If the beginning of Spring (in this hemisphere, anyhow) wasn't enough good news for you this week, here are nine more news stories guaranteed to warm your heart and, perhaps more importantly, do something nice for your brain as well.
Are you as sick of election coverage as we are?
Well, take heart. There are only 10 months left until the presidential election! So if you'd like something else to think about in the mean time, may we suggest these nine positive developments on the energy front?
No need to thank us -- it's all in a day's work here at The Speculist.
Here's a collection of 50 of our favorite positive developments from the year 2007.
Enjoy!
Tap...tap..tap...
Woman in Red Dress: "Is this thing on? Okay. I just thought it would be nice if someone would come to the microphone and announce what a fabulous specimen of a human being Phil Bowermaster is."
(Pause for long round of applause, cheers, whistles, and hoots. Piano man plays grand arpeggio.)
W.I.R.D.: "I've know Phil for more than 20 years, and let me tell you, he's Getting Better All The Time."
(Raises glass of sparkling libation.)
"And, as Speculists, we all know making something better takes a lot of work. And patience. And intelligence. And Integrity. And foresight. And the ability to work well with others."
(Pause)
"And most of all, it takes the unshakable belief that the thing in question CAN be better."
(More cheers and glasses raised. More segue music from piano.)
"So, here's a toast to Phil, in honor of his 45th birthday. For the NEXT 90 years of his life, may he keep Getting Better All the Time."
(Looking better than his Second Life avatar, Phil stands and takes a humble bow, surrounded by his beautiful and adoring family.)
(The revelers give a ringing toast with their crystal goblets of bubbly. Environmentally friendly confetti, streamers, and balloons rain down. Piano man launches into his rendition of Lucinda Williams, "World Without Tears"...)
This Reuters article:
Centennial time capsule car found ruined | Oddly Enough | Reuters
Got me thinking about a couple of things. First, how might the time capsule have been done better (please confine speculation to approximately mid-century technology), and second, what would constitute
"an advanced product of American industrial ingenuity with the kind of lasting appeal that will still be in style 50 years from now."
with respect to early twenty-first century technology?
Please discuss in the comments.
P.S. I think I'll do some checking into how the economics of the capsule contents might have been improved. I'll let you know if anything particularly interesting comes of that.
UPDATE (Moments later): a bit of searching yields a price range of about $900 to $11,000 for similar era Belvederes in conditions ranging from semi-restored to ... iffy. A restored 1956 done by hot-rod legend Boyd Coddington's shop goes for $29,500
UPDATE FROM STEPHEN:
I'm reminded of Doc Brown's 70 year preservation of his time traveling Delorean:
Notice how this was portrayed in Back to the Future III. Dr. Brown put the vehicle up on pylons. It's covered. And it's in a sealed room.
A mine would be far superior to a natural cave because caves tend to be damp (they're usually formed by water). The preserver could choose a place in the mine where drainage is assured. Barring a cave-in or the renewed mining activities, this sort of time capsule would be perfect.
But even as portrayed in BTTF III, certain parts - like the rubber wheels - didn't fare so well. Even a carefully preserved car would need a lot of work before it would be ready for the highway.
Ben Goertzel says the Singularity may get here sooner than many of us expect:
One of these years, one of these AGI designs—quite possibly my own Novamente system—is going to pass the critical threshold and recognize the pattern of its own self, an event that will be closely followed by the system developing its own sense of will and reflective awareness. And then, if we've done things right and supplied the AGI with an appropriate goal system and a respect for its human parents, we will be in the midst of the event that human society has been pushing toward, in hindsight, since the beginning: a positive Singularity. The message I'd like to leave you with is: If appropriate effort is applied to appropriate AGI designs, now and in the near future, then a positive Singularity could be here sooner than you think.
Goertzel says that with a Manhattan Project approach, we could be there in a decade or so, but that it will most likely take a little longer being driven by a few serious researchers trying "really, really" hard to make it happen. Like Kurzweil, Goertzel believes that better understanding of the human brain will lead us there, but he's not convinced that we need a full brain scan or significantly more powerful hardware.
This is a good overview for folks who haven't read much about AGI (artificial general intelligence.) There are some interesting thoughts in the comments as well. Read the whole thing.
`Bear in mind then, that Brag is a good dog, but Holdfast is a better. Bear that in mind, will you?' repeated Mr Jaggers, shutting his eyes and nodding his head at Joe, as if he were forgiving him something. `Now, I return to this young fellow. And the communication I have got to make is, that he has Great Expectations.'
Dickens, Great Expectations
In the upcoming current edition of FastForward Radio, Stephen and I spend some time talking about our recent discussion about The Secret, and what our views on that matter have to say about where The Speculist fits on a scale from the completely skeptical to the completely mystical/credulous. Without giving too much away about a show that's still in production that you can just go listen to, I will just say that at this site, we are quick to entertain any idea that entertains us, but we don't spend a lot of time on ideas that don't have a solid basis in science and technology.
Which isn't to say that science and technology are the only worthwhile subjects that might be discussed. The folks who write for The Speculist would probably have a lot to say about religion, for example -- seeing as we are mostly people of faith -- but along with politics, it is one of the two topics we generally avoid. (With a few notable exceptions.) Those subjects are taboo not because they aren't interesting or because we wouldn't have a lot to say about them, but rather because:
1. They already get plenty of coverage elsewhere in the blogosphere, and
2. They tend to take over, leaving little time or room for other discussions.
Anyway, there are plenty of other topics that we haven't spent a lot of time on, except to have some fun with them. Things like UFOs, for example. We don't write about UFOs because they aren't particularly interesting to us; and they aren't particularly interesting to us because we don't think there's much of anything there. The real world can prove much more exhilarating than imaginary substitutes. Take sea monsters: an actual sea monster captures the imagination in a way that the mythical one can't.
Likewise, The Secret offers us a world of infinite possibility accessible by means of the fact that our minds control physical reality. That's nice, but speaking as someone not yet thoroughly convinced that my mind does control physical reality, I am nonetheless astounded by the future of limitless possibility that lies before us. In one of the earliest entries at The Speculist, written about three and a half years ago, I dashed off a list of items that I believed we have a pretty good shot at being able to live to see. At the time, I labeled these items the "extremely good news."
On the one hand, that's correct. It is good news that all of these items lie within the possibility space of humanity. But on the other hand, there's nothing particularly extreme about this list. These are just a few possibilities that lie far beyond the scope of what most practitioners of The Secret ever think about, and yet they lie well within the scope of what is attainable by humanity. These are not our Great Expectations; they're just our reasonable expectations.
Preserving and Nurturing the Biosphere
1. Methods of production that generate zero pollutants
2. Energy sources that produce zero pollutants
3. Reversing of previous environmental damage
4. Human population levels with zero negative environmental impact
5. Preservation of natural habitat for all living species
6. The long-term survival of all living species
7. The retrieval of lost species
8. The creation of new species and new biospheres
Standards of Living
1. Eradication of hunger worldwide
2. Adequate clean water, housing, clothing, for all
3. Medical care for all
4. Access to technology and knowledge for all who want it
5. Total economic independence for individuals and groups who desire it
Indefinite Human Lifespan
1. Eradication of aging and infectious disease
2. Quick, effective treatment for any kind of cancer
3. Effective prevention/cures for heart disease, diabetes, other chronic diseases
4. Suspension of life not sustainable by current means
5. The transfer of human consciousness to new media
Work
1. Work necessary for economic viability, not for economic survival
2. Continued blurring of line between work and play
3. Full immersion VR to eliminate distance
4. Artificial Intelligences to assist us in work
Recreation
1. Artificial Intelligences to entertain and befriend us
2. Full immersion VR to simulate any experience
3. Consumer model of entertainment rivaled by producer/participant model
(Amazing how much things can change in such a short period of time. Look at item 3 in the immediately preceding category. I'd say we're well on our way with that one.)
Stephen was taken to task in the comments section of the aforelinked discussion of The Secret for suggesting that a person's goals should be "realistic." But I think he would agree that everything on this list is not only realistic, but quite reasonable. With a future this bright within our grasp, who needs spooky magic powers?
[We're moving this entry back to the top to give those who haven't had a chance yet to tell us where you think the minute had should be on the Doomsday Clock. Come on, we know you've been thinking about it... For those who have been following the development of this post, please be aware that two Updates have been added to Kathy's original.]
The Doomsday Clock, based at the University of Chicago, has been ticking off the metaphorical minutes until apocalyptic midnight since the beginning of the cold war between the U.S. and former Soviet Union--circa 1947. In those days, the threat of the U.S.S.R. launching nuclear weapons kept school children hunkered under their desks, practicing bomb drills as naively as they did tornado and fire drills.
The demise of the Soviet Union didn't stop the Clock, however. Its keepers, the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists (also Chicao-based) keep it calibrated to the changing face of the treats to global survival. Since 2002, for example, the clock has been set at seven minutes to midnight.
Some purists might argue that the Bulletin is straying too far from its traditional message on nuclear issues. On Jan 17, 2007, the Doomsday Clock was set to five minutes to midnight, and the Bulletin issued this statement:
"We stand at the brink of a second nuclear age. Not since the first atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki has the world faced such perilous choices. North Korea’s recent test of a nuclear weapon, Iran’s nuclear ambitions, a renewed U.S. emphasis on the military utility of nuclear weapons, the failure to adequately secure nuclear materials, and the continued presence of some 26,000 nuclear weapons in the United States and Russia are symptomatic of a larger failure to solve the problems posed by the most destructive technology on Earth.As in past deliberations, we have examined other human-made threats to civilization. We have concluded that the dangers posed by climate change are nearly as dire as those posed by nuclear weapons. The effects may be less dramatic in the short term than the destruction that could be wrought by nuclear explosions, but over the next three to four decades climate change could cause drastic harm to the habitats upon which human societies depend for survival.
This deteriorating state of global affairs leads the Board of Directors of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists--in consultation with a Board of Sponsors that includes 18 Nobel laureates--to move the minute hand of the “Doomsday Clock” from seven to five minutes to midnight. "
Could there be mitigating factors the Bulletin scientists didn't include in their calibrations? In the spirit of Stephen and Phil's lyrical response to the Doomsday argument, I am hereby issuing a challenge: the formation of an ad hoc Bulletin of Speculists to present an alternative setting for the minute hand of the Doomsday Clock.
UPDATE FROM STEPHEN:
Of course the Doomsday clock is not a measurement of the actual risk of the world coming to an end. It's always been a measurement of the nervousness of atomic scientists that a major invention of their field will end the world. I suspect politics has played its part. Looking over this Doomsday Clock graph I see a rough correlation between the setting of the clock and the party holding the U.S. Presidency:
click for a larger image
Here's the official announcement of this latest move:
The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists (BAS) will move the minute hand of the "Doomsday Clock" on January 17, 2007 [to 5 minutes to midnight]...the first such change to the Clock since February 2002. The major new step reflects growing concerns about a "Second Nuclear Age" marked by grave threats, including: nuclear ambitions in Iran and North Korea, unsecured nuclear materials in Russia and elsewhere, the continuing "launch-ready" status of 2,000 of the 25,000 nuclear weapons held by the U.S. and Russia, escalating terrorism, and new pressure from climate change for expanded civilian nuclear power that could increase proliferation risks.
One problem is that the BAS is trying to set the clock for two different things – actual Doomsday (which I would take to be the end of the world – at least for humans), and nuclear war.
Though it isn't politically correct to say so, a regional nuclear war would not be the end of humanity. It doesn't even mean the rise of some weird post-apocalyptic Mad Max world. Our civilization would plod on after a nuclear war between India and Pakistan or between Israel and Iran. If the U.S. got nuked by a terrorist group it would probably be a single bomb destroying a single city – probably a major city. Our economy would be devastated, but our civilization would limp away and then eventually charge back. Ditto on a nuclear attack on U.S. interests from North Korea.
The risk of regional nuclear wars (which includes the risk of a nuclear terrorist attack) has risen as the risk of a big nuclear exchange (the kind that would endanger the human race as a whole) has diminished.
We had some close calls during the Cold War. Everybody knows about the Cuban missile crisis (although you couldn't tell it from the setting of the Doomsday Clock at the time). Few know how close we came to going out in 1983.
But we made it through somehow.
So, Kathy, I think mitigating factors that those BAS guys aren't considering include the following:
As for where I set the clock, I think that we should first agree on where the lowest and highest risk should be set. There's no rule against setting the Doomsday clock outside of 15:00 to midnight (in 1991 the clock was set to 17 minutes to midnight). But the Doomsday clock graphic seems to suggest that as long as there is an existential risk, the clock should be set somewhere between 11:45 (lowest risk) and midnight (Doomsday).
But we need more clocks. One "nuclear war" clock could reflect the risk of nuclear war in whatever form. That, I'd argue, is what the BAS Doomsday Clock has become. It's not a human extinction clock, it's a nuclear-war-of-all-kinds clock. That being the case, I'd say the current setting of 5 minutes to midnight sounds about right. The risk of regional nuclear war is high.
The risk of human extinction from nuclear war is much less. If I was setting a clock for that I'd put it at 11:47 - just a little higher than the minimum risk. Of course if we actually do have a regional nuclear war, this nuclear extinction clock would shoot close to midnight. There is just no telling how this country would react if New York or Washington were wiped out. Let me put it this way – the War on Terror is also a war to save the rest of the world from our response to such an attack.
A third clock could reflect all existential risks. Risks like these.
I'd set that clock at 7 minutes to midnight.
UPDATE FROM MICHAEL:
Some of the following (which originated in a 'backchannel' email exchange among the bloggers here at the Speculist), recapitulates facts and concepts already touched on by Kathy and Stephen. To the extent that our readers find any such repetition distasteful, I offer an apology in advance. However, I think that if these relevant facts are not laid out in these particular terms, it might damage the foundation of the ideas I'd like to discuss.
Begin email extract...
The greatest value to the "Doomsday Clock" (besides as a marketing campaign by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, and a fairly successful one) is as a fairly visible metaphor for, and estimate of, one sort of existential risk. When the Clock was initially conceived and presented, that existential risk was fairly clearly defined: Global Thermonuclear War between the only two social constructs capable of engaging in that activity. First between the United States of America and he Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, then among blocs of nation-states either capable of independently developing nuclear weapons or granted them as clients of such independently-capable states.
With first the departure of France's independently-acquired nuclear arsenal (The "Force de Frappe" lit. 'Strike Force') from the direct control of either the North Atlantic Treaty Organization or the Warsaw Pact and then the subsequent advent of nuclear arsenals, admitted or supposed, under the control of nation-states either unaligned with or more-or-less loosely associated with the original adversaries, the definition of the risk being characterized by the Clock expanded and became much more complex. While the fundamental risk remained Global Thermonuclear War prosecuted by one or both of the only nation-states capable of accomplishing such a civilization-threatening feat (single-handedly or 'cooperatively'), the contributing risks represented by escalation and alliances opened a larger number of paths from the status quo to the unthinkable outcome and some of those paths had distinctly lower thresholds standing between origin and outcome. A number of writers in the period made believable projections of these paths their stock-in-trade.
As the definition of the chain of risk evaluated by the Clock evolved and expanded, its utility as a widely-accepted summary estimate of the probability of the fundamental existential risk became diluted.
After the reductions in overall capacity by the relevant 'players' in the 1980's, and the dissolution of the Soviet Union in the '90's, the risk evaluated by the Clock, and thus its overall relevance, was diminished considerably. Other risks, global and potentially existential (catastrophic meteorite impact, pandemic disease, climate changes, collapse of the global socioeconomic infrastructure due to insufficient forward planning "Y2K") or "merely" regional (local famine, 'brushfire' conflicts formerly closely confined by their implications for the balance between superpowers) increased in their relative importance and/or attention regardless of any change in their independent
In order to capitalize on the significant stock of intellectual and moral authority at their disposal, and not least to continue selling their publication in the market in the wake of such decreased attention, the Educational Foundation for Nuclear Science (parent organization of the Bulletin) extended the factors considered by the Doomsday Clock. The recently-publicized addition of 'global warning' as a sufficiently-significant influence as to notably move the measure in the direction of greater certainty is only the most proximate and public acknowledgement of this evolution.
HOWEVER: The fundamental concept of the Clock was, and remains, to place an easily-understood and widely agreed upon value on the probability of one or more large-scale risks to society. As the exact risk being evaluated becomes less-closely defined the ease of understanding, wide acceptability, and thus the utility of the value is diminished.
In the intervening years since the establishment of the Clock, and particularly since the turn of the millennium, the understanding of risk and means by which it can be rationally estimated, even without a great concentration of highly-accurate information in the hands of a few analysts, have been developed. One such means of understanding and evaluation, leveraging recent improvements in communications and computing technologies, is the concept of Prediction Markets. (Addressed early on in the Speculist: ) Evolved out of insurance underwriting, actuarial science, and futures markets, and attempting to capture information held by, but not necessarily shared among, a wide sample of observers and enlist economic self-interest to drive what might otherwise be a largely- or completely-altruistic exposure of limited information and expertise, such markets operate best (make the most accurate, and profitable, predictions) when the risks being evaluated are clearly and concisely defined in time, space, and scope. In formulating such a risk prediction, or 'contract', one would frame the risk to be evaluated in specific and measurable terms. The Bulletin's Clock, in attempting to remain relevant in light of changing patterns of risk, has sacrificed the specificity necessary to be a reliable estimate of those risks even if its value is established by a large, knowledgeable, subset of the population.
While there is considerable room for debate as to whether it is more or less ethical to frame such risk predictions in specific human terms versus less emotionally-charged, but less specific, purely-economic terms, the more specific the prediction, the more precisely the risks attending to the event(s) or outcome(s) predicted may be estimated.
Perhaps an example would be appropriate:
"One million or more people dwelling in Sub-Saharan Africa will die of starvation and malnutrition by (on or before) 12 'o' clock midnight, December 31st, 2007 as verified by official population and mortality statistics and estimates published by the World Health Organization not later than December 31st, 2008"
is a far more specific statement of risk than a commodities futures contract that says, in effect:
"COB 12/31/07 CBOT Sorghum >= US$10.00 / cwt."
[Translation: At market close, on the Chicago Board of Trade, on December 31st, 2007, Sorghum (also known as millet, considered livestock feed in North America and Europe, but a fairly popular grain for human consumption in parts of Asia and Africa) will be sold for $10.00 per hundredweight, roughly $4.20 per bushel. Implied in this price are a number of factors including changes in demand among all users, worldwide crop sizes, transportation costs between successful producers and desirous consumers, and, conceivably, the unavailability of appealing foodstuffs in places, like sub-Saharan Africa, where people eat millet.]
Tragedy, too, can be evaluated in futures markets. To a certain extent, it already is. When property insurance is underwritten, in Boise, Bangkok, or Baghdad, some consideration must be made of the threats to that property posed by both natural and man-made causes. However, the specific contribution to the estimated risk posed by causes that others, including ourselves, might be interested in, is not transparent in the insurance contract itself.
While it may seem ghoulish and morally questionable to market a futures contract stating a specific cause of risk to specific property or individuals over a specific timeframe, there is a great deal of value in knowing what others might think about the probability of such a threat. Whether those individuals have vested interests in the proposition under consideration than the possibility of making a certain, limited, amount of money for guessing or estimating that risk correctly in light of the passage of events or otherwise, the society at large gains a great deal of useful information regarding that particular threat and possibly regarding risks contingent upon human action in general.
Finally, as Thomas Sowell points out in his Basic Economics, insurance and futures contracts can serve as means by which risk itself can be transferred from those with fewer resources to absorb and deal with it to those who have greater resources. The farmer who must wait until harvest not only to know how large his crop is (i.e. how many units he can bring to market), but also the size and quality of all other competing farmers' crops (which set the market price per unit) bears a substantial amount of risk. By contracting with a speculator to sell his crop, however large, at a price per unit established in advance of the harvest, the farmer limits his risk to the factors most closely under his or her own control (the productivity of his or her crop) and transfers the risk that others might out-produce the farmer to the speculator. The speculator, in turn, can hedge his or her bets by investing only a part of his or her capital in any one commodity or market, perhaps reducing the possibility of 'making a killing' by paying the farmer pennies on the eventual dollar value of the farmer's crop in particularly lean years, but offsetting the overall loss should bumper crops reduce the value of the farmer's output below the price agreed upon in advance.
To make a long two-cents worth short: The Doomsday Clock has outlived its original value in light of the dilution of its prediction and the expansion of understanding of the nature of risk and the possibilities for more successfully predicting and hedging risks developed since the Clock's inception. If the Bulletin really wished to remain in the vanguard of risk-awareness, the Directors would establish the Bulletin as the definitive window on and sponsor of an openly-traded, cash-based, highly-specific Predictions Market.
...End email extract
AFTERTHOUGHTS: One objection likely to be raised to my call for formulating marketable predictions in a specific, quantifiable, and mutually verifiable manner is that, particularly as predictions become more specific geographically and socially, the market for them also becomes more easily suceptible to manipulation by less-and-less potent actors. The worldwide wheat crop probably couldn't be materially manipulated by anything less than a nation-state or other actor of similar scope and capability. On the other hand, the continued health and welfare of a single individual can easily be altered (negatively or positively) by deliberate action on the part of another single individual (or the same individual, if the incentives were right). Political assassination is a canonical example here. Deliberate manipulation of the outcome of a prediction market contract could, potentially, deliver a profit to someone who was willing to influence the outcome of the prediction. Such manipulation for gain should, however, be fairly transparent as the trading value of the relevant contracts swung substantially away from previous values just prior to the perpetrators' intervention. There is considerable evidence of just this sort of manipulation having taken place in the days leading up to the terror attacks on September 11th, 2001 as the downturn in the valuation of airline stocks resulting from the attacks was played to advantage by investors with advance knowledge of the attacks. The fact that this manipulated investment was not only detected (eventually) but that it served as a link that tied these investors back to the organization that committed the attacks (thereby ultimately causing more harm than gain to the manipulators), as well as existing laws regarding securities fraud, insurance fraud, insider trading, and, more directly, criminal and civil laws covering physical and economic harm, intentional or otherwise, committed between persons or corporate bodies, would, I believe, serve to sufficiently dis-incentivize rational attempts at manipulation.
Finally, as my direct answer to the challenge posed in the original posting, I believe the clock should be set at:
Nuclear Weapons Use, >US$2x1013 GDP decline, 93 years, = $0.01 ^ $0.005
[Translation: The odds of a nuclear exchange causing the planetary GDP to be cut in half from today's value, (a serious effect, but not quite the civilization-ending catastrophe I grew up expecting) occuring in the remaining years of the 21st century are about 1 in 100 and took a half a chance in 100 uptick recently.]
UPDATE: (January 23, 2007 10:28PM MST)
It struck me that the kinds of 'existential threats' under consideration here, and the probabilities assigned to them by whatever chosen representation, are also contributory factors of the factor L (representing the average lifetime of intelligent civilizations) in the Drake Equation (q.v.) first discussed in this blog in July of 2004 (see item #6), again in 2005, and as recently as last week. (Actually the sum of the probabilities of all existential risks, expressed as 'years of lost life-expectancy'*, would be the reciprocal of L, if I recall my algebra correctly at this hour.)
*See Chapter 8 - Understanding Risk in Bernard L. Cohen's "The Nuclear Energy Option" for a discussion of formulating risk probabilities in this fashion
BTW - Thanks, Kathy, for providing such an interesting topic for discussion!
Some good news earlier this week over on L2SI, in case you missed it.
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We're a bit overdue on getting this edition out. But that's what you've got to love about good news -- it always arrives at the right time.
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Welcome to the first edition of Better All the Time for 2006. Our somewhat belated new year's resolution is to bring you more good news than ever before. So beginning with this edition, we will be featuring 12 -- that's right, 12! -- good news stories with each and every edition. So let's get started!
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Welcome to the Christmas List edition of Better All the Time. These halls are just about as decked as they are going to get, the shopping is pretty much wrapped up (both figuratively and literally) and some very tempting aromas are beginning to emanate from the kitchen. Sure, there's plenty left to do, but the big rush is over. While you prepare yourselves for the festivities to come, take a moment to review a different kind of Christmas list. This list is made up not of things we hope for some day, but that are here now, improving our world and promising an even brighter tomorrow.
...for the Better All The Time thesis. Nothing like a little historical perspective:
Terrorist attacks, a war in Iraq and natural disasters aren't so bad compared to other tough times in America's past, from the Revolutionary War to the Cold War, history professors say.
Asked to compare eight difficult periods of the nation's history, 46 percent of the 354 professors who responded to a nationwide survey agreed the current era was the least trying. The Civil War, 55 percent said, was the toughest.
None of this is to say that the problems we have today aren't real. Of course they are. But by and large, life has gotten safer, cleaner, easier.
I wonder what these scholars would say if asked what the future will be like? Would they expect the trend to continue or would they think we've peaked?
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Welcome to the In Search of Good News edition of Better All the Time. This time out, we thought we would do a little experiment. Rather than cherry-picking a few good news stories from numerous sources around the Web -- which is our normal modus operandi -- this time we decided to see what a general web search for good news would yield. We went to the Yahoo! and Google news sites and grabbed 50 news stories from each. No, we didn't just grab the top 50 news stories from each. It would be all too easy to do that and then bemoan the lack of good news coverage.
Instead, we did a search for "good news" on both the Yahoo! and Google news sites. Having cranked out 25 previous editions of Better All the Time, we know that good news doesn't come leaping off the page from a casual perusal of the headlines. But what happens if you go to the news sites and say, "Hey, how about a little good news, please?"
What follows is a mash-up of the top 100 results.
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Just in time for Turkey Day, we've got some great news for you. No, we haven't just saved a lot of money on our car insurance. It's much better than that! Check it out.
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It's that time again. Take a break from all the gloom and doom and enjoy a walk, however brief, on the positive side. We've assembled ten news items guarantee to make you feel better about the world and where it's headed.
So let's get started.
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Take the Better All the Time Challenge! We're so convinced that you're going to like reading good news for a change that we don't even have to ask you to read it all. Just read the first two news stories in this week's Better All the Time. Those two stories on their own can offset 80% (or more!) of the gloom found in virtually all MSM reporting.
And if you like what you find in those first two stories, go ahead and read the rest of the good news we've compiled for you at no additional charge. Yes, you read that right. How can we offer such an incredible deal? The answer is simple -- volume. There's more good news every day, and we've got plenty to spare.
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We're back!
After an 11-month hiatus, Better All The Time returns to accompany the Carnival of Tomorrow, FastForward Radio, and our day-to-day offerings aimed at keeping you up to date on what we call the Spiral of Progress. Sure, the news is as chock-full of horrible, depressing, and terrifying developments as it ever was and, no, we don't deny any of it. Oh, wait. This is a blog. To be honest, we take issue with a fair amount of what's reported in the mainstream media. But that's beside the point. The point is this: There may be a lot of bad news. Heck, there may be even more bad news than there used to be. But what we're about here is the good news, which is not only increasing, but beginning to "add up" to point us in some wonderful new directions. Let's have a look.
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Depending on how you voted earlier this week, you might be in need of a little good news...or maybe you're just ready for a little more. Either way, enjoy.
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A question we're often asked — how can the world possibly be "getting better" when the bad news consistently outweighs the good? This is a common misunderstanding. The reality is that good news so far outweighs bad that the former isn't considered noteworthy. A high school student robs a convenience store. Meanwhile, at the school a few blocks away, 400 of his peers are recognized for their academic achievements in an Honors Night ceremony. Which of those two stories would be considered noteworthy? Which would be picked up by the local media? Even if some enlightened media outlet treated the stories equally (which would be a stretch), they aren't equal. The good news is 400 times greater than the bad.
That might not be a bad ratio to work with. Better All The Time isn't about donning rose-colored glasses and pretending that serious problems don't exist. It's about remembering, if only for a moment, that the problems aren't the whole picture, and that — every day, for every problem that we are forced to contemplate — hundreds of positive developments go unheralded. Usually even unnoticed.
So here, for your edification and enjoyment, are ten news stories that show how the future might be better. Each one reflects a development so positive that even the mainstream media couldn't pass it up.
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Dispatches from a rapidly changing, rapidly improving world | ||
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Welcome to a new and improved Better All The Time. We've got the same same upbeat philosophy, a snappy new look, and more good news than ever. So what are we waiting for? Let's get started.
Did you miss us as much as we missed you? Better All The Time is back with some good news to brighten up your week.
Change is the constant, the signal for rebirth, the egg of the phoenix.
-- Christina Baldwin, via ThinkExist
We're back.
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http://www.blog.speculist.com
Item 2
Cold Fusion Back from the Dead
Later this month, the U.S. Department of Energy will receive a report from a panel of experts on the prospects for cold fusionthe supposed generation of thermonuclear energy using tabletop apparatus. It's an extraordinary reversal of fortune: more than a few heads turned earlier this year when James Decker, the deputy director of the DOE's Office of Science, announced that he was initiating the review of cold fusion science. Back in November 1989, it had been the department's own investigation that determined the evidence behind cold fusion was unconvincing. Clearly, something important has changed to grab the department's attention now.
Behind the scenes, scientists in many countries, but particularly in the United States, Japan, and Italy, have been working quietly for more than a decade to understand the science behind cold fusion. (Today they call it low-energy nuclear reactions, or sometimes chemically assisted nuclear reactions.) For them, the department's change of heart is simply a recognition of what they have said all alongwhatever cold fusion may be, it needs explaining by the proper process of science.
The good news:
It's this sort of thing that makes predictions about future energy capacity and capabilities so difficult to predict. (For that matter, it's this sort of thing that makes the future in general so difficult to predict.) Cold Fusion may yet be a long way off, but the fact that it could be back on the table only goes to show the risks involved in assessing the future based on present capabilities. Things might just be better than we think.
Interesting Implications:
We've seen a lot of discussion in the blogosphere recently about the viability of changing to a "hydrogen economy." The big problem with hydrogen is extracting it from water (or some other source, although water is probably the most likely.) A lot has been written about the impracticality of solar power, wind power, nuclear power, etc. But there hasn't been much written about cold fusion, either as a direct energy source or as a means of enabling hydrogen as an energy source. A while back, Steven Den Beste had this to say on fusion:
Wake me when it actually works.
Well, we won't nudge him just yet.
Item 3
Have We Seen an Exoplanet?
Astronomers may have taken the first ever photograph of a planetary system outside our own solar system. Gael Chauvin of the European Southern Observatory (ESO) and colleagues in Chile, Germany, France and the US have taken images of what appears to be a planet orbiting a young brown dwarf about 230 light years away. The results could shed more light on how planetary systems form (Astronomy & Astrophysics in press).
The good news:
While we've known for some time now that planets exist outside our solar system — we can "see" them by the gravitational effects they have on the stars they orbit — this may be the first actual picture of such a planet. May there be many more.
The downside:
The problem is that planets, particularly earth-sized planets, are very dim bulbs located on astronomical scales right next to a very bright star. Even with a resource like Hubble at our disposal, they're never going to be easy to spot.
Luckily...
A couple of super geniuses have set their minds to the task of designing the next generation of space-based telescopes. Wow, somebody should be paying those guys a lot of money.
Item 4
Pinpointing Cancer Fight
In the fight against cancer, some scientists are thinking small. Really, really small.
The National Cancer Institute launches a five-year, $144 million project today to investigate using nanotechnology, the science of building devices on the atomic level, to fight cancer.
The good news:
The treatments that will be looked at include, among other approaches, the use of gold nanoshells that "cook" tumor cells to death and nanoparticles that deliver chemotherapy on a cell-by-cell basis. We've been tracking these developments over the past year (here and here, for example). It's gratifying to see these lines of research get additional funding. Moreover, with the blessing of the National Cancer Institute, it would seem that nanomedicine is well on its way to being mainstream.
More good news:
Meanwhile, research shows that a very different form of treatment also offers very real benefits to cancer patients:
Hypnosis can relieve suffering and improve the quality of life of cancer patients, researchers said on Thursday.
Although it has been used to help people to give up smoking, lose weight and overcome phobias, its real therapeutic potential is still untapped, they believe.
Dr Christina Liossi, of the University of Wales in Swansea, said there is medical evidence that hypnosis helps to relieve the depression, nausea, vomiting and pain suffered by cancer patients.
There have also been suggestions that hypnosis could increase survival in patients with the disease, but she added there is not enough evidence to support them.
Still more good news:
RNAi treatment, touted as the next big thing in biotechnology is now being given its first try:
The first clinical trial of a therapy based on the much-heralded technique of RNA interference, or RNAi, will begin within several weeks to treat a condition which can lead to blindness.
If the results of these tests prove fruitful, RNAi treatment may soon be used to help cancer patients as well as those afflicted by a host of other medical problems.
Item 5
Scientists Recover Critical Genesis Parts
NASA scientists said they have recovered some critical pieces of the Genesis space capsule intact and are optimistic the wreckage will yield valuable information about the origins of the solar system.
"We should be able to meet many, if not all, of our science goals," physicist Roger C. Wiens of the Los Alamos National Laboratory said Friday.
The good news:
Apparently, the individual compartments that were used to gather sample atoms from around the solar systm got fused together pretty well, but atoms are kind of hard to destroy. So it's possible that just a few of them will be sufficient to give the scientists the information they're looking for.
Here's hoping.
Also, NASA is envisioning future missions that avoid the problem of parachute malfunctions altogether:
As currently envisioned, the Mars Sample Return mission uses a completely passive entry vehicle. A return craft holding the specimen canister would be aerodynamically stable throughout its landing on Earth. The MSR entry craft would not require a parachute...
In other Space News...
As the age of space tourism draws ever closer, some some would-be amateur astronauts are likely to prepare themselves by taking one or more zero G flights, which are about to be offered on a commercial basis:
The Zero Gravity Corporation has been given the thumbs up by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to conduct "weightless flights" for the general public, providing the sensation of floating in space.
Tickets are on sale for around $3,000.
A specially modified Boeing 727-200 aircraft, called G-Force One, will be used during a nationwide tour Sept. 14-24.
Hmmm...at $3000 a pop, these flights will not only make the passengers weightless, they should go a long way towards lightening their wallets as well.
Item 6
Better Living Through Gadgets
Here's a small sampling of recent gadget news. How did we ever get by without these things?
Item 7
Nickels to Get a New Look
There's change in store for Thomas Jefferson on the nickel that is. He's getting his first makeover since being put on the coin in 1938.
The good news:
The new nickel looks better and includes the word "liberty" in Thomas Jefferson's handwriting. Plus, Jefferson is featured more prominently. Moreover, for the nostalgic, the new coin has a buffalo on the back.
The downside:
The changes to the nickel comes on the heels of other currency updates, which include adding color the to $50 bill. Change is good and all, but we're not sure how we're going to feel about swapping greenbacks for Monopoly money.
Better All The Time is compiled by Phil Bowermaster and Stephen Gordon.
More good news: Arthur Chrenkoff gives the latest good news from Iraq. And here's the latest edition of Winds of Discovery.
Live to see it!
After this weeks festivities in Boston, whether you viewed them as a tremendous renewal of hope for our nation, a massive hot-air-athon, or an unwlecome disruption of your summer re-run viewing, what better wrap-up could there be than a little good news?
There are so many exciting developments taking place every week that it's sometimes hard to narrow them down to seven. We'd like to think that the following items are a representative sample, but failing that, they're at least a good start.
Only those who will risk going too far, can possibly find out how far they can go
-- T. S. Eliot
Item 1
You Call it Corn, We Call it Optical Disks
In September 2003, Sanyo Electric introduced the concept of a new optical disc, dubbed 'MildDisc' and based on poly lactid acid produced from corn. These discs will have a lifetime of 50 to 100 years and are biodegradable.
The good news:
A CD made from corn? What could be better for running on your spinach-powered laptop? We live in amazing times.
The downside:
The disks have been delayed coming to market. Apparently they do not do well with high temperatures. (Is it possible that their failure is accompanied by a loud popping sound?)
Anyway...
Roland Piquepaille comments on the production of the disks:
[H]ere are interesting numbers. Sanyo said that an ear of corn would be enough to deliver 10 discs. There are about 9 billions of CDs produced annually, and the yearly world corn production is estimated to be around 600 million tons. So only 0.1 percent of the world corn's production would be enough to satisfy the worldwide disc market, according to the company.
Item 2
If I Only Had a Heart, the Nerve, some...Teeth
Our good friend Randall Parker, the FuturePundit himself, has run a series of stories over the past week about major breakthroughs in the use of adult stem cells:
Helmut Drexler of University of Freiburg, Germany and his colleagues treated sufferers of acute myocardial infarctions (i.e. heart attacks) with bone marrow stem cells and found that the bone marrow stem cells boosted the volume of blood pumped by the left ventricle of the heart.
...
Better Humans reports on research by Siddharthan Chandran of the University of Cambridge, UK Cambridge Centre for Brain Repair on the use of a mix of growth factors to successfully turn skin cells into neural stem cells.
...
Working with freshly extracted human third molars (wisdom teeth) scientists have been able to isolate stem cells that can turn into the ligament that hold teeth into place.
The good news:
Adult stem cells are the often-ignored older siblings of embryonic stem cells, which hold so much promise and which are surrounded by so much controversey. The conventional wisdom is that embryonic stem cells are more or less "universal assemblers" capable of replenishing or creating anew virutally any cell in the body, where adult stem cells are much less flexible, having only one direction that they can grow. The second item cited above, which describes adult skin cells being converted to neural stem cells, would appear to fly in the face of the conventional wisdom. We may yet see universal cell assemblers grown from adult cells. And even if we don't, it seems that new applications for adult stem cells are being found all the time — which is tremendous news in its own right.
The downside:
Randall explains:
In the United States the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is throwing up roadblocks even for adult stem cell therapy. The FDA's stance has nothing to do with the debate about embryonic stem cells. Rather, it is part of the FDA's never-ending quest to protect people with fatal diseases from the risk that experimental therapies might harm them. In my view people with fatal diseases ought to be allowed to try experimental therapies and the FDA's position both slows the rate at which treatments are developed and unjustifiably takes away the individual's right to choose which treatment risks are worth taking.
Hear, hear.
Anyway...
It's encouraging to see that progress is being made in so many different areas at once. We can expect to hear a lot more about adult stem cell therapy in the months and years to come.
Item 3
Keep Hubble Repair Options Open - Experts
NASA should not rule out sending a shuttle to fix the aging Hubble Space Telescope, an expert panel told the space agency on Tuesday, six months after a planned repair mission was dismissed as too risky.
The good news:
We are big believers that the Hubble telescope, which has opened the eyes of the world to a universe we could scarcely have imagined, is worth saving. It's gratifying to see NASA coming to the same conclusion.
Anyway:
In a week in which the Cassini probe has survived being peppered by ring chunks, and speculation is increasing about passengers on SpaceShipOne, we didn't want to miss this very positive development.
Obscure Blogosphere Reference:
James Taranto would have headlined this piece as follows:
What Would the Hubble Telescope Do Without Experts?
Item 4
New Portable Multimedia Entertainment Devices Head for Stores
Get ready to feel obsolete with your iPod. Portable media players will be available within weeks, and they store and play not only music, but movies, recorded TV shows, and photo slide shows.
The good news:
These gadgets can be configured with up to 40 GB of storage, "enough to store every episode of The Simpsons." Kawabunga, Dude!
The downside:
The screen sizes are 3.5 and 3.8 inches, which might prove to be a bit of a strain for tired old eyes. Also, at an estimated street price of $500, they are a smidge more expensive than an iPod.
On the other hand...
It's 1984.
The phone rings, and you answer it. It's you, calling from the future:
"Hey, Me-From-20-Years-Ago. How's it going?"
"Okay. How about with you, Me-From-20-Years-Ahead?"
"Great! You'll never guess what I just bought."
"Tell me."
"Well, it's a portable combination TV, VCR, stereo."
"Portable? What does it use, tiny little tapes?"
"No tapes. It stores everything in computer memory."
"No kidding. Can it hold as much as a six-hour extended play vhs tape?"
"It can hold hundreds of hours of video and music."
"Whoah. So you say it's portable. What does it weigh, 15-20 pounds?"
"It weighs about the same as your beloved Sony Walkman. And it's just a little bigger than the Walkman. You could carry it in your coat pocket if you wanted to."
"I don't believe it! How much did it cost?"
"Guess."
"Well, let's see. I just bought some stuff. My TV cost me about $500. My VCR was about $200. My stereo was about $300. That's $1,000 in 1984 money. I'm thinking the device you're talking about must have set you back a good $10,000. What, are we like rich in the future?"
"Gotta go. See you in 20!"
"But, wait I want to know —"
[Click]
So you see, "expensive" is a relative notion.
Item 5
West Nile fears boost protective clothing sales
Recently, the battle of man vs. insect has spawned a new tool: clothes that appear normal in every way, except for their built-in repellent that keeps bugs at bay.
"This is the first new development in personal insect protection since DEET," says Haynes Griffin, CEO of Buzz Off Insect Shield of Greensboro, N.C. DEET is the active ingredient in most tick and insect repellents.
The active ingredient in Buzz Off clothing is permethrin, a synthetic version of pyrethrum, a natural insect repellent derived from the daisy-like flowers of a plant in the chrysanthemum family.
The good news:
You might be wondering just how effective these bug-proof clothes really are. It seems that West Point Academy has reported a reduction in the incidence of Lyme disease from 10 cases to zero one year after switching to field uniforms made from the fabric.
That's pretty impressive.
The downside:
In the long run, insect-proof clothes are probably bad news for, say, the people who make Off.
Anyway...
The Better All The Time Wardrobe grows. Insect-proof clothes now join power-generating clothes, self-cleaning clothes, and bullet-proof shirts.
An elaborately decorated cave ceiling with artwork dating to 13,000 years ago has been found in Nottinghamshire, England, according to a press release issued today by the University of Sheffield.
The site of the find, Church Hole Cave at Creswell Crags, is being called the "Sistine Chapel" of the Ice Age because it contains the most ornate cave art ceiling in the world. The ceiling extends the earliest rock art in Britain by approximately 8,000 years and suggests that a primary culture unified Europeans during the Ice Age.
The good news:
The fact that this important find is just now being discovered in a well-known cave is evidence of how much we still can still learn from known archeological sites.
The scope of the discovery:
Jon Humble, inspector of ancient monuments for a preservation group called English Heritage, commented, "The text books say that there is no cave art in Britain. These will now have to be rewritten. It is remarkable to consider that some 500 generations ago people created pictures on the wall of the caves depicting the world that they knew, which certainly was not as we know it."
Moreover...
It seems we know less than we think we do about the world we live in. There's more to learn, folks.
Item 7
Extended Life For Baby Boomers!
In a radio interview, famous futurist Ray Kurzweil predicts that health conscious baby boomers have a good shot of living long enough to benefit from life extension technologies - to bootstrap into indefinite lifespans.
On "Living Forever," Kurzweil discussed how to dramatically slow down the aging process, even stop and reverse it, and the social and cultural ramifications. He also described his forthcoming book, "Fantastic Voyage: Live Long Enough to Live Forever," co-authored with Terry Grossman, M.D.
"The book makes the scientific case that immortality is within our grasp," says Kurzweil. "Our health program enables people to slow aging and disease processes to such a degree that we can remain in good health and spirits until the more radical life-extending and life-enhancing technologies, now in the research and testing pipeline, become available.
Here's an real audio link to the interview.
Better All The Time is compiled by Phil Bowermaster, Stephen Gordon, and Kathy Hanson. Live to see it!
Original Comments
Great site! Thanks to Instapundit for the link--I'm adding this to my Favorites.
Posted by: Dar at July 14, 2004 10:01 AMGood work on the adult stem cell item.
Unfortunately the self-cleaning clothes thing won't work. Stop washing them, and environmentalists will complain that we won't be putting enough phosphates in our rivers...
Posted by: J Bowen at July 14, 2004 10:02 AM"These discs will have a lifetime of 50 to 100 years and are biodegradable."
I'd say those two qualities are mutually incompatible.
re:Item 2
pet peeve #427 - the phrase is "hear, hear", NOT "here, here".
Otherwise, great job!
Mike:
'"These discs will have a lifetime of 50 to 100 years and are biodegradable."
I'd say those two qualities are mutually incompatible.'
Current model humans have a lifetime of 50 to 100 years and are also biodegradable.
Posted by: raymund at July 14, 2004 02:48 PMHopefully the boome
Great feature! Keep up the good work.
Posted by: G. Murry at July 14, 2004 09:15 AM