The boys and their toys: Drones R Us

A seldom acknowledged dimension of the U.S. military today is what the impish historian of technology David F. Noble used to call "the boys and their toys."  The logo above from the "Program Executive Office" of the "Unmanned Aviation and Stike Weapons" program shows the ghoulish fun that the guys are having with the latest collection of gadgets in their toybox -- the drone aircraft.  Yes, your tax dollars are paying to  produce menacing graphics of The Grim Reaper surrounded by the circular bureaucratic logo on what appears to be a Pentagon door or in a military Power Point display.

The idea that designing, building and using lethal weaponry is a kind of game is a common obsession in America today.  It is clearly on display, for example, in the "build a robot to smash other robots" competitions that are commonly used to attract middle school, high school and college students to careers in computer science and engineering.  The subtext is that killing and destruction are all part of the enjoyment that sophisticated technology involves.   To point out (as I sometimes do) that this approach is ultimately pathological and certainly not a great way to attract young people to lives as technical professionals is dismissed as "denying the kids their fun," and "rejecting the best way to recruit the next generation of engineers."  


In the interest of truth in advertising, my suggestion would be to include the Pentagon's stylish new grim reaper on advertisements for the next round of killer robot games we take to the country's school children.  They need to know what they're getting into.  (Perhaps they do already.)

Spanish activists drag bankster into court

                                                    Rodrigo Rato in happier times


An interesting episode from the ongoing financial crisis in Spain is the move by Spanish activists to file suit against financial mogul and conservative political bigwig Rodrigo Rato, former head of the International Monetary Fund and, more recently, president of "Bankia,"one of Spain's largest banks.  The trial is now taking place in Madrid.  Some details and commentary are offered below.  

(I worked with Florencio Cabello to do a quick English translation of the story written by F. Fafatale.  The term "15M" refers to the continuing mass movement that began in Spain on May 15, 2011.)


 * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * 


INTRODUCTION

To a considerable extent the current financial crisis in Spain was
triggered by the collapse of a particular bank, "Bankia," a relatively
new financial institution composed of several smaller banks in 2011.
Responding to the panic of "bailout," "austerity," and cuts in social
services, a group of Spanish citizens related to the M15 movement has
launched a campaing called 15MpaRato*
(http://15mparato.wordpress.com). In fact, the campaign's first move
has been to file a lawsuit demanding that Bankia's former director,
Rodrigo Rato, as well as the rest of the board, be held accountable
for the mismanagement and possible criminal behavior involved in the
notorious bank's demise.  The story below provides details of the
citizens' case against Rato.

[*The term "15MpaRato" is an untranslatable pun meaning in Spanish both
"M15 is out to get Rodrigo Rato" and "M15 is here to stay".]

TRANSLATION OF THE ARTICLE:

15m Pa Rato: Citizens' networks find their own voice in the "Bankia case"
The signature of the memorandum [bank bailout plan] with the EU hasn't
caught 15MpaRato flat-footed. Here we review the course of the
citizens' initiative that has been successful in including its lawsuit
in the case against Bankia brought before the Audiencia Nacional [the
Spanish court that deals with serious crimes].

F. Fafatale (Madrid)
July 20, 2012.  Issue 179
http://diagonalperiodico.net/Redes-con-voz-propia-en-el-caso.html

"In the war between the elites and the common people, fear has changed
sides. Now we are the ones who define the targets", proclaims the
15MpaRato campaign website. On the web site we can find the lawsuit
against Bankia recently admitted by Fernando Andreu, judge of the 4th
Central Court of the Audiencia Nacional. This means that the M15
movement is already fully entitled to appear in court in this case.

Some weeks ago, the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office backed the
lawsuit filed by the UPyD (Unión  Progreso y Democracia) party. This
meant that Rodrigo Rato and 32 former members of Bankia's board are to
be investigated on charges of falsifying accounts, dishonest
administration, price manipulation and improper appropriation of the
bank's funds.

Why is the 15MpaRato complaint different from UPyD's and others? In
their own words: "Our complaint includes almost every charge that
judge Andreu levels against members of the board, but also expands the
first lawsuit to include offenses contained in Article 282bis of the
Spanish Criminal Code". This article imposes jail sentences ranging
from one to six years and fines ranging from six to twelve months if
the administrators of a public company falsify economic and financial
 information in ways that cause serious damage. The 15MpaRato demand
adds: "The charges of falsifying accounts, dishonest administration,
price manipulation and improper appropriation are intended to protect
Bankia's legal goods, which formerly were public".

However, this complaint (launched by the Platform for a Citizen Debt
Audit, Xnet, Citizens' Bailout Plan, Iaioflautas (aging M15
activists), Platform of People Affected by Mortgages, Euribor
Operation, #CierraBankia, Real Democracy Now network and Madrilonia)
goes a step further: "We intend to protect the people, the affected;
we represent no other interest than the common interest of the people.
We are the people! The admission of our complaint allows us to appear
in court and watch over those interests at every moment in the process".

After the admission of its lawsuit, the 15MpaRato campaign has
required the judge Andreu the intervention of Bankia before Spain
signs the memorandum of agreement with the EU. This memorandum implies
modifying Spanish laws to turn the banks' private debt into public
debt. "The issuance of bonds is the trick to pay the big creditors,
but in ways that will later increase the national debt", explains
15MpaRato. On the contrary, If the judicial administrators intervene,
as will be discussed this week at the Audiencia Nacional, the
Government-backed issuance of new bonds could be abruptly stopped.

The next steps of 15MpaRato will be to expand attention to the
criminal aspects of the dispute and to gather information from Bankia
workers. Besides, this campaign collaborates with the platform of
#OpEuríbor, which focuses on the possible manipulation of Euribor, the
reference rate upon which most Spanish mortgages are indexed. to.
Together they reclaim "the nullity of all contracts signed by Bankia,
on the grounds that the calculation of Euribor in Spain has been
revealed as a fraud of historic dimensions, in much the same way that
we are seeing the Líbor scandal unfold in the UK".

The 15MpaRato lawsuit is also distinctive in its mode of operation,
showing the power of network collaboration achieved through the
Internet. The citizen response to the online campaign exceeded its own
promoters' expectations: the crowdfunding campaign launched to obtain
the ? 15 000 needed to file the lawsuit pulverized all records,
raising the money in less than 24 hours; all the information required
to initiate the case was gathered in 23 days, something that would
have been impossible for any single citizen to accomplish acting on
her own; in just 12 hours 50 small shareholders offered themselves as
plaintiffs and dozens of inside witnesses were located.

- From a communicative perspective, the campaign bears the imprint of
M15 movement, making the most of social networks. The press conference
organized in June to announce the filing of this lawsuit was both
twitted and streamed. The message was clear: "Impunity is over. For
each bank intervention, we will save schools, hospitals and jobs for
the benefit of all. We don't owe, we won't pay. They owe, they shall pay".

Will we regard Coke and Pepsi the way we do cigarettes?

The presence of high fructose corn syrup in the food and drinks we consume is now commonly linked to America's obesity epidemic and a range of associated health concerns.  A story by Susan Heavy in Reuters notes:

" A leading U.S. cancer lobby group is urging the Surgeon General to conduct a sweeping study of the impact of sugar-sweetened beverages on consumer health, saying such drinks play major role in the nation's obesity crisis and require a U.S. action plan.

In a letter to U.S. Health Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, the American Cancer Society's advocacy affiliate on Tuesday called for a comprehensive review along the lines of the U.S. top doctor's landmark report on the dangers of smoking in 1964.

"An unbiased and comprehensive report on the impact of sugar-sweetened beverages could have a major impact on the public's consciousness and perhaps begin to change the direction of public behavior in their choices of food and drinks," American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network wrote."

 In a similar light, the the descriptions below by John Cassone, PhD of Cassone Wellness, arrived in a Google+ message.  They seem plausible.

 * * * * * * * * 

This is what happens to your body within one hour of drinking a can of soda.

10 minutes: 10 teaspoons of sugar hit your system, which is 100 percent of your recommended daily intake. You'd normally vomit from such an intake, but the phosphoric acid cuts the flavor.

20 minutes: Your blood sugar skyrockets. Your pancreas attempts to maximize insulin production in order to turn high levels of sugar into fat.

40 minutes: As your body finishes absorbing the caffeine, your pupils dilate, your blood pressure rises, and your liver pumps more sugar into the bloodstream. Adenosine receptors in your brain are blocked preventing you from feeling how tired you may actually be.

45 minutes: Your body increases dopamine production, causing you to feel pleasure and adding to the addictiveness of the beverage. This physical neuro response works the same way as it would if we were consuming heroin.

60 minutes: The phosphoric acid binds calcium, magnesium and zinc in your lower intestine, which boosts your metabolism a bit further. High doses of sugar and artificial sweeteners compound this effect, increasing the urinary excretion of calcium. The caffeine’s diuretic properties come into play. (You have to GO!) Your body will eliminate the bonded calcium, magnesium and zinc that was otherwise heading to your bones. And you will also flush out the sodium, electrolytes and water. Your body has eliminated the water that was in the soda. And in the process it was infused with nutrients and minerals your body would have otherwise used to hydrate your system or build body cells, bones, teeth.

The sugar crash begins. You may become irritable and/or sluggish. You start feeling like crap. Time to grab another?"

  * * * * * * *

It's been years since I've had a Coke or Pepsi.  I moan when as I watch friends order them in restaurants or at the ball park.  Once thought to be harmless beverages emblematic of the good life, they now loom as an increasingly obvious menace to our well-being.  Efforts to remove them from the American are often resisted with much the fervor that greeted anti-smoking campaigns and attempts to require the use of auto seat belt campaigns.  It's a question of precious "freedom" don't you know?

Smashing victory over censorship at RPI and Troy

                                       Artist Wafaa Bilal with image from "Virtual Jihadi"

During the spring of 2008 at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York the scheduled presentation of “Virtual Jihadi,” a piece of performance art by artist Wafaa Bilal, was banned by the university.   Mr. Bilal had been invited by the Department of Arts to show his work – a modified version of a first person shooter video game that depicts armed conflict in the Middle East – for the campus community.  Following a protest by the campus Republicans, Shirley Ann Jackson, President of Rensselaer, decided that the work was not suited for campus viewing, and forbid the artist to show and discuss his politically controversial anti-war statement.  (I wrote extensively about this incident of explicit censorship in this blog during that period.)

As an alternative, the off campus Sanctuary for Independent Media located in north Troy, offered its auditorium for an evening showing.  Despite the presence of picket signs and protests outside the Sanctuary, the event to place in a fully packed house.  But the next morning, officials of the City of Troy arrived and locked the building, claiming that “code violations” made the place unfit for any social activity there.   Thus, Mr. Bilal’s art was censored a second time within a week.  Troy joined R.P.I. on the list of institutions eager to suppress constitutionally protected free speech.

It’s a long story, folks, but the long and the short of it is that the Media Alliance that operates the Sanctuary for Independent Media, filed a civil rights law suit against the City of Troy and won.  Part of the settlement involved an agreement for the Sanctuary and City to write a grant proposal to the National Endowment for the Arts.  Today the news came through that the proposal had been awarded an NEA grant, one to be matched dollar for dollar by The City of Troy.  Here’s the message of the Sanctuary’s Steve Pierce about this astonishing outcome.  

Hi--  Good news!  Our federal civil rights lawsuit against the City of Troy for shutting down an anti-war art exhibit at the Sanctuary in 2008 comes to a close today with the announcement of a grant award from the National Endowment for the Arts, to be matched dollar for dollar by $50,000 from the city as agreed in our settlement of the case (http://www.nyclu.org/regions/capital-region/sanctuary-settlement-022712).    If you're unfamiliar with the history, there's a great short documentary about what happened: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v42OLzCDr98  Thanks for all your support over the years...  --Steve 

  % % % % % %

 At RPI, in Troy, New York and everywhere else, this a victory worth celebrating. 
Congratulations to Branda Miller, Steve Pierce and their colleagues who've made the Sanctuary for Independent Media such a lively place for art, education, community activity, media, and politics during the past decade.  

Note:  The documentary listed above is fabulous.  It should be required viewing for university and city officials who believe it would be a wonderful show of strength and moral character to censor political speech and works of art.  The stupidity of such measures is shockingly obvious.  Especially notable in the video are the absurd, laughable arguments in favor of censorship, especially the repeated insistence of RPI managers that Wafaa Bilal's provocative video presentation must be banned because it is equivalent to child pornography.   

Two elegant gentlemen: Sal Restivo and Tony Bennett

My friend and colleague Sal Restivo, brilliant, prolific sociologist of science, recently retired from the Department of Science and Technology Studies at Rensselaer and has moved to Ghent in Belgium where he continues his work as a research fellow at the university there.   I'll miss him. 

In an exchange of emails today he mentioned that he'd gone to a Tony Bennett concert in Antwerp and later spent some time with his fellow Italian American.  Here's Sal's description:   "In photo left to right: Sal,Tony Bennett (holding the CD from my son Dave's gig as the Boss Brass pianist with Mel Torme; Dave sent Tony the CD in appreciation for his influence on his (Dave's) music), my friend Phyllis, and Tony's wife Susan."  

 I see.  So this is "retirement" in Europe.  Go, Sal!

Are Things Getting Better?

 I don't know whether if was a suggestion, rumor or something that actually happened, but when I was studying political theory at Berkeley in the 1960s, a philosophy TA mused that Karl Popper came to campus and proposed a semester long course on the topic: "Are Things Getting Better?'

That's always struck me as a great topic for inquiry -- puzzling, wide open, full of possibilities.  What kinds of evidence and argument could be marshaled to provide an answer?  How would one weight the positive, negative and neutral trends for humanity and the planet?  How could one begin to compare the changes about which many people are sanguine -- the presence of the Internet, for example -- against ones whose  presence tends to cast a shadow over any reasonable expectations about the future (global warming, the end of cheap energy, growing economic inequality...)?

It turns out that on the occasion of the Rio+20 summit, The Guardian has prepared a brief set of categories including population, life expectancy, child mortality, ecological footprint, poverty, hunger, food production, GDP, social change, life satisfaction, battle deaths and biodiversity, along with a slice of the available evidence to prompt us to ponder such questions.

Here's the link that asks for your views and compares them to others who've taken the survey.  (I'm still undecided.)

Rio+20 interactive: is the world getting better or worse?

Tens of thousands of Norwegians sing a song the killer hates

In a plaza in Oslo today some 40,000 Norwegians gathered in to sing a song, "Barn av Regnbuen," Children of the Rainbow.  The song celebrates the tolerant, multicultural society that most people in the country revere.  It's also the kind of society that Anders Behring Breivik, now on trial for killing 77 people last July, openly hates, a sentiment that apparently motivated his murderous rampage.  

Here are the words to the song with my translation:

En himmel full av stjerner.
Blått hav så langt du ser.
En jord der blomster gror.
Kan du ønske mer ?
Sammen skal vi leve
hver søster og hver bror.
Små barn av regnbuen
og en frodig jord.

A sky full of stars.
Blue sea as far as you can see.
A land where flowers grow.
Can you wish for more?
Together we will live
each sister and each brother.
Small children of the rainbow
and a fertile soil.

The song is an adaptation of Pete Seeger's classic "Rainbow Race" (1917), embraced by Norwegians as a national favorite.  Here's Pete's original version on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XxXzD0eQQBg 

Twenty years ago I lived with my family for a year in Norway and came to love the place and its people.  I applaud them for joining together in the face of great tragedy to raise their voices in song, affirming the simple truth that unites them.

Ha de bra, my friends.

Lonely Climate Flower

Today I noticed one pink azalea in front of my home in Chatham, New York.  Usually, at this time of year, hundreds of flowers sprout from the two thirty-year-old plants that grace our front porch.  But in the middle of March there was a spike of very warm weather that encouraged the plants to begin to blossom about a month early.  Just as the flowers were beginning to emerge, a freeze stuck the region, killing all the azaleas, or so I thought.  Today this one little survivor announced its presence.

This is small testament to much a much larger pattern: destruction of Earth's climate, bringing increasingly capricious weather that now assaults both nature and civilization. 
     
       
    

Next generation nuclear power is just around the coroner

If the disaster at Fukushima were not enough, it turns out that the perpetually dismal economic profile for nuclear power has gotten even worse.  At the level of sheer business calculation the question about nuclear power plants has always been whether they were even remotely feasible without huge government subsidies as well as the legal regulations (oh, no -- not regulations!) that shifted most of the liability for any nuclear accidents to US taxpayers.  As the nuclear industry and the Obama administration boldly plow ahead with plans for "the next generation" of radiation producing plants and their occasional byproduct --  electricity --,  a significant voice has begun speaking out.  

John Rowe, former CEO of Exelon, the nation's largest producer of nuclear power, has now pulled away the curtain to reveal the industry's wizards frantically twisting the dials on what now seems to be a six decade long failed experiment.  As reported in Forbes, Rowe offered his well-informed, no-nonsense assessment at a University of Chicago conference last week. 

Nuclear power is no longer an economically viable source of new energy in the United States, the freshly-retired CEO of Exelon, ... said in Chicago Thursday.

And it won’t become economically viable, he said, for the forseeable future.

“Let me state unequivocably that I’ve never met a nuclear plant I didn’t like,” said John Rowe, who retired 17 days ago as chairman and CEO of Exelon Corporation, which operates 22 nuclear power plants, more than any other utility in the United States.

“Having said that, let me also state unequivocably that new ones don’t make any sense right now.” 

....

“I’m the nuclear guy,” Rowe said. “And you won’t get better results with nuclear. It just isn’t economic, and it’s not economic within a foreseeable time frame.”

It's always refreshing to hear straight talk from well-placed business people.  Too bad frank confessions of this kind usually arrive a the person is flying skyward on a golden parachute.  (Did I hear the faint echo of the word "suckers!" as the sail vanished over the horizon?)   Why didn't Rowe tell us this before all the excitement about the new nuclear boondoggles in the U.S., like this one in today's news for example?
 

Scana Corp. has received approval to build two nuclear reactors at its Virgil C. Summer plant in Cayce, S.C., at a cost of US$10.2 billion.

Scana applied to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in 2008. The first reactor is scheduled to begin generating electricity in 2017, about a year later than expected because of delays in the NRC's licensing process, the company said in a statement. But the second unit will be commissioned in 2018, a year ahead of schedule.

Don't worry about the national debt or the "austerity" attacks on Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, food stamps, etc.  Just get those big nuke subsidy checks in the mail, Barack. 

For those interested in the mindset of nuclear power and similar obsessions, here's an always reliable handbook.

                                                  
                                                       
                                              

Radiation at Fukushima is killing robots (What about us?)

The news from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant seems to get worse day-by-day, more than a year after the calamitous earthquake, tsunami and subsequent multiple meltdowns at the site.  Because levels of radioactivity have reached 73 sieverts per hour in the reactor 2 containment structure, it is no longer safe for human beings to enter the wreckage.  According to the Tokyo Electric Power Company, owners of the plant, "People exposed to such high levels of radiation in just a minute would become nauseous and could die within a month."  Uh oh.....

Earlier reports about efforts to contain the disaster waxed enthusiastic about wonderful new robots that could withstand levels of radiation far in excess of what humans can endure. Yes, we have the technology!  Here's one such account from last November.

Unique video sequences, authorized by Tokyo Electrical Company (TEPCO), have been published by Japanese Robonable showing U.S. military robots operating inside Unite 3 reactor building at Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station. The iRobot PackBots  are preparing for the establishment of a system to reduce gas pressure in the reactor containment vessel. A similar system had been installed in Unit 1 and Unit 2 of the damaged nuclear reactor leading to reduction of emissions of radioactive material.

Alas, hopes of this kind have been dashed.  Current levels of radioactivity at Fukushima quickly destroy the smart, durable military robots sent in to hoist the plant's simmering trash.  In a report from The Epoch Times:

Even robots, endoscopes, and other devices cannot be deployed inside of the containment chamber, because the high radiation would render them useless, the company said. Radiation can damage computer chips and alter images taken via cameras.

The radiation levels are the highest discovered by the company since the plant was crippled during the earthquake and tsunami a year ago. 

Like many of the actual and brewing disasters of our times, the predicament could prove to be a godsend for research and "innovation." "TEPCO spokesperson Junichi Matsumoto noted that the company needs to develop devices and robots that are resistant to high levels of radiation." 

So get  those grant proposals written, folks!  Think of it as boost for the great "Singularity" and its contributions to the "Next Generation of Nuclear Power" just around the corner (or is it "coroner"?).
             

                                       TEPCO officials surveying the situation at Fukushima
                                       
                                         
                                                  
                                                    
                 

Objects that control human beings?

At present the Prado Museum in Madrid has a wonderful collection of art on loan from the Hermitage in St. Petersburg.  At the very end of the exhibition I came upon a fascinating painting, "Metaphysical Still Life," by Giorgio Morandi (1890-1964),   The written explanation next to the work made the painting all the more interesting.  I've long been puzzled by the influence -- including political influence -- that material artifacts exercise within human affairs.  Morandi's view of the situation moves the question to a truly sublime level.  Here's the text on the wall.

Morandi used the methods of "Metaphysical Painting," depicting simple objects of different geometrical shapes with few details, a limited palette and an emphasis on the key volumes.  He includes a mannequin, icon of the Metaphysical aesthetic, as a metaphysical expression of the idea that it is objects that control human beings and that the secret of their power is not governed by logic and cannot be revealed.

Now that I'm aware of Morandi's basic vision, I plan do some further poking about to see exactly what he had in mind.

Expect epiphany!

      

            

              

Hey, this machine's got a good job! So what's your beef?

During the late 1970s within scholarly and political debates about technology and society, one of the key topics was “the future of work.”  A number of able writers, the David F. Noble, Seymour Melman, and Harley Shaiken among others, along with leaders in the labor movement, e.g.,William Winpinsinger, President of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers, worried that the advance of automation and computerized production – computer numerically controlled (CNC) machine tools and the like would bring devastating consequences to the American working people – falling wages, job loss, long term unemployment, shattered families, decaying communities, etc.    

Noble’s books, Forces of Production and Progress Without People, still essential reading, scoped out much of the social landscape that has, during the past three decades, become the U.S.A. – a land of vacant factories and the now forlorn towns and cities that were once crucial to American industry.   Noble argued forcefully that developments touted as fabulous technical and economic “advances” left a key element out of the picture – the lives of ordinary human beings.  

By the middle 1980s the emerging field of science and technology studies (S.T.S.) turned its attention to other matters – biotechnology, personal computers, identity politics, the social construction of this-and-that, technoscience ANT hills, and other highly fundable research projects.  One consequence of the shift (actually more like a shameful stampede) was to leave ordinary working people high and dry as regards any advocates or supporters within the corridors of academic research and teaching.  Factory workers were, in effect, consigned to an intellectual and practical dust bin, forced to confront automation, robotization, globalization, the networked society, and the political language of “free markets” and “neoliberalism” on their own with few allies in America’s wonderful universities, laboratories and think tanks.  As the tide swept over the land,  S.T.S. became, to a large extent, S.Y.L – See Ya Later!

During the same period and in much the same frame of mind, the nation’s business and political elites explicitly renounced any plans to develop a coherent “industrial policy” for the United States, a policy that might have (among other things) made sensible plans about how to help the nation’s blue collar workers prepare for a future in which post-World War II factory jobs would be replaced by more sophisticated methods of production.  A tacit understanding took hold within both major political parties that the global corporations were now the ones best equipped to make decisions about production, productivity, new definitions of work, and – oh, by the way – the distribution of wealth in the “new economy.” Those who persisted in agonizing about industrial policy and the fate of labor were regarded as fluffy, romantic, unrealistic.  

While attention to living conditions of the American working class (oops, there I said it!) has improved somewhat with the rise of Occupy Wall Street and the recent wave of media attention to the plight of the 99%, it is still rare to find any thoughtful discussion of U.S. factories, their technologies and workers.  Now that the “future of work” has finally arrived, how well are everyday people doing?   

A welcome exception to the prevailing journalistic and scholarly blackout on this score is Adam Davidson’s excellent piece, “Making It in America,” in The Atlantic.  Poignant and often tragically sad, the report is one we should have known and responded to long ago.  

Below are a few notable segments to get you started.  The factory is the Standard Motor Products in Greenville, South Carolina.  The young woman interviewed is Madelyn “Maddie” Palier.

Factories have replaced millions of workers with machines. Even if you know the rough outline of this story, looking at the Bureau of Labor Statistics data is still shocking. A historical chart of U.S. manufacturing employment shows steady growth from the end of the Depression until the early 1980s, when the number of jobs drops a little. Then things stay largely flat until about 1999. After that, the numbers simply collapse. In the 10 years ending in 2009, factories shed workers so fast that they erased almost all the gains of the previous 70 years; roughly one out of every three manufacturing jobs—about 6 million in total—disappeared. About as many people work in manufacturing now as did at the end of the Depression, even though the American population is more than twice as large today. ….

Before the rise of computer-run machines, factories needed people at every step of production, from the most routine to the most complex. The Gildemeister, for example, automatically performs a series of operations that previously would have required several machines—each with its own operator. It’s relatively easy to train a newcomer to run a simple, single-step machine.  ….

A Level 1 worker makes about $13 an hour, which is a little more than the average wage in this part of the country. The next category, Level 2, is defined by Standard as a worker who knows the machines well enough to set up the equipment and adjust it when things go wrong.  …. 

For Maddie to achieve her dreams—to own her own home, to take her family on vacation to the coast, to have enough saved up so her children can go to college—she’d need to become one of the advanced Level 2s. A decade ago, a smart, hard-working Level 1 might have persuaded management to provide on-the-job training in Level-2 skills. But these days, the gap between a Level 1 and a 2 is so wide that it doesn’t make financial sense for Standard to spend years training someone who might not be able to pick up the skills or might take that training to a competing factory.  …. 

“What worries people in factories is electronics, robots,” she tells me. “If you don’t know jack about computers and electronics, then you don’t have anything in this life anymore. One day, they’re not going to need people; the machines will take over. People like me, we’re not going to be around forever.”  . . . 

The double shock we’re experiencing now—globalization and computer-aided industrial productivity—happens to have the opposite impact: income inequality is growing, as the rewards for being skilled grow and the opportunities for unskilled Americans diminish.   ….

I never heard Maddie blame others for her situation; she talked, often, about the bad choices she made as a teenager and how those have limited her future. I came to realize, though, that Maddie represents a large population: people who, for whatever reason, are not going to be able to leave the workforce long enough to get the skills they need.  ….

Those with the right ability and circumstances will, most likely, make the right adjustments, get the right skills, and eventually thrive. But I fear that those who are challenged now will only fall further behind. To solve all the problems that keep people from acquiring skills would require tackling the toughest issues our country faces: a broken educational system, teen pregnancy, drug use, racial discrimination, a fractured political culture.  ….

For most of U.S. history, most people had a slow and steady wind at their back, a combination of economic forces that didn’t make life easy but gave many of us little pushes forward that allowed us to earn a bit more every year. Over a lifetime, it all added up to a better sort of life than the one we were born into. That wind seems to be dying for a lot of Americans. What the country will be like without it is not quite clear.

   

   

  

  

  

United States of Denial -- Peak Petroleum

 

Especially as I monitor the discussions in the ongoing presidential campaign, it seems that the U.S.A. has finally become unhinged -- disconnected from any sense of the realities that ought to be urgent topics for public debate.  The downward spiral of imagined concerns has now hit rock bottom with renewed attention to a subject most of us thought had been settled half a century ago, the right of couples to exercise contraception.   Are we headed back to the Dark Ages?

One question that has almost vanished from sight is the nation's energy policy, its present at future course.  Other than increasingly loud complaints about rapidly rising gasoline prices, the discussion about energy in Washington and elsewhere has ground to a halt.  Rather than pursue much needed measures to cut consumption fossil fuels and to speed the necessary transition to renewable, carbon neutral, non-radioactive energy sources, the country seems bound and determined to persist in its "Drill, baby, drill" fantasies about energy abundance, dreams accompanied by ever louder drumbeats in Washington and the TeVee news promoting  another costly, futile energy war in the Middle East.

It seems hard for our dumbed-down, bought off  political elites and for much of the citizenry to understand how little time there is to recognize the basic facts about energy and to start moving in more positive directions.  One problem seems to be that the literature on matters like the arrival of "peak petroleum" is just too voluminous and complex for everyday folks and ordinary politicians to understand.  That excuse, however, will now be much harder to hide behind because the good people at Incubate Pictures and the Post Carbon Institute have combined forces to produce a well-researched, engaging, animated, half hour long film, "There's No Tomorrow" by Dermont O'Connor, that lays out the multimillion year history and present predicament of fossil fuels in a way that is both entertaining and informative.   It deserves an Academy Award for best short movie.  Both adults and children can understand can grasp its argument and data with ease.   Take a look and then take action!

     

       

      

 

If these are the next 5 "big" technologies, I'd sure like to see the small ones

Occasionally the doors to the research laboratories in Silicon Valley and other high tech centers open just a crack to reveal what the geniuses and entrepreneurs inside are doing to improve humanity’s future.  That’s why I always take notice when I see headlines like this one from KGO-TV in San Francisco: “Next big 5 technologies that will change your life.” 

Oh good!  What does the future hold in store?

This time the story features some visionary, blue sky projections from Bernie Meyerson, IBM's vice president of innovation.  In tones of earnest excitement Meyerson describes the astonishing breakthroughs just over the horizon. 

1.  Phones and computers will actually know what you’re thinking (by observing your behavior);

2.  No more spam (the filters will improve);

3.  No more passwords (computers will have facial recognition, voice recognition, etc.);

4.  New ways to charge phones (micro-generators produce energy from the body’s motion);

5.  The digital divide will disappear (as godsends like items 1 through 4 trickle down to the world's grateful poor).

It comes as no surprise that silliness like this comes from a vice president of “innovation.”  To a great extent, “innovation” has become the brand name for projects of breathtaking triviality.   For those obsessed with “performance measures,” here are some good ones – “metrics” for a civilization that staunchly refuses to apply the best of its knowledge to the world’s most urgent problems – peak energy, climate crash, global inequality, world hunger, environmental crises too numerous to list -- but instead generates an endless stream of clever toys designed for high end consumers already sated with gadgets galore.

Max Weber accurately described our predicament about a century ago: 

“Specialists without spirit, sensualists without heart; this nullity imagines that it has obtained a level of civilization never before achieved'" 

(from The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, 1905)

        

                                             

                                     

The real pirates are in the music industry

                               It's our damned song now, matey!  We stole it fair and square.

One of the many amusing features of the otherwise serious disputes about so-called "online piracy" and of proposed legislation to stop it -- SOPA/PIPA -- for example, is the use of the term "piracy" by organizations that have been stealing artists and consumers blind for decades.  Thus, to cite just one category of abuse, it was long standard practice within record companies to trick songwriters into signing over the long term rights to their songs, the "publishing" rights.  That meant that the corporation, not the artist, received royalties for any further recordings of the song. Several generations of musicians were led to believe that "publishing" was something like printing the sheet music copy of the song and since they didn't want to be involved in the printing business, of course they wouldn't mind signing that "little" feature of a contract waved in their faces.

Today's puffing and spouting by large corporations about "piracy" of songs and movies has much the same character.  It turns out that those most concerned about the "theft" of music online are still busy stealing songs themselves.  This article from The Hollywood Reporter tells the story of the voracious Universal Music Group (UMG) and its war against some rap musicians.

The contract between UMG and YouTube over use of a "Content Management System" remains secret, but the ability to remove videos from YouTube could become controversial quickly. Just witness what happened to one rap group who found it impossible to put up one of its own songs on YouTube.

The rap group known as After the Smoke had created a song entitled, "One in a Million."

The song included a dancing keyboard rhythm and a scattered beat that was catchy enough that it became the underlying music to a track, "Far From A Bitch" by another rap group artist known as Yelawolf, signed to a UMG label.

When Yelawolf's song was leaked without authorization, UMG allegedly stepped in and had the song removed.

But in the aftermath, YouTube's filtering technology, perhaps on the lookout for any reposted copies, took down "One in a Million," angering  group member Whuzi. "We were like, 'Wait a minute? What's going on?'"Whuzi told Vice Magazine. "When I looked into it deeper and tried to contact YouTube and went through the all the correct procedures, they told me the entity that owns the copyright to our song was Universal."

After the Smoke is not signed to any Universal label.

                                                                                         
                                                                                          
                                                                                    

Song for our Great Depression: "Apple Days Are Here Again"

 

      Workers at Foxconn making Steve Jobs' wonderful iPhone 

During one of those end of the year 2011 wrap-up programs on the BBC, several CEOs of major corporations were asked to give their predictions for the year ahead and years beyond.  Would the U.S. and Europe emerge from what amounts to a persistent recession, or are there better days ahead?  Their predictions, made in separate interviews, varied in many of the specifics, but they were basically upbeat and looked forward to economic “recovery” within the next year or so. 

A recurring theme in the businessmen's statements caught my ear.  Here’s my rough paraphrase and summary:  “The future of a vibrant economy depends on new ideas and technological innovations, ones that will produce new levels of wealth and well-paying jobs in the decades just ahead.  Look at Apple, the iPhone and iPad, for example, that’s the model for the new economy.  That's where we should be looking.”   

In interview after interview the good news was: Apple, Apple, Apple, Apple, Apple.   Apparently, there are going to be dozens, maybe even hundreds of Apples, new corporations with jazzy new products to produce and sell, making us all rich once again.  I was struck by the univocal conclusion with its one lonely exemplar. All of this came, by the way, at the same time that the news was full of hyperventilating praise for the recently deceased Steve Jobs and the economic wonders he'd generated during his career. 

Today's New York Times runs a story, "How U.S. Lost Out on iPhone Work," by Charles Duhigg and Keith Bradsher that casts a shadow over these happy fantasies.

Apple employs 43,000 people in the United States and 20,000 overseas, a small fraction of the over 400,000 American workers at General Motors in the 1950s, or the hundreds of thousands at General Electric in the 1980s. Many more people work for Apple’s contractors: an additional 700,000 people engineer, build and assemble iPads, iPhones and Apple’s other products. But almost none of them work in the United States. Instead, they work for foreign companies in Asia, Europe and elsewhere, at factories that almost all electronics designers rely upon to build their wares. 

 

“Apple’s an example of why it’s so hard to create middle-class jobs in the U.S. now,” said Jared Bernstein, who until last year was an economic adviser to the White House. 

“If it’s the pinnacle of capitalism, we should be worried.”    

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The Times story pulls away the curtain from one of the central, delusional happy talk American narratives of ourtime.  We are asked to put our faith in "innovation" and in wonderful new corporations that will bring the return of prosperity by generating high tech product lines that, presumably, will be made by American workers and thereby restore prosperity to the land.  But what about all the contractors and sub-contractors and sub-sub contractors hiring hundreds of thousands of low wage laborers at places like Foxconn in China?  The delightful tales of a "new economy" just ahead never bother to mention such dreary details.  As always, people in the fading U.S. middle class  are urged to be more forward-looking and "optimistic."

In that bubbly spirit, we should rewrite the lyrics of the Depression era song, "Happy Days Are Here Again." 

Apple days are here again

The skies above are clear agin

So let's sing a song of cheer again

Apple days are here again!