Connecting Aerodynamic Seasteads in Clusters

Image SourceThe SESU seastead design won the recent Seasteading Institute's design award for "most aesthetic." As you can see, the seastead is mostly enclosed by transparent panels. This design protects the inhabitants from ever-present winds, sea spray, and splash in high seas, while allowing for daylight illumination. The above image demonstrates a cluster of 3 SESU 'steads, along with a docked super-yacht. In reality, the best dock designs for yachts and passenger ships are yet to be created.
Image SourceThe SESU design is Al Fin's favourite of the recent seastead design contest winners. The semi-enclosed design protects inhabitants and interior structures from many of the hazards of the open sea, in comparison to the other designs.

Better methods for loading and unloading supplies and personnel -- from the sea and from the air -- will be most important for any such facility that intends to put to sea long term.

The vertical 4-spar design is meant to minimise wave impact on the structure. But traveling through the water will be slow, which means that it will be difficult for such seasteads to move out of the way of large storms. The structure would have to be able to adapt and transform itself to meet and survive strong storms at sea.

The walkways connecting the 3-stead cluster, as pictured, would likely snap like toothpicks in any significant storm. Should that happen, the 3 seasteads would be far too close for safety in a free-floating configuration. There are many things to be taken into account, before this design is actually inhabited and tested at sea.

What would you change or modify?

For more information, read Reason Magazine's 20,000 Nations Above the Sea for an interesting look at the founding fathers of the Seasteading Institute and on some of the non-technical problems seasteading faces.

For seasteading to be successful as a movement, it will have to solve a long list of problems. Only a few of them are technical or engineering problems. Most of them will be tougher because they will involve human psychology, politics, and legality.

Bottom Up Brain Building: The Missing Links

There is a way to build thinking machines that might work. Use as your model the only proof of concept of higher intelligence known to the universe: the human brain / mind. Start by developing a machine nano-architecture that can do almost as many things that the human brain can do. To do this, you must understand the brain and you must invent new machine tools for imitating what the brain does.

Berkeley professor of electrical engineering Leon Chua, has made a good start. His "memristor" devices have gotten a lot of people excited about the possiblity of designing a working machine brain from the bottom up.

When two metallic wires are separated with a few nanometers of memristive material (such as certain transition metal oxides), an electronic device is formed that acts much like a nonlinear resistor, but with a twist. The resistance varies over time as a function of the currents flowing through it. In other words, it is a resistor with memory.
The rate at which their resistance changes is extremely nonlinear in the voltage applied. Small voltages hardly perturb the resistance at all, while somewhat larger voltages can induce fast changes. _Memristor Cortical Computing

Because memristor devices are able to change their electronic characteristics based upon their electronic history, they can be seen as analogous to neuronal synapses, which change their characteristics based upon their synaptic firing history. This dynamic adaptation on the nano scale presents the possibility of building very dense self-organising electronic networking chips far beyond anything previously possible.

Intelligence is not an algorithm. It cannot be "programmed." But given the proper "neural architecture" and appropriate experience, intelligence can be evolved over time. The memristor needs to be joined by other advanced memory-electronics in order to provide for machines the extremely subtle learning that the human brain can do.

The electronic brain will be a time coming. "We're still getting to grips with this chip," says Williams. Part of the problem is that the chip is just too intelligent - rather than a standard digital pulse it produces an analogue output that flummoxes the standard software used to test chips. So Williams and his colleagues have had to develop their own test software. "All that takes time," he says.

Chua, meanwhile, is not resting on his laurels. He has been busy extending his theory of fundamental circuit elements, asking what happens if you combine the properties of memristors with those of capacitors and inductors to produce compound devices called memcapacitors and meminductors, and then what happens if you combine those devices, and so on.

"Memcapacitors may be even more useful than memristors," says Chua, "because they don't have any resistance." In theory at least, a memcapacitor could store data without dissipating any energy at all. Mighty handy - whatever you want to do with them. Williams agrees. In fact, his team is already on the case, producing a first prototype memcapacitor earlier this year, a result that he aims to publish soon. "We haven't characterised it yet," he says. With so many fundamental breakthroughs to work on, he says, it's hard to decide what to do next. Maybe a memristor could help. _NS

It should have been obvious that the tools for creating machine intelligence were inadequate to the task. Just as it should have been obvious that the models used to predict climate over multi-decadal scales are completely inadequate to the task. Many things become obvious once one throws off the blinders of conventional groupthink. If one allows oneself to think outside the box, the possibilities suddenly multiply wildly.

More: The image at top is of a slime mold, which is sometimes a single-cell organism and sometimes a multiple cell organism, depending on environmental conditions. Each biological cell is in essence an incredibly complex computing machine. Multicellular organisms possess unbelievable biological computing power, compared to non-biological computers. Imagine the computing power of a human being, complete with brain and nervous systems. It is literally beyond the power of human made hardware to emulate. But as humans develop more subtle technologies of computation, they will be able to build -- from the bottom up -- machines that have the intelligence first of insects, then of higher and higher animals.

Will humans eventually be able to evolve machines with the intelligence of humans and higher? Of course. It is also true that if humans do not choose to become more intelligent themselves, that they are finished on this planet, long term. How humans go about the enhancement of their own intelligence will make for some interesting work in the not so distant future.

Brian Wang provides more quotes and images on this topic

Freedom For the High Seas and Beyond

The Aeroyacht 110 has been dubbed “the world’s most innovative super catamaran” by its designers and, while that’s a pretty big claim, it’s certainly an audacious concept. Capable of speeds of over 32 knots but able to cruise effortlessly at 20, boasting a superbly-appointed 32ft wide salon with 360º sea views and with its own fold-up amphibious plane as a tender, the Aeroyacht 110 looks to be the ne plus ultra of luxury sailing.

Designed from scratch by Gregor Tarjan, founder of Aeroyacht International, together with naval architect Pete Melvin, of the world-renowned Morrelli & Melvin multihull architects, the Aeroyacht 110 was designed from the outside-in. Tarjan started with the concept for a “pure sailing machine” and, once its streamlined shape was established, only then worked out how many people it could and should accommodate

.Source
The amphibious tender ICON A5 adds a completely new dimension of freedom to the maritime ensemble. All that is lacking is a small submarine. The decks appear ample for both a mini-sub and the small amphibious flier.

Perhaps the Aeroyacht people can correct that oversight by the time the super cat hits the market. The ability to roam on the sea, under the sea, and above the sea, is an absolute minimum of freedom for the advanced between levels human. For exploration on shore and throughout inland estuaries, a hovercraft may need to be included.

Be There Or Be Stuck on this Dirt Ball Forever!

The design of our next generation flight and space systems will be dependent more than ever on high performance, increasingly efficient, reliable and affordable propulsion systems. Our ability to incorporate new technologies into aircraft and spacecraft will have far reaching impacts to the evolutionary roles these complex systems play in our everyday lives. Lockheed Martin Space Systems, Lockheed Martin Aeronautics, and Lockheed Martin Missiles and Fire Control invite you to Denver and be a part of the exciting future of the aerospace propulsion industry. _AIAA/ASME/SAE/ASEE

Denver in an Ice Age Summer
From 2-5 August, 2009, in Denver Colorado, the 7th Annual International Energy Conversion Conference and the 45th Joint Propulsion Conference will explore a wide range of topics of interest to readers of the Al Fin blogs:

The 7th IECEC will explore the future of clean energy systems through a series of panel discussions and technical paper presentations. This year's hot topics include:

* Alternative power systems – such as fuel cell technology and solar system technology
* Biofuels, including biodiesel fuels and fuels created from food-waste
* Electric power systems which would replace traditional fossil fuel based propulsion systems
* Nanotechnlology applications for solar power systems, among many others. There will also be a discussion of future energy policy needs to answer the demand for “green” energy systems. _IECEC

In a special joint conference with the "Joint Propulsion Conference" the IECEC will also be taking a look at biofuels as the source of rocket propulsion fuel for space launch.

The 7th IECEC is sponsored by Battelle Memorial Institute and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency. The 45th JPC is sponsored by Lockheed Martin Space Systems Company, Lockheed Martin Aeronautics Company, and Lockheed Martin Missiles and Fire Control.

This joint conference is a great opportunity to rub shoulders with other innovation-oriented people. Denver in early August can be quite hot, but you will be spending most of the day in conference anyway. Evenings can be very pleasant. A number of beautiful summertime destinations are just a short hop from Denver.

Why Asians Can't Think (Outside the Box)

The higher average intelligence of East Asians compared to Europeans is well documented. The question is: why do East Asians -- despite their intelligence -- lag behind Europeans in measures of creativity, particularly over the past millenium?

Dennis Mangan recently looked at differences between thought styles of Asians and Europeans in this posting. Satoshi Kanazawa of the London School of Economics and Political Science provides the grist for discussion:

The first four Euro-American nations are overrepresented among the Nobel laureates by a factor of 5 to 10; Switzerland is overrepresented by a factor of 28! In sharp contrast, all Asian nations are underrepresented among the Nobel laureates. Japan, for example, has been a major geopolitical and economic power for most of the 20th century (Small and Singer, 1982). Yet it has produced only 12 Nobel laureates, the same number as Austria, which has one-sixteenth of Japan's population.

This problem has long been known to East Asian specialists as the "creativity problem" (Eberts and Eberts, 1995, pp. 123-127; Taylor, 1983, pp. 92-123; van Wolferen, 1989, pp. 89-90). Some argue that the ideographic Asian languages curb abstract thinking and creativity among Asians (Hannas, 2003).....Whatever the reason, it is evident from Table 1 that some combinations of cultural, social, and institutional factors combine to stifle basic science in Asia.
_Kanazawa (PDF)

A similar story is told in Charles Murray's classic compilation "Human Accomplishment." While Murray went to great lengths to include as strong an Asian componentas possible in the history of human accomplishment, the cumulative list of Asian accomplishments up to the present fell short.

Q. You pay a surprising amount of attention to Asian culture. Does that stem from the six years you lived in Asia beginning as a Peace Corps volunteer?

A. Put it this way: There are aspects of Asian culture as it is lived that I still prefer to Western culture, 30 years after I last lived in Thailand. Two of my children are half-Asian. Apart from those personal aspects, I have always thought that the Chinese and Japanese civilizations had elements that represented the apex of human accomplishment in certain domains.

When I began the book, I actually hoped to give Asian accomplishment a still larger place than it wound up getting.

Q. Why did you end up with mostly Dead White European Males in your inventory of 4,002 significant figures?

A. That's what happens when you employ the methods I used. And as I spend many pages in the book describing in perhaps excessive detail, those methods are not skewed by Western sources that are unfairly oblivious to non-Western accomplishment. _Charles Murray Interview

So, how does one explain the lagging of East Asians behind Europeans in the creativity race? La Griffe du Lion suggests that East Asians have such high visuospatial ability, that their overall IQ score is lifted higher than all others except for Ashkenazi Jews. But while visuospatial / mathematical ability is quite important in many fields of hard science, mathematics, and engineering / technology, deep creativity and radical innovation appear to spring from yet other parts of the cognitive neural assemblage beyond mere visuospatial ability.

Part of the reason why Asians cannot think for themselves and make original and creative contributions to science is because they are too conformist. One of the factors that Miller identifies as a possible obstacle to the Asian future of evolutionary psychology ("academic conservatism") is actually fatal. Scientific revolutions happen by challenging the established paradigms. No conformists have ever brought about a scientific revolution. _Kanazawa PDF

A conformist culture will certainly lend toward an anti-innovative conservatism, which can leave life-long imprints in the brain of a growing child. On the other hand, culture does not spring out of nothing. Culture is strongly influenced by the genetic complement of a population. For example, communist totalitarian conformity was forced onto several nations of Eastern Europe at roughly the same time that China was forced into communism by the victory of Mao's PLA. But communism did not last in most of the European populations, whereas in China the CCP is still the locus of one-party rule.

Long ago, inventors in China devised gunpowder, printing, paper money, the magnetic compass, and probably other wonders now lost to history. But even millenia ago, entrenched Chinese conservatism prevented the constructive uses of most of these inventions. It was left to Europeans to expand and innovate on these ancient inventions around the time of the "renaissance." Has there been a fatal "lack of curiousity" in Chinese culture?

This lack of curiosity extended into science. While ancient China was in many ways more technologically advanced than ancient Greece, knowledge for its own sake was never valued. The ancient Greeks in contrast wrote and debated tirelessly about abstract ideas that had no connection to the real world. _HBDBooks

Similarly, Hindu mathematicians devised advanced arithmetic notation and algebraic logic, as well as other advanced mathematical concepts for the times. These ideas moved along routes of trade and conquest to Islamic centers of thought in Persia, Iraq, Egypt, Syria, Andalusia ... where the Hindu ideas were combined with ideas from ancient Greek mathematics, and a synthesis of sorts was created. But it was left to Europeans to take the Hindu - Islamic - Greek synthesis along with rediscovered Greek ideas, and turn them into the modern mathematics upon which modern technology is based.

East Asian scientists and technologists certainly have the brilliance to maintain and advance the modern technologies that Europeans are bequeathing to them. The question remains: what will be the pattern of advance? Will we see a plodding, step by step elaboration and revising of science and technology centered on current fields of study, from the new "Asian renaissance?" Or will we see the sort of radical creation of entirely new foci of science and technology of the sort we have become accustomed to over the past few centuries, from European inventors and researchers?

There is much to be learned about the cultural -- and genetic -- reasons why different populations seen to have different habits of thought. Rather than shying away from such research as somehow "racist" or "not PC", we should get busy understanding all aspects of this universe we live in.

Bruce Hall's University Model for High Schools

No matter how hard a person such as Lynn Tilton works to save the US economy, if the American public is uneducated -- or poorly educated for the needs of society -- the society will eventually sink into mediocrity. Bruce Hall has proposed one of the most thoughtful approaches to reforming American secondary education that I have seen.

As you can see in the diagram, Bruce proposes creating a range of "Majors" or areas of emphasis, to match the wide range of available needs and niches in society at large. Most high school students will not succeed at nor benefit from a strenuous four year college program. But most students are capable of matching their unique skills and talents to satisfying work that can provide for their needs -- if they are shown the possibilities and given the skills and competencies they will need.

Adolescence should be considered a critical window of development. It is the time that children should begin to shoulder responsibility, and lay the groundwork for the early stages of their adult experience. Modern American society neglects this period of critical development, resulting in too many adolescents becoming stuck perpetually in quasi-adolescence.

By showing teenagers a more realistic range of possibilities, and by building their aptitude and competence to perform well within that wide range of options, teens become empowered and eager to demonstrate their skills responsibly -- rather than becoming embittered and alienated when the establishment fails to deliver on its promises.

America needs all the Lynn Tiltons it can get. But it also needs the ideas of its Bruce Halls and others capable of penetrating to the heart of America's growing educational deficit.

Critical Developmental Periods of Learning

In this very short video, John Abbott discusses the importance of matching the critical learning windows of development to methods of interacting and teaching -- from infancy to adolescence and beyond.

Perhaps the greatest problem with modern affluent societies is their failure to meet the challenge presented by the adolescent developmental period. This failure is manifested by permanently stunted half-adults who never grow beyond quasi-adolescent fads, fashions, and in-group dependencies.

Is Lynn Tilton A Modern Dagny Taggart?

Dagney Taggart was the heroine of the Ayn Rand classic "Atlas Shrugged." Taggart was one of the competent pillars of American capitalism holding back the forces of government encroachment and societal decline. A gritty, smart, competent railroad executive, Dagny fought tooth and nail against the collapse of the massively interconnected economic system that she believed in, and played a large part in maintaining.

This determination to save the economic and industrial system of the US put Dagny at odds with the ever-grasping government -- and with a mysterious group of entrepreneurs, industrialists, and wealthy financiers who were disappearing from the face of the Earth. The ongoing disappearance of these important players in US and global capitalism made Dagny's work that much harder. When Dagny discovered that these capitalist cohorts were voluntarily dropping out of the system -- and inviting her to do the same -- she was infuriated, dismayed, and determined even more to succeed against all the odds. But that was before she met John Galt. Who is John Galt?

Lynn Tilton is the CEO of private equity firm Patriarch Partners. Tilton leads the $5 billion venture firm in the effort to "turn around" failing corporations and businesses -- to reverse the accelerating entropy of American business and manufacturing.

The video above gives a very thin slice of Tilton's ideas, achievements, and projects. Tilton's twitter feed is here, and she also has a blog, Dust to Diamonds.

When Al Fin learned about Tilton's Old Town Mill project to take a defunct paper mill and turn it into a potentially thriving wood chip to bio-butanol to jet fuel enterprise, he was quite impressed. While the bio-jet fuel project illustrates Tilton's "turnaround" ability to anticipate trends and to turn "dust into diamonds", it is just one of many projects that Tilton is working on.

What would it take to convince a person like Lynn Tilton that "going John Galt" was the only viable alternative remaining? Quite a lot, I am sure. But Brocko and his gang appear to be doing everything they can to eliminate all viable alternatives.

I wish Ms. Tilton continued good fortune in her projects. Turning around the American economy -- and thus the world's -- is no easy task. Too bad the US has elected a government that is doing everything possible to make that task impossible.

If Ms. Tilton ever does go John Galt, you had best look to your bugout plans.

Print This!!!

The amazing sandstone sculpture pictured above will be "printed out" as a 10-metre tall pavilion -- to be built in Pontedera, Italy, in 2010. It takes little imagination to see fantastically imaginative houses and other buildings constructed using the same "printer" approach. The materials used are simply sand or mineral dust combined with an inorganic binder. The final sandstone material has passed a large array of traction, compression and bending tests with flying colours. In other words, the building approach is capable of scaling safely at least to the 10-metre scale structure to be built in Italy. Suitable reinforcing nano-fibres can be included as scaling requires.

Such sandstone buildings would blend well in a desert environment. The thermal characteristics of thick sandstone walls are suitable for dry climates with severe temperature swings.

But I am more excited by the potential of this building technique for printing other types of structures, using alternative building "inks." In particular, nano-porous "inks" with suitable binding agents could print a wide array of sturdy floating structures capable of serving as seasteads in many waters of the world. Check out the "Sea Foam Colony" idea for a similar approach to extruding a seastead.

College Degrees Overpriced, Oversold

The system must change before students are made poorer, society grows less equal, the bright are left ignorant and "college" comes to mean a four-year pajama party intruded upon by the occasional group discussion on gender studies. The answer is to relieve schools of the job of validating knowledge and return them to a role of spreading it. Colleges should no more vouch for their own academic competence than butchers should decide for themselves whether their meat is USDA prime. _NYP

If you are at all concerned about the cost and quality of a college education, Jack Hough's New York Post article excerpted above is well worth your time. Today's college education often amounts to little more than training in binge drinking, hooking up, cult-like programming in ideological "correctness", and all around cultural superficiality and perpetual immaturity.

Hough's conceptual sketch of the lifelong "knowledge transcript" is worth the time of reading the article. Analogous to a person's lifelong medical record, the knowledge transcript would convey a person's qualifications to potential employer's and contracting agencies in far more detail and accuracy than any college diploma.

Opportunities for learning and developing expertise in today's society are growing exponentially. Most of these opportunities take place outside of university degree programs -- and often provide more relevant skills and competencies than traditional college degree courses will have done. An accurate way of capturing a person's competencies in toto, as they change over time, would provide a far superior evaluation of expected value to others in the marketplace.

Imagine My Surprise . . . . .

.... to discover that others had happened upon a similar idea for a wave energy conversion / floating platform stabiliser to one that I have played with for over ten years now. My inspiration came from reading the Marshall Savage book, The Millenial Project.The version above was conceived by Joseph George, and is described further here. The idea as pictured needs some modification to provide greater robustness in high seas, but the drawing demonstrates the function of one short row of the devices. In an actual floating platform, many such rows would exist, in arrays.

The next two images portray a similar device which helped win the Rolls-Royce Prize for best Master's Thesis in 2007, and the JEC Innovation Award in 2009. This prize winner is the result of a collaboration between Norwegian and Belgian engineers. As you can see, the "point absorbers" in the second platform converter are not open-bottomed like the absorbers in the Joseph George design at top.

The image above and to the right shows a "wave farm" comprising four of the platforms pictured below and to the left.
The platform design with multiple point absorbers presents advantages that are not available from several other wave energy conversion devices, particularly when incorporated into a seastead design.

The concept of using such point absorbers for both wave energy conversion and for "shock absorbers" to smoothe the platform's ride, appeals to my sense of multi-functionality. For rough seas in the open ocean, some form of "breakwater" would still be necessary to reduce the shock to the platform and the point absorbers.Looking at the most recent prototype design for a seastead from the Seasteading Institute, it is not terribly difficult to imagine the placement of similar point absorbers beneath the platform, given the suitable infrastructure. As I said, however, in high seas the occupants of such a seastead might be grateful to have a sturdy floating breakwater on the job. Al Fin engineers are in the process of designing such a "device."

I am pleased to see that the "point absorber" wave energy conversion idea has been developed to this point by multiple inventors, and hope that such platforms can eventually be used productively.

The Reach of North Korean Missiles

Image SourceThanks to the miracle of modern missile technology, two-penny dictators like Kim Jong Il can now hold the Sword of Damocles over heads of state around the world. South America and Greenland appear to be fairly safe from a sneak attack from the diminutive cockroach (see Team America).

But then, how long before Venezuela's Hugo Chavez gets similar capability to wreak havoc on his foes? Paint similar red circles with their centers on Caracas. Do the same for Damascus, Tehran, Tripoli, Riyadh, Islamabad. Now you begin to understand the scope of the problem.

Nuclear technology and missile technology are out of the box, freely available to anyone who can pay. As the US loses its will and ability to restrain nuclear proliferation, two-penny dictators around the globe will almost certainly take the opportunity to nuke up.

Of course the danger from these tin-pot nuclear dictatorships is more to their neighbors, and to the global environment should large-scale fallout take place. But it only takes a small nuke or two to finish off LA, NYC, DC, or London. And a skillful EMP attack to finish the US as a modern economic force would require only a dozen or fewer well-placed nukes. A world without the US is a world on its way down.

China and Russia are not above arming a third party, in order to devastate their mutual enemy while retaining plausible deniability. This could never happen in the old order of things, when the US was strong and the anchor of the world economy -- necessary to the prosperity of all exporting nations.

Things are different now. China and Russia have significant economic problems now that world demand for their exports is way down. Political instability with a collapse of the current political order is not out of the question for either oppressive state, should things go badly with the world economy. Should either the CCP or Putin see such a thing coming to pass, neither would hesitate to set a plan in motion that they felt would reduce pressure on them from the outside.

In other words, if everything is going to hell anyway, why would Putin or the CCP pause before badly handicapping a long-time enemy -- as long as a third party will take the blame?

The world is nothing like it seems.

Society for Creative Apocalyptology Looks at Deep Science Research Facility in Homestake Mine

Image SourceAlmost a mile deep, under the Black Hills of South Dakota, the US government is building the world's deepest underground scientific hidey-hole. The groundbreaking for the facility was attended by politicians, connected individuals, and scientists who may eventually work in one of the labs to be built deep underground.

The new labs will be built in and around the old Homestake Gold Mine, which extends as deeply as 8,000 feet underground. The gold mine was shut down in 2001 and allowed to flood when pumps were shut down. Refurbishing of the mine will involve restoring the pumps, refurbishing and stabilising tunnels, and building new underground infrastructure for scientific and other purposes.

The ostensible purpose of the deep new facility is to study dark matter in a location that is deep enough to be shielded from cosmic rays. But can you think of any other reasons for building such a deep, remote, high technology facility? And how many politicians are more interested in dark matter than in confiscating as much wealth from taxpayers and anyone else, as they can?

The new scientific lab complex is expected to span a wide array of experimental sciences, as the refurbishers develop new methods of deep underground architecture.

Analysts at the Society for Creative Apocalyptology © have looked at the plans for the new underground lab, and concluded that it would make an ideal university / scientific complex to survive the next apocalypse -- whatever the cause.

When the axe falls on civilisation, human societies in the western world will fragment by religion, ethnicity, language, and the luck of the draw. If you find yourself living in a bad neighborhood when the doom comes down, you had better have some very good extraction plans already set in place, and well-rehearsed.

The electrical grid will go down fairly quickly, since it is unlikely that many utility managers will have had to foresight to disconnect their sections of the grid to prevent cascading failures. Manpower shortages at all high technology installations would grow acute quite quickly. Universities, high tech labs and research centers, and other high tech facilities would quickly fall to the momentum of collapse, and be looted and stripped beyond repair.

That is why a facility such as the one in South Dakota is so important in the re-start of civilisation -- after the fall. A location where top scientists and technologists across a wide range of human scientific and technological skills can continue to advance their studies while the rest of the world is falling down around them. Then, when the momentum of collapse dies down and the pressure from the doom inciting event(s) has subsided, advance teams of scouts can move out of the enclave to survey the damages and the potential for re-emergence.

A schedule for the re-introduction of technology can be devised and implemented by advance teams of skilled workers, as likely surviving population centers are located. As surviving, rejuvenated population centers are re-connected, a new larger society can be regrown.

But you will not read about these plans in conventional journals, papers, or blogs. And the SCA agrees that popular knowledge of such generative / regenerative knowledge centers would be counter-productive. Of course, what the government is attempting in South Dakota (and what the UK is attempting in Scotland etc.) is nothing more than a tax-supported version of what the SCA has been working on all along, using private funding.


H/T ImpactLab

If US Housing is at the Bottom, Why Is Barney Frank Pushing Fannie Mae to Loosen Its Lending Standards Again?

The unemployment rate is expected to continue rising -- at least above 10% -- and perhaps as high as 15 to 20 % by the end of 2009. The continuing loss of jobs (and businesses) will put ever-increasing pressure on the mortgage divisions of large banks.

The pension crisis is just starting to kick in across the country, and the additive effect of huge government deficits on top of a continued economic slowdown will put a dangerously inflationary spin on the current Obama depression.

Peter Schiff has a few words on that topic from yesterday's Vlog:

America cannot get out from under the disastrous "economic perfect storm" as long as its political leadership is doing all that it can to make the disaster worse. Expect continued economic slowdowns combined with a growing inflation for the near to medium term.

From "Cap and Trade" to "Obamacare" to "Card Check" to the nationalisation of huge sections of American industry, to unprecedented budget deficits and dysfunctional spending -- the Obama Outfit appears dedicated to salting the fields of the American economy.

Obama and his cronies have to be painstakingly cleared away from positions of responsibility in as many areas of government as possible, before America can begin to recover, long term. At this time, America's news and entertainment media is still so deeply into denial over its "Messiah", that the suffering of the Obamapocalypse will have to grow much larger -- to undeniable levels before the majority of Americans begin to comprehend what they have let themselves in for.

Update Full Disclosure 25 June 09: Al Fin would be the first to admit that the impending economic disaster the US is facing would have occurred anyway -- in 2025. The entitlement crisis and the pension crisis would have combined with the demographic crunch to create the same combination of problems. In a sense, Obama only accelerated the process by 15 years and put it on steroids. The Obama build-up of the government sector at the expense of the private sector is remarkable in its swiftness, and in the lack of public backlash.

Whether many Americans would have taken that 15 years (until the 2025 depression) and used them to prepare for the inevitable is a moot question. They no longer have that 15 year buffer period.

If the US Congress passes the cap and trade bill (to say nothing of card check, Obamacare, and any number of other corrupt monstrosities) there will be no turning back. The US will have a 15 year head start on the 2025 depression.

Artificial Intelligence: It Still Stinks

Update 24 June 09: This Rodney Brooks article in the April 09 issue of Cosmos presents an expert viewpoint which I consider to be one of the most honest and insightful about AI, from an AI expert. Brooks has long been a champion of the "bottom-up" approach to creating lifelike behaviour in robots, and seems to understand the importance of "embodying" an intelligence, complete with emotions or quasi-emotions.

Forbes has published an Artificial Intelligence Report (via Instapundit) online that presents an array of viewpoints on the present and future of AI. From Kurzweil-like true believers in the coming of superhuman intelligent machines to skeptical wanna-believers like David Gelernter, over 20 insiders and quasi-insiders provide their insights into the likely future of AI as they see it.

Unfortunately, not even the insights of Ben Goertzel, Hugo de Garis, Judea Pearl, and other experts, provide any evidence that AI researchers have confronted -- much less overcome -- the monumental conceptual obstacles that have prevented AI research from "reaching first base" in the attempt at devising a human-level intelligent machine.

Despite the painfully obvious differences between human consciousness and algorithmic approaches (even algorithms informed by Bayesian networks) to solving problems, today's students and tomorrow's researchers appear to be stuck in mental conceptualisations of intelligence that were already outmoded 20 years ago. Until students are relieved of such dysfunctional shackles, it is likely that they will continue repeating the mistakes of their predecessors in AI research.

Herbert Gelernter reveals that IBM is planning to pit its "Blue Gene" project against human contestants on the Jeopardy game show. Such a test of general knowledge would certainly hit at the sense of human supremacy where it might hurt the most, should the computer win. But it is difficult to know where the human contribution begins and ends in such projects as "Blue Gene" and "Deep Blue." These projects are not actually artificial intelligences so much as highly tuned human-machine team efforts. Such a "neo-Turing Test" is an improvement over the original, but if IBM does not allow a thorough look "behind the curtain", the wizardliness of Blue Gene might not inspire any more confidence than Oz deserved.

Machine "intelligence" has made inroads in many areas, providing useful assistance to human experts in science, medicine, economics, commerce, transportation, the military, and increasingly in government. But these are all special-purpose problem solvers and aids to decision making. Not broad spectrum all-purpose intelligences in their own right, capable of learning and acting on their own initiative.

Human intelligence is the only "higher" intelligence that we know of. Until AI researchers confront the core problem of human intelligence -- embodied consciousness -- they will continue to beat around the bush for many more decades, and end up little ahead for all the effort.

William R. Forstchen Discusses EMP Threat

William R. Forstchen is the author of the bestselling near-future thriller, "One Second After." In this Pajamas TV special, Forstchen discusses the threat from EMP to modern civilisations.

Try living without electricity for a week or two. Then imagine entire neighborhoods, communities, cities, and regions going without electrical power for weeks and months. How many would survive after a few months without power? Trauma victims and the critically ill would be the first to die. Then persons with renal failure, insulin dependent diabetes, heart failure, and other chronically ill persons dependent upon short supplies of medication would die. Treating infectious diseases would be a whole new ballgame without immunisations and antibiotics.

Grocery stores and department stores would be looted for supplies. Food supplies would run short due to a shortage of fuel and viable vehicles. Houses and buildings would burn in the absence of the ability to put out the flames. And so on.

Forstchen's book does a good job of describing the breakdown of civil order, and the abysmal death rates that would result from loss of electricity. Keep in mind that a lot of triggers could result in the same widespread death, violence, loss of cohesion. EMP is only one of many.

H/T Instapundit

Economic Boom China 2009: The Dark Side

The international media has been following reports of record commodity imports by China. The surge is being portrayed as reflecting China's recovering economy. Indeed, the international financial market is portraying China's perceived recovery as a harbinger for global recovery. It is a major factor pushing up stock prices around the world.

But China's imports are mostly for speculative inventories. Bank loans were so cheap and easy to get that many commodity distributors used financing for speculation. The first wave of purchases was to arbitrage the difference between spot and futures prices. That was smart. But now that price curves have flattened for most commodities, these imports are based on speculation that prices will increase. Demand from China's army of speculators is driving up prices, making their expectations self-fulfilling in the short term. _Caijing.com_via_FabiusMaximus

Large numbers of investors and financial analysts have pinned their hopes for the global economy on China's back. The most polluting nation on Earth, one of the most dictatorial and most corrupt nations on the planet is being held up as the future of the planetary economic system.

But China's cheery economic numbers may be hiding a darker set of realities behind the bamboo curtain. Here is one critical look at China's economic situation that is worth a read. The Chinese economy may be in the middle of a huge financial bubble of its own.

China has been buying up commodities worldwide at a frantic pace -- trying to take advantage of bargain basement prices brought on by low global demand. This Chinese commodities "rally" has inflated the Baltic Dry Index and China's economic figures, but it may be on the verge of fizzling.

The emerging problem of toxic Chinese drywall sales to North America is likely to once again raise the issue of the Chinese Poison Train. Toxic products flowing out of Chinese enterprises into world marketplaces should have had a far worse impact on Chinese exports than they have done. Poor quality steel from Chinese foundries is another problem likely to come back to bite the dragon's tail.

The problem of excessive Chinese regulations and limitations on entry into the marketplace continue to give corrupt and inefficient State Owned Enterprises in China an unfair advantage over private enterprise. This corrupt inefficiency shows no sign of going away anytime soon.

The gullibility of those who take Chinese economic figures at face value is difficult to explain, outside of wishful thinking. Everyone is looking for the big score, and right now China seems to be the biggest score around. Wait and see.

Based on an article from Abu Al Fin

Update: News stories here and here illustrate the uncertainty and volatility within world markets.

It is unlikely that the Obama crew has more ideas than to "inject more liquidity". Like the "mechanic" whose answer to every car problem is to add a quart of oil to the engine. You must have had some reason to vote for him, America.

Expect Another US Real Estate Bubble Shortly

Robert Shiller explains in the Gulf Times why another real estate bubble is likely to be heading our way before long.

The kinds of expectations for real estate prices that have informed public thinking during the recent bubbles were often totally unrealistic. A few years ago Karl Case and I asked random home buyers in US cities undergoing bubbles how much they think the price of their home will rise each year on average over the next ten years. The median answer was sometimes 10% a year.

If one compounds that rate over 10 years, they were expecting an increase of a factor of 2.5, and, if one extrapolates, a 2000-fold increase over the course of a lifetime. Home prices cannot have shown such increases over long time periods, for then no one could afford a home.

The sobering truth is that the current world economic crisis was substantially caused by the collapse of speculative bubbles in real estate (and stock) markets – bubbles that were made possible by widespread misunderstandings of the factors influencing prices.

These misunderstandings have not been corrected, which means that the same kinds of speculative dislocations could recur. _GulfTimes_via_SimoleonSense

The US government for its part appears to be stoking the flames for another real estate bubble. The Obama - Geithner financial regulations are set to inflate Fannie Mae, Freedie Mac, and the Community Reinvestment Act back up to catastrophic proportions, just as occurred in the last days of the Clinton administration.

“Starting with the Community Reinvestment Act of 1977, that was given more teeth during the Clinton administration, Congress started intimidating banks and other financial institutions into making loans, so-called sub-prime loans, to high-risk homebuyers and businesses.

“The carrot offered was that these high-risk loans would be purchased by the government-sponsored enterprises Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Anyone with an ounce of brains would have known that this was a prescription for disaster but there was a congressional chorus of denial,” he added.

“The financial collapse of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac is not a failure of the free market because lending institutions in a free market would not have taken on the high-risk loans,” said Williams. “They were forced to by the heavy hand of government.” _CNS

As Steve Sailer points out, the Obama administration is ratcheting up pressure on lending institutions to provide loans to unqualified borrowers. In fact, under Obama, such pressure is likely to be much higher than ever before. If affirmative action banking can solve problems created by affirmative action banking, then Obama's thinking is quite sound.

Expect a whole series of financial bubbles during the Obama reich, each somewhat more inflated than the previous one.

Bonus Link: Another look at why the Obama stimulus plan is rapidly inflating debt at the cost of future economic growth. It's what you get when you elect a clown to do a job that requires someone with more qualifications.

Boycott Al Fin Blog For The Month of July!

Image SourceYes, you read the title correctly. Al Fin is recommending that you not read any Al Fin postings in July. Instead, you should devote a bit of time each day to read the master's thesis by David J. Tamm entitled "The Reinvigoration of the West through Outer Space Development." You can download a PDF version of the thesis.

Tamm's thesis takes a rather clear look at many of the underlying reasons for the current stagnation and malaise that dominates modern western culture. In fact, you can be excused for thinking that Al Fin himself wrote large sections of the thesis, so many of Tamm's ideas parallel Fin's thoughts so closely.

The long term survival of the human race is uncertain, given recent demographic trends. The transcendence from earth-bound humans into a space-faring race of wise and intelligent creatures is even less probable. For humans to grow from their current quasi monkeyhood into truly sapient creatures, they need to meet and overcome huge challenges.

But modern western culture is more about avoiding challenges and embracing the stagnant quagmire of mediocrity. The current US government wants to turn the US into a comfortable retirement home much like Europe. A world run by government bureaucracy, where CYA and groupthink replace all innovative and creative thought. A heaven for leftists and Obama zombies.

What use do mediocre government bureaucrats have for outer space? It's just too hard, too expensive, too dangerous. Let's just create and expand more social programs instead! Governments thrive on malaise and dependency. Primitive level humans accept such a master-slave relationship all too easily.

What is the alternative? Read Tamm's thesis and find out.