Defensive, condescending, full of made-up knowledge, and absolutely lethal to patients — these are the hallmarks of the occult detective, such as Algernon Blackwood’s Dr. John Silence, probably the biggest jerk in weird fiction. Like Batman, Silence vanished for 5 years of international training, only to return well-versed in being obnoxious and making things up. His first adventure was “A Psychical Invasion” (1908) in which a humorist overdoses on marijuana and loses his sense of humor. Silence uses a magical collie to fight what he claims is an evil ghost lady, relays a bunch of pseudoscience as patronizingly as possible (“As I told you before, the forces of a powerful personality may still persist after death in the line of their original momentum…If you knew anything of magic, you would know that thought is dynamic…etc.”), then he has the humorist’s house torn down.
Tag: books
Manhattan Secrets
In his latest book, Manhattan’s Little Secrets, author John Tauranac leads readers on a fascinating hunt for the overlooked and under-seen around every corner of New York City. Some of the Manhattan secrets that Tauranac reveals in his book include where to find actual stones from the dungeon where Joan of Arc was held, where to find an ancient symbol of Christianity on an apartment house and how to spot an architect’s likeness worked into the statuary of a building he designed.
The Case for Space
A vibrant Space Program will inspire millions of children
2019-06-04: Robert Zubrin on the Case for Space
The author surveys the resources available on the Moon, Mars, near-Earth and main belt asteroids, and, looking farther into the future, the outer solar system where, once humans have mastered controlled nuclear fusion, sufficient Helium-3 is available for the taking to power a solar system wide human civilization of trillions of people for billions of years and, eventually, the interstellar ships they will use to expand out into the galaxy. Detailed plans are presented for near-term human missions to the Moon and Mars, both achievable within the decade of the 2020s, which will begin the process of surveying the resources available there and building the infrastructure for permanent settlement. These mission plans, unlike those of NASA, do not rely on paper rockets which have yet to fly, costly expendable boosters, or detours to “gateways” and other diversions which seem a prime example of (to paraphrase the author in chapter 14), “doing things in order to spend money as opposed to spending money in order to do things.”
2019-09-09: Why we should go to space.
When I share enthusiasm for some new space exploration or colonization initiative, I occasionally hear the retort that we should focus on saving Earth first, often with climate change in mind as the imminent existential threat. A recent articulate example from Facebook: “It seems to me that we are in such a significant emergency (really interrelated emergencies) that we need to focus all of our ingenuity and resources on transforming our energy systems, infrastructure, agriculture, transportation, political systems, etc. right here on this planet. I am afraid that we will end up exporting our exploitative culture to space and not make the changes here that we need to restore the life support systems of our planet.” And my reply: When I have heard these concerns in the past, I have dashed off a retort about the false dichotomy, but the concerns persist, so let me try to be a bit more thoughtful, and please let me know if you find any of this to be persuasive: 1) Positive inspiration: living in space is the ultimate recycling and sustainability challenge. A fair number of people like to dream of something grand as they simultaneously solve the problems of today. You mention transforming energy, ag and transportation. Think of the advances that some of the “space people” have made in this area. Tesla came after SpaceX. Some of my most recent investments have been in fusion power and animal-free meat manufacturing. They are both HUGE priorities to save the Earth (we have to stem the growth of hundreds of new coal power plants in China and meat manufacturing globally, both major sources of GHG). But they are also essential for off-world colonies — energy and food production challenges are more acute when imagining a lunar or Mars base. For a breakthrough solution, you often have to imagine a challenge greater than the creeping incrementalism of “problem fixing.” 2) Direct synergy: where would the environmental movement and the climate change science be without space? From the whole-Earth image of our pale blue dot to the Earth observation satellites, one could argue that space initiatives have been the greatest advance for the environmental movement (Sierra Club). The founders of Open Lunar are the founders of Planet; like me, they still have their day jobs where they image the entire Earth every day from space. Other space entrepreneurs are putting up GPS-RO satellites to measure upper atmosphere weather (essential to climate models and weather prediction) and this data cannot be gathered from the ground. These satellite constellations are now cost-effective because of the lowering launch costs from SpaceX and some of their competitors. 3) Differential advantage: not everyone on the planet should be focused on the same thing. You provide a partial list of priorities, but should a domain expert on poverty or the diseases of the poor shift entirely to something on your list of emergencies? Do you want to argue that climate change trumps other priorities, and even if it does, do you have a rank list of what to prioritize within that domain? This climate-change prioritization list surprised me as to the space-synergies. 4) Experimentation zones: this is a new opportunity. If we want to perform experiments in geoengineering, Mars and Venus might be better places to start as we hone our skills and verify our simulations. And if we can make one habitable, and humanity becomes multi-planetary, it would be one of the greatest accomplishments for our civilization. These experimentation zones could include the “political systems” you mention and go beyond the “charter cites” that Paul Romer espouses to “charter civilizations” with experiments in better governance among the off-world colonies. In short, exploring the final frontier and saving the Earth are not mutually exclusive; rather, they are deeply synergistic, inspirational and focused on the ultimate sustainability challenge. And the entrepreneurial drive to forge a future that inspires future generations with the potential of progress is a worthy endeavor in its own right.
Intangible Assets
The portion of the world’s economy that doesn’t fit the old model just keeps getting larger. That has major implications for everything from tax law to economic policy to which cities thrive and which cities fall behind, but in general, the rules that govern the economy haven’t kept up. This is one of the biggest trends in the global economy that isn’t getting enough attention.
If you want to understand why this matters, the brilliant new book Capitalism Without Capital by Jonathan Haskel and Stian Westlake is about as good an explanation as I’ve seen. They start by defining intangible assets as “something you can’t touch.” It sounds obvious, but it’s an important distinction because intangible industries work differently than tangible industries. Products you can’t touch have a very different set of dynamics in terms of competition and risk and how you value the companies that make them.
Haskel and Westlake outline 4 reasons why intangible investment behaves differently:
It’s a sunk cost. If your investment doesn’t pan out, you don’t have physical assets like machinery that you can sell off to recoup some of your money.
It tends to create spillovers that can be taken advantage of by rival companies. Uber’s biggest strength is its network of drivers, but it’s not uncommon to meet an Uber driver who also picks up rides for Lyft.
It’s more scalable than a physical asset. After the initial expense of the first unit, products can be replicated ad infinitum for next to nothing.
It’s more likely to have valuable synergies with other intangible assets. Haskel and Westlake use the iPod as an example: it combined Apple’s MP3 protocol, miniaturized hard disk design, design skills, and licensing agreements with record labels.None of these traits are inherently good or bad. They’re just different from the way manufactured goods work.
more of the economy is moving to intangible assets
Bad Romance
One awkward thing about the supposed book stuffing “scam” is that it walks so closely to accepted industry practices. These compilations deceive readers by baiting them with promises of fresh content, like a new novella, at the end of a book which is otherwise all repackaged, previously published material. But mainstream authors do sometimes include bonus short stories or previews of upcoming titles in the back of a book — granted the book itself is usually original. The incentives that Kindle Unlimited generates to put out longer and longer books aren’t completely new, either — Charles Dickens’ verbose, meandering prose may reflect the fact that he was paid per installment. The 30-day Amazon Kindle cliff may necessitate ghostwriting, repetitive plots, and copycat writing, but none of these things are new in genre writing. Publishing and marketing have long gone hand in hand. Gaming the best-seller charts happens outside of ebooks — arguably, the major publishing houses live and die by their ability to game the best-seller lists.
Capital In The 21th Century
Contrary to the popular consensus today, the American Dream was very real for most of America’s history. This was less due to American ideals and institutions, and more the fact that America (as a new country) had less time to accumulate a rentier class, which takes a couple generations for the fortunes to really multiply. And as a country with a very high population growth rate (remember the average colonial New England family had like 10 kids), any wealth that did get accumulated was quickly diluted over a bunch of children instead of inherited as a chunk. This was at least true in the North and frontier – the South, which inherited a lot of the worst parts of the 1600s English upper-class, got a society along the lines of the European aristocratic model with rentier plantation owners. Traditional models of labor-capital split generally fail to capture this because much Southern wealth was in the form of slaves, ie labor turned into a form of capital, which confuses the models. But as for the rest of the country, Piketty approvingly quotes Tocqueville’s description of America as “a land without capital”.
Against Education
Some of Caplan’s ideas dovetail with the thoughts I’ve had myself since childhood on how to make the school experience less horrible—though I never framed my own thoughts as “against education.” Make middle and high schools more like universities, with freedom of movement and a wide range of offerings for students to choose from. Abolish hall passes and detentions for lateness: just like in college, the teacher is offering a resource to students, not imprisoning them in a dungeon. Don’t segregate by age; just offer a course or activity, and let kids of any age who are interested show up. And let kids learn at their own pace. Don’t force them to learn things they aren’t ready for: let them love Shakespeare because they came to him out of interest, rather than loathing him because he was forced down their throats. Never, ever try to prevent kids from learning material they are ready for: instead of telling an 11-year-old teaching herself calculus to go back to long division until she’s the right age (does that happen? ask how I know…), say: “OK hotshot, so you can differentiate a few functions, but can you handle these here books on linear algebra and group theory, like Terry Tao could have when he was your age?”
Antifragile
Antifragility seems an odd concept at first. Our experience is that unexpected events usually make things worse, and that the inexorable increase in entropy causes things to degrade with time: plants and animals age and eventually die; machines wear out and break; cultures and societies become decadent, corrupt, and eventually collapse. And yet if you look at nature, antifragility is everywhere—it is the mechanism which drives biological evolution, technological progress, the unreasonable effectiveness of free market systems in efficiently meeting the needs of their participants, and just about everything else that changes over time, from trends in art, literature, and music, to political systems, and human cultures. In fact, antifragility is a property of most natural, organic systems, while fragility (or at best, some degree of robustness) tends to characterize those which were designed from the top down by humans. And one of the paradoxical characteristics of antifragile systems is that they tend to be made up of fragile components.
Lucid dreaming playbook
1. Set an alarm for 5 hours after you go to bed.
2. When the alarm sounds, try to remember a dream from just before you woke up. If you can’t, just recall any dream you had recently.
3. Lie in a comfortable position with the lights off and repeat the phrase: ‘Next time I’m dreaming, I will remember I’m dreaming.’ Do this silently in your mind. You need to put real meaning into the words and focus on your intention to remember.
4. Every time you repeat the phrase at step 3, imagine yourself back in the dream you recalled at step 2, and visualize yourself remembering that you are dreaming.
5. Repeat steps 3 and 4 until you either fall asleep or are sure that your intention to remember is set. This should be the last thing in your mind before falling asleep. If you find yourself repeatedly coming back to your intention to remember that you’re dreaming, that’s a good sign it’s firm in your mind.
Who We Are and How We Got Here
The case of the Ancient North Eurasians showed that while a tree is a good analogy for the relationships among species — because species rarely interbreed and so like real tree limbs are not expected to grow back together after they branch — it is a dangerous analogy for human populations. The genome revolution has taught us that great mixtures of highly divergent populations have occurred repeatedly. Instead of a tree, a better metaphor may be a trellis, branching and remixing far back into the past.
Gregor J. Rothfuss 