up “feudal fiefdoms.” In making his case, Mr. Molefe cites and quotes extensively from my novel The Postman, suggesting that, in the long run, the only thing that matters is normal men and women standing up, as citizens, and taking responsibility.

== Toward a Confident, Scientific Civilization ==

A report titled the “The Competitiveness and Innovative Capacity of the United States,” warns in stark terms that “some elements of the U.S. economy are losing their competitive edge.”  A restored emphasis on science and technology is a major part of any solution.

Meanwhile, a compilation of public opinion polls commissioned by Research!America, demonstrates increasing public support for research and innovation to improve health, create jobs and boost the economy.

How best to nurture positive attitudes?  Rob Sawyer delivers a wonderful online appraisal of the importance of science fiction, especially in mass media, as a way to experiment with ideas and comment on social dilemmas. In the course of this amazingly cogent performance, Rob reaches at a conclusion very similar to mine… that much of this transformative power has been frittered and ruined by the pablum mentality toward science fiction that was engendered by Star Wars.  His critique is a bit different, yet related to my own in Star Wars on Trial – and my earlier Salon Magazine article – about how George Lucas’s cycle wound up betraying the world’s most daring and exciting and progressive storytelling genre. And undermining a civilization that’s been very very good to all of us. Including George Lucas.

== And Up With Science Fiction! ==

Also joining the fight for the good stuff… famed author and literary lion Ursula K. LeGuin stood up for her home genre of science fiction with a roar: “To define science fiction as a purely commercial category of fiction, inherently trashy, having nothing to do with literature, is a tall order. It involves both denying that any work of science fiction can have literary merit, and maintaining that any book of literary merit that uses the tropes of science fiction (such as Brave New World, or 1984, or The Handmaid’s Tale, or most of the works of J.G. Ballard) is not science fiction. This definition-by-negation leads to remarkable mental gymnastics.” Good for her.

And the British Library is holding an exquisite exhibition on the history of Science Fiction Literature, through September.  I would love to attend.  Look at this excellent video about this event, featuring the erudite China Miéville.

See an “exam” for would-be fantasy novelists. If you answer “yes” to even one of the 69 cliches, then sorry. You’re great epic isn’t original and groundbreaking.  It is derivative copycatting hackwork.  I think #4 is a little unfair and too broad… but it does serve up a warning to do it in a new way. On the one hand, many of the cliches fit Joseph Campbell’s storytelling prescription.  On the other hand, Campbell sucks. While reading (and chuckling) note how many of these howlers are core elements of Star Wars!

A thought-provoking essay by Brad Torgerson about why fantasy has taken off while science fiction book sales may have languished.

== Is Internet Freedom Endangered? ==

The short answer? Always.

More specifically, I’ve been asked my opinion, as “Mr. Transparency,” about the Stop Online Piracy Act or SOPA.  Naturally, I opposed this absurd over-reach that portended to strangle internet freedom by putting unsupportable burdens on carriers and linkers to information.  And yet, my stance is not relexive but reflective and I hope that you, too, will ponder the complexity we must navigate.

The Internet carries a lot of illicit copyrighted information. My books appear on several pirate sites and, for the record, I ask that they stop; I got kids in college.) Yet – Julian Sanchez argues the overall economic impact of online piracy has been wildly inflated – the most pirated movies also tend to be top at both box office & DVD sales. The most impacted industries (music, movies, books) have outperformed the overall U.S. economy lately. So should we yawn? It’s complex. Without IP, the US could never afford to lift the world by buying goods. (Hence overseas IP thieves are cutting their own throats.) And IP was an innovation to foster openness.  Want a return to rampant trade secrecy? OTOH – SOPA would have strangled internet freedom. We need to be thoughtful, not reflexive.

== Fascinating Miscellany ==

See an amazing list of predictions made 100 years ago by a very savvy writer, amazingly on-target. Especially since the heady optimism of 1911 hit a hard wall in 1914. Still, call out the predictions registry!  Oh… There is one last peculiarity to Watkins’ article. Every one of his predictions involved an improvement in the lives of Americans. He saw only positive change in the new century.  Note this as an artifact of 1911… before the Titanic and before the calamities of 1914 smashed optimism like a bug.  Will we ever get it back?

Have a look at this Kickstarter project… to create a “sousveillance App” for android smartphones called Help! Turn it on and live audio and video stream to a safe place till you shut it off.  If the feed is interrupted by damage or power failure or interference, an email goes to your contact person offering the stored feed up till the moment it was lost.  Use it for alibis, in cases of danger or just to record that encounter with authority.  (If you sign up, say I sent you!)

A couple of very beautiful astronomical perspectives. The Known Universe and Hubble Ultra Deep Field 3D.

Kanzi, a fun-loving male bonobo, has figured out how to cook his food with fire and even to light fires with matches.  All right, that’s halfway uplifted.  Shall we finish the job?  Ah Fiben Bolger was my best character ever!

“War Correspondent”  or “WarCo” is a first-person-shooter game in development in which the player holds a camera instead of a weapon, gaining points not only fore surviving and filming the most dramatic and dangerous moments, but also for followup interviews and report editing.  An altogether amazingly cool notion.  It leverages against ideas that resonate with my own The Transparent Society … and with Peter Gabriel’s Project Witness.  I can’t wait to offer it to my son and to try it myself.  And to offer my support.

Fascinating/fun artistic recapitulation of the rise of human civilization… and then (in the eyes of this comet expert) the highlight of a worrisome encounter with a comet!  Deep-down- all the way to the symbolism of human “seeds” crossing the cosmos – it is a love-ode to human ingenuity and unquenchable zest to survive and persevere.

See a cogent, well-written and unabashedly transhumanist article by Valkyrie Ice about the future of graphene computing (that may accelerate Moore’s Law), the home-fab revolution, and… sexbots. Published on Accelor8or

Brazil has undergone a demographic shift so dramatic that it has astonished social scientists. Over the past 50 years, the fertility rate has tumbled from six children per woman on average to fewer than two — and is now lower than in the United States. This may be of cosmic importance.  Yes, cosmic. Because Malthus may be more correct on other planets than he has been for us. A fluke in human nature has meant that everywhere women get health, freedom, prosperity and hope, the vast majority choose small families. This seems counter -darwinian! It may also save us all, giving us time to repair and save the world and cross the danger gap into star-traveling levels of wisdom. Might most other races get trapped into overpopulation busts, as portrayed in 1960s sci-fi and gloom books? Might this explain the Fermi Paradox of missing starfarers? In fact, it may not last more than a couple generations, so let’s use this breather well.

Dolphins have been using iPads, so it’s really about time our primate cousins adopted the technology: Orangutans use iPads to video chat with Friends in other zoos! Now the big questions.  Will this help to reduce ennui at the zoo? Or to nail down simian and cetacean intelligence? Will this help to sell scientists and the public on Uplift? Will the orangs use Face Time to organize their own Simian Spring?  And does this qualify as one for the Predictions Registry?

We seem to be getting amazingly close to the $100 laptop (or pad) per child.

100 Skills Every Man Should Know: The Instructions (With Videos!) – from Popular Mechanics

== SCIENCE BLIPS! ==

Americans think science will save the economy!

Technology addiction: evolution or enslavement?

9 amazing exoplanets

UCSD researchers have been developing fascinating devices that can self-propel, even though they are microns in size. The latest use tiny self-propelled rocket motors that can zip around an acidic environment, like the human stomach, without the need for any external fuel.  I’ve met these guys.  Amazing stuff.

The European Southern Observatory’s plan to begin construction of the world’s largest telescope — the European Extremely Large Telescope — will take a big step forward; its primary mirror will be a staggering 138 feet (42 meters) wide. For comparison, the Keck Observatory in Hawaii has a mirror that measures 33 feet (10 meters) wide. But don’t count out the yanks, — Caltech (my alma mater) leads a consortium to put an almost equally prodigious 30 meter device on Maua Kea in Hawaii.

ResearchGate is a new social network for scientists.  One grasps what they intended the name to mean.  But that secondary implied meaning does sound worrisome!

Visit your travel agent to book a flight to space!

What mystifies Dr. Hawking? Women are a mystery, he says.

Check out a lovely little epiphany… an optimistic (super!) look at the newxt 40 years, written by someone who hasn’t had the joyful spirit of ambition snuffed by grouches of right and left.

Meteor in Titan’s atmosphere?

From fussilli to quadrefiori: The complex mathematics and geometry of pasta

One of many interesting series podcasts about science developments may be the Sentient Developments site of my friend George Dvorsky.  Give it a listen!

==Can We Get Smarter? ==

I won’t be the first… but… transcranial direct current stimulation or TDCS, can be used to improve language and maths abilities, memory, problem solving, attention, even movement.  “”You require effort and hard work to learn. It is just that you get more out of your effort. And because it is cheap, low tech, easily affordable, it could be widely available. This addresses the objection that it will introduce inequality and unfairness. It could be available and should be available to all, if it is safe and effective.”

Another possibility? Optimum intervals  to pulse serotonin to maximize a protein that seems to be involved in memory? The optimal protocol, it turned out, was not the usual, even-spaced one, but an irregular series of two serotonin pulses emitted 10 minutes apart, then one five minutes later, with a final spritz 30 minutes afterward. With this regimen, interaction between the two enzymes rose by 50 percent—an indication that the learning process was operating more efficiently. Very preliminary, but suggests steady but irregular learning may be better than cramming! Read the article in Scientific American.

Well, we’ll see.  But humanity could use a “brain wave.” Still, wait a bit.

Yes… well… watch out for things that sound too good!  The web site “ Sci- ənce! ” offers “red flags of quackery” … related to many familiar “logical fallacies.”

Oh but this one is obvious! Chewing gum before a test – does it increase brain function?  Too bad it makes you LOOK stupider.

== Dolphins Triumphant! ==

Speaking of smarter-than human…. Many species interact in the wild, most often as predator and prey. But recent encounters between humpback whales and bottlenose dolphins reveal a playful side to interspecies interaction. In two different locations in Hawaii, scientists watched as dolphins “rode” the heads of whales: the whales lifted the dolphins up and out of the water, and then the dolphins slid back down.

But this is even better. Quick! To the Predictions Registry! Dolphins are skilled at imitating sounds they hear. But they occasionally store away sounds to practice much later, at night when they are alone… possibly while sleeping and dreaming. French water park workers included whale songs in the music background of a show. Then… at night… when the dolphins were half-brain sleeping… they seemed to drift into recapitulations of the themes in the whale song –

– very much like I portrayed Captain Creideiki doing, in Startide Rising!  Someone log that as a “hit”?

Ah, but do they already know about this?  This sonar-sighted object under the Baltic, the size of a jumbo ject… isn’t it shaped like the Millennium Falcon?

But now let’s try something much more ambitious — a bigger, broader reading compilation.  This is still just a sampler – for something comprehensive, see the Science Fiction Encyclopedia or the user-friendly Worlds Without End. But any person who has read all the books and stories and authors noted here (and I admit they are heavy on “classics”) can come away with bragging rights to say: “I know something about science fiction.”

For this list I divide the novels authors and stories in my own quirky manner , according to categories…

* DIRE WARNINGS AND SELF PREVENTING PROPHECIES:

These novels and shorter works have drawn millions to ponder many different kinds of danger that may lurk down the road ahead. Among our possible tomorrows, so many might be dreadful-but-avoidable – from tyranny to ecological deterioration to some tragic failure of citizenship.  A few of these books even attained the most powerful status any work of fiction can achieve … changing the future, by alerting millions, who then girded themselves, discussing the problem with neighbors, becoming active, vowing to help ensure the bad thing never happens.

The following examples of self-preventing prophecy stand out. All of them help us focus on something that we may desperately miss, if it were ever gone

Nineteen Eighty-Four, by George Orwell.
The Sheep Look Up, by John Brunner
A Canticle for Leibowitz, by Walter M. Miller, Jr.
Make Room! Make Room!  by Harry Harrison (basis for the film Soylent Green)
Brave New World,  by Aldous Huxley
“Harrison Bergeron” by Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
On The Beach, by Nevil Shute
We, by Yevgeny Zamyatin
The Cool War, by Frederik Pohl
The Disappearance, by Philip Wylie
Flood, by Stephen Baxter
The Windup Girl, by Paolo Bacigalupi
The Unincorporated Man, by Dani Kollin & Eytan Kollin

… plus almost anything by Alice Sheldon (James Tiptree Jr.), or Nancy Kress or Octavia Butler… I leave it to others to decide whether my own apocalyptic warning novel, The Postman. belongs on this list.

* HARBINGERS OF HOPE:

These tales offer something almost as important as warnings… a tantalyzing glimpse at (guardedly and tentatively) better tomorrows. It’s actually much harder to do than issuing dire warnings! (That may be why there’s so little optimism in print. Most authors and directors are simply too lazy.)

Stand on Zanzibar, by John Brunner
Beyond This Horizon, by Robert A. Heinlein*
Rainbow’s End, by Vernor Vinge
Consider Phlebas,  by Iain Banks (and his Culture Series)
Island, by Aldous Huxley
Pacific Edge, by Kim Stanley Robinson

… plus the entire sub-genre known as Star Trek, among the few places where you come away feeling envious of our grandkids – the way things ought to be….

* HUH! I NEVER REALIZED!

Some tales simply rock readers back with wondrous stories that also broaden their perspective… from strange cultures to alternate social systems to unusual ways of thinking.

Lord of Light, by Roger Zelazny
Dune, by Frank Herbert
The Dispossessed, by Ursula K. LeGuin
Courtship Rite, by Donald Kingsbury
The Years of Rice and Salt,  by Kim Stanley Robinson
A Deepness in the Sky, by Vernor Vinge
Snow Crash, by Neal Stephenson

…plus the “Nine Worlds” series of John Varley and the brain-twistings of  Samuel Delaney…

* THE HARD STUFF:

Take me someplace new.  Boggle me with possibilities grounded in this strange-real universe of science! Almost anything by these authors will give you tons of the real meat of SF.

Timescape, by Gregory Benford
Eon, by Greg Bear
The Foundation Trilogy, by Isaac Asimov
FlashForward, by Robert Sawyer
Tau Zero, by Poul Anderson
Ringworld, by Larry Niven
Diaspora or Quarantine, by Greg Egan
To Crush the Moon, by Wil McCarthy
Vast, by Linda Nagata
Anti-Ice, by Stephen Baxter
The Web Between the Worlds by Charles Sheffield
Spin, by Robert Charles Wilson

… plus many works by Joe Haldeman, John Varley, Elizabeth Bear, Charles Gannon, Jack McDevitt….

* FANTASY – WITH BRAINS:

Just because there’s magic and wizards and kings and such…  doesn’t mean it has to be lobotomizing.  There really are exceptions!

The Drawing of the Dark, by Tim Powers
The Lord of the Rings, by JRR Tolkien (yes, there are Elfs. But JRRT was exceptionally smart and honest about the attractions and  drawbacks of nostalgia)
Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality, by Eliezer Yudkowsky (only available for free, online)
Neverwhere, by Neil Gaiman
The City and The City, by China Mieville
Boneshaker, by Cherie Priest

… plus glowing works by John Crowley and “urban” fantasies by Emma Bull, Nalo Hopkinson, Geoff Ryman…

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*GEDANKENEXPERIMENTS:

Or… what if things were different?

The Stars My Destination, by Alfred Bester
Dying Inside, by Robert Silverberg
Childhood’s End, by Arthur C. Clarke
Brain Wave, by Poul Anderson
The Yiddish Policeman’s Union, by Michael Chabon
BlindSight, by Peter Watts

*RIP-SNORTING GOOD STORYTELLING:

Explains itself. Just go along for the ride.

The Forever War, by Joe Haldeman
Gateway, by Frederick Pohl
The Mote in God’s Eye, by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle
Old Man’s War, by John Scalzi
The Great Time Machine Hoax or Earthblood, by Keith Laumer
The Princess Bride, by William Goldman

… plus anything at all by Poul Anderson.  I mean it.

*ALTERNATIVE HISTORY/PARALLEL WORLDS:

Extra points if it seems plausible that this might-have-been really might have been. And even more points if the reader goes, “That world seems likelier than this one I’m living in!”

The Man in the High Castle, by Philip K. Dick
1632, by Eric Flint
Cryptonomicon, by Neal Stephenson
The Great War (series)   by Harry Turtledove
Bring the Jubilee, Ward W. Moore
Lest Darkness Fall, by L. Sprague deCamp

*TIME TRAVEL:

Here the biggest test is whether you can offer a new or surprising logical twist. Bring on them paradoxes!

The Man Who Folded Himself, by David Gerrold
Up the Line, by Robert Silverberg
Run, Come See Jerusalem, by Richard Meredith
The Big Time, by Fritz Leiber
“All You Zombies” and “By His Bootstraps” by Robert A. Heinlein

Doomsday Book, by Connie Willis
The Technicolor Time Machine, by Harry Harrison

* HUMOR:

The hardest thing of all to do well.   Someday I might dare to try this most-difficult type!

The Ultimate Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams
Bored of the Rings, A Parody of J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, by the Harvard Lampoon
Hoka! Hoka! Hoka! by Poul Anderson and Gordon Dickson
The Colour of Magic, by Terry Pratchett
“Blued Moon” in Fire Watch, by Connie Willis

… plus snorkers by Esther Freisner and punny-business by Spider Robinson and groaners by Mike Resnick.

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* SHEER BEAUTY:

Forget science, logic and other superficialities.  Just love it.  The words… the words…

The Martian Chronicles,  by Ray Bradbury
Gravity’s Rainbow, by Thomas Pynchon
Riddley Walker, by Russel Hoban
Hyperion, by Dan Simmons
The Book of the New Sun, by Gene Wolf
The Rediscovery of Men, by Cordwainer Smith
More than Human, by Theodore Sturgeon
“‘Repent Harlequin!’ Said the Ticktockman” by Harlan Ellison

…plus anything by Robert Sheckley (one of my all time favorite authors).

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* QUIRKY CLASSICS:

Going farther back … hey it’s a kind of time travel!

The Time Machine, by H.G. Wells
20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, by Jules Verne
Last and First Men, by Olaf Stapledon
Herland, by Charlotte Perkins Gilman
After Many a Summer Dies the Swan, by Aldous Huxley
The World, The Flesh, and the Devil by JD Bernal
When Worlds Collide, by Balmer & Wylie

Plus an influential international item, Journey to the West by Wu Cheng’en

…plus… well… you aren’t truly steeped in the genre till you’ve wallowed in Doc Smith and Edgar Rice Burroughs.. and Conan!

* PREDICTIVE SUCCESS!

We SF authors often disclaim any intent to foretell the future.  We explore it, test possibilities, perform gedankenexperiments, even warn or entice.  But predict?  Well, at times we do try… and even keep score! My fans maintain a wiki tracking hits and misses from my most predictive near-term book to date – Earth. Here are some looks-ahead that have been impressively on-target.

Shockwave Rider, by John Brunner
Beyond This Horizon, by Robert A. Heinlein*
“The Brick Moon” by E. E. Hale (1865)
Neuromancer, by William Gibson
Age of the Pussyfoot, by Frederick Pohl

…plus at least half of the tales ever written by Jules Verne!

* BEST FOR YOUNG ADULTS AND KIDS:

Or for those young at heart. (See my separate list of Young Adult Recommendations.)

Rite of Passage, by Alexei Panshin
Little Fuzzy, by H. Beam Piper
The Door into Summer, by Robert A. Heinlein
The High Crusade, by Poul Anderson
A Spell for Chameleon, by Piers Anthony
Orbital Resonance, by John Barnes
The Chanur Saga, by C.J. Cherryh
The Ship Who Sang, by Anne McCaffrey
The Disappearance, by Philip Wylie
Pilgrimage, by Zenna Henderson
Emergence, by David Palmer
Little Brother, by Cory Doctorow
Leviathan, by Scott Westerfield

… plus anything by Andre Norton, H. Beam Piper…  and check out my Out of Time series!

* OTHER WORTHY AUTHORS:  Try some on!

Charles Stross, Kay Kenyon, Syne Mitchell. Paul McAuley, Howard Hendrix, Charles Gannon,… but also explore on your own!

 *AND SF ISN’T JUST ANGLO-AMERICAN

International contributions to this genre are undeniable. Indeed, it would be churlishly socio-centric to ignore great titles like Roadside Picnic (Arkady and Boris Strugatsky), The Cyberiad (Stanislaw Lem), We (Evgeni Zamyatin: mentioned in dark prophecies, above), The Paper Spaceship (Tetsu Yano) and Japan Sinks (by my Worldcon co-GoH Sakyo Komatsu).  In fact, this is a whole ‘nother category deserving a whole ‘nother list! And your suggestions are welcome.

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Okay… that will have to do.  Eccentric and opinionated and far from comprehensive, this is hardly more than a sampling and a biased one too. Yes, there are a fair number of older classics, but also a sampling of marvelous works by new, upcoming authors.

(Note: surely there will be many suggested titles pushed in followup discussion!)

Still, I am confident that if you went thoroughly through this list – noting those you loved or respected and a few works you hate! – then you’d at least have made a good start getting a taste of the boldness, the excitement, the intellectual verve and challenging ideas to be found in this, the most unabashed and courageous of all literary forms.

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* Regarding Heinlein’s Beyond This Horizon, it is in the thoughtful second half of the book that you get amazingly insightful ruminations about what a smarter human civilization might be like. This requires wading through a much more pedestrian and even silly “action” half. But it’s worth the effort.